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I was born in Peru, of a middle class family, but
even though we had enough of everything and more
to spare, I still remember my mother admonishing
us when we wasted food or left our meals uneaten.
"Every seed", she used to say, "can
grow into a full plant and feed a family for many
generations". She had learnt this wisdom herself
as a young child living in a rural village in the
central Andes. She had seen hunger first hand and
still remembered the faces of the needy who came
to plead for grain from her father, a successful
farmer. No caller, she used to say, ever left empty
handed, even though that meant that her family would
have to do without. Like agricultural communities
around the world, sharing was at the heart of living.
Later, when I started studying pre-Columbian cosmology
I discovered that the ancient Peruvians believed
that all of reality is held together by one simple
principle which is called ayni in Quechua,
the native language of the Andes. This word translates
into English as reciprocity, the principle of equal
exchange of energy. Ayni affects everything,
because the ancient Peruvians, like their modern
counterparts, understood that energy cannot be created
or destroyed, only exchanged. For every thing that
is spent, a corresponding force must be created.
For every gift we receive, a corresponding gesture
must be made in return. "Today for me, tomorrow
for you", was my mother's simple way of interpreting
this wisdom.
But this was fine for those things which, like
the newspaper at my door, can be exchanged for hard
cash. Understanding ayni was much more
difficult when it came to things like the earth,
or the wind, or life itself. Yet ayni was
necessary in order for the Cosmos to continue to
exist. So where was this ayni to come from?
The answer of the ancient Peruvians was that it
came from human gratitude; that it was human emotion,
in a sense, which kept reality in place. Although
I understood this intellectually at first, it took
a few years for this particular piece of information
to truly come alive in my consciousness, and ironically
it was the death of my mother which brought it to
full force. Loosing her made me understand just
how precious her life had been to me and how much
of me was a product of what she had given to me.
Sadly, I also realized just how little ayni
I had shown to her while she was alive.
For the ancient Peruvians gratitude was not only
something which we needed to feel in a sentimental
way, it was the foundation for action and was related
to another principle which categorized all of human
activity into three areas: knowledge, labor, and
love. In order for ayni to be manifest,
I was taught, knowledge must be first cultivated
in the self and then shared in order to be useful
to the community. Labor, on the other hand, has
no meaning if it is centered on the self. It must
render a service to the community at all times.
And love is at the center, binding our efforts to
our selves and our loved ones. To be worthwhile,
gratitude must take form, it must be part of the
labor, love and wisdom of a society. It is not enough
to feel gratitude, it must be made concrete, of
value.
The ancient Peruvians also recognized one additional
characteristic of ayni, and that had to
do with the fact that energy is everywhere, and
that for ayni to be effective, our gift
had to be shared not with one or two people, but
showered on all of creation. To miss this point,
I was warned, was to miss the essence of life. To
begin with, every action must recognize that all
of reality is alive, interconnected, and responsive.
There is no area of life that is not in one way
or another part of who we are. This is obvious if
we consider all of the people and resources which
have come together to produce that same newspaper
that appears miraculously at my door step every
day. Not only did it require reporters, editors,
and photographers, but its contributors include
messengers, janitors, electricians, plumbers, cooks,
postmen, wives, and husbands, not to mention trees,
metals, minerals, rain, sunshine and all the other
energetic components that go into simple paper.
Ayni must be demonstrated to all of these,
and this is but the morning newspaper!
The method my ancestors proposed to get around
this seemingly insurmountable problem was simple:
live all of your life in ayni, show gratitude
at all times, and make every gesture of your life
a labor of love and retribution for the gifts you
receive, the gifts you are to receive, and for the
miracle of life itself. Ayni is not about
record keeping, it is about living constantly in
reciprocity, giving and getting as part of a dance
of life, a dance of energy. A life lived in gratitude
is perforce a happy life because it recognizes the
immeasurable bounty that surrounds us. It is a life
that is never in want, no matter how little we may
or may not have. It is a life lived fully.
I find it sad how little this principle is applied
today. Our culture is the richest the planet has
ever seen, yet we continuously act with greed and
self-importance. The fact is that no matter how
hard we try, we will be unable to pay back in ayni
for everything we have received unless our society
as a whole takes on the challenge of demonstrating
gratitude for our gifts. We have been placed in
a privileged position in relation to the whole planet,
and by the principle of ayni, we are beholden
to it. We are therefore beholden to construct, to
improve what is, and to protect the web of life.
Yet we continue to destroy, to take for ourselves,
mindless not only of the suffering we inflict on
others and on nature, but of the transgression we
are committing to natural law.
I now understand that gratitude is not only desirable,
it is imperative. Gratitude is not only a polite
manner which adorns our upbringing; it is the very
fabric of life itself. We are being showered continuously
by life with gifts of immeasurable value: our breath
alone is a creation which defies all of our understanding.
By the laws of nature, we must give something of
equal value in exchange. Yet we as humans are incapable
of that order of creation. I, for example, am incapable,
as a male, of matching the gift of life my mother
has given me. Yet I am bound by those same laws
to do so. And here is where I discovered the great
beauty of ayni, which had been handed down
the generations through my ancestry. Again, it was
through my mother that this wisdom had been transmitted,
and it had to do with my own power. Never once did
she ask for herself. Instead she used to say, "Be
the best you can be and remember to help those around
you." It is only in each person that ayni
can be made manifest; it is in our own creative
genius that we can return the gift, through our
labor, our knowledge and our love.
Today, I try to make every action, word, and thought
an act of ayni, of gratitude and reciprocity.
I cannot claim to succeed all of the time, but little
by little I am whittling down the great debt I owe
to life, and to that important person in my life,
my mom. After all, it was she who taught me not
to waste even a seed.
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