Cusco, Peru, was the capital of the Inca
Empire. The name means “navel” in Quechua and the city was
believed to be the center of the world by the Incas. Not
surprisingly, then, there are many, many Inca ruins in and near the
city. And, also, many Spanish colonial buildings built atop Inca
ruins in a symbolic and psychologically devestating representation of
the conquest. In fact, the main cathedral in the Plaza de Armas is
built with gorgeous stones pillaged from the Inca holy site of
Saqsaywaman (jokingly pronounced by every American as Sexy Woman).
The entire city is a reminder of the destruction of a people – as
most buildings are colonial structures built on top of Inca
foundations; the Inca stonework is still visible up to about knee
height and then the quality of the stonework obviously deteriorates.
Located at 10,800 feet, it is tradition for new arrivals to the city
(usually from sea level in Lima) to drink lots of coca tea, which is
touted to help ease the headaches and lethargy that often accompany
the altitude transition. Cusco, now
with a population of almost 350,000, is one of those magical cities
with great natural beauty, history, and vibrancy. That's probably why
UNESCO declared it a World Heritage Site in 1983 and why over a
million tourists visit it each year. I fell in love with Cusco when I
went there in 2000 – and was excited to return. But the reality is
that “you can never go back.” As many times as I've heard the
saying and experienced its truth, I wasn't prepared for how weird it
was to go back to Cusco. So much had changed.
Part of the difference had to do with
differences in myself. For one thing, when I went to Peru in 2000 I
had spent months and months gearing up for it – reading everything
I could about Peruvian culture and especially Peruvian spirituality,
training at the gym and Green Lake Park for the Inka Trail trek to
Machu Picchu, and saving money so I could do anything and everything I
wanted while I was there. This time, of course, Peru was happening as
one month of a 14 month worldwide journey. And as the only country we
are hitting that I have already been to, I did almost nothing to
prepare for it beyond reflecting on my last visit, and I invited
Miral to make all the decisions on what we did and didn't do there,
since I'd seen the country before. I felt very goal-oriented and
driven in Peru in 2000 – this time I felt much more open to
whatever might happen.
Maybe more profoundly, I had been
divorced for all of about six months when I went to Peru in 2000 and
I was still only beginning to recover. I remember that I still
ruminated about the marriage falling apart, vacillating between angry
bouts of blaming her and depressing binges of beating myself up.
Having met no one I was even remotely interested in, and unsure if I
could stomach starting again with someone new if I did, I mentally
prepared for the possibility of always being alone. I had recently
started a daily Buddhist meditation practice and could already sense
that it was going to be very healthy for me, but I had not yet really
tasted any distance from my thoughts and feelings as reality and they
still overwhelmed me. I remember meditating in the Plaza de Armas in
Cusco each day I was there, but I also remember the ruminating
thoughts that accompanied me nearly everywhere I went in Peru.
Ten
years later, life is pretty different. The years of meditation seem
like they have paid some dividends. I feel like I am less easily
carried away by my thoughts and feelings and the inevitable ups and
downs of life – sometimes even genuinely curious about and amazed
by the whole display. I feel like I have had some brief tastes of the
great mystery that lies beyond my sense of an individual self.
Most importantly, I hope that I have become a more awake and caring
person, even though I am almost constantly reminded of how much
further I have to go. Whereas I was still feeling pretty confused
about how to handle the future when I went to Peru in 2000, in 2009 I
am feeling a much healthier balance of openness and purposefulness.
So it was strange to be in Cusco – and to remember -- not just
remember in my mind, but to feel again “who I was” the last time
I walked through this Plaza or in that market.
And despite my worries back then, I am
definitely not alone now. After a lot of years of wondering if I'd
ever meet someone special again, I have. I am traveling with and my
life is intertwined with a woman who is completely magical. A woman
who is stunningly bright and articulate and has stretched my thinking
on everything from religion to relationship to personal growth -- who
possesses a child-like enthusiasm and playfulness that has infused my
life with a huge amount of joy – who is so dedicated to turning
each and every experience of her life into a cause for celebration
that life truly feels like an unending chain of sacredness. I arrived
in Cusco this time in partnership with someone who shares my
intention to live an uncommon life deep with meaning. Parents often
talk about the joys and renewal of seeing the world through the eyes
of their children. Not to steal from a lyric of Elliott Smith's, but
I found myself in love with Cusco in a new way seeing it through
Miral's eyes. She was drawn to exploring the more chaotic side of
real, everyday Cusco and was pretty uninterested in looking at the
local Inca ruins, feeling that nothing could match her experience at
Machu Picchu.
As
much as I was a different person with a different outlook and agenda
when I explored Cusco in 2000, Cusco was a different city then, too.
Extreme and unmistakable changes had occurred. Maybe two images
capture it best.
First image: One of my favorite
memories of Cusco from 2000 was wandering the streets around the
Plaza de Armas looking for cool Peruvian wares. Tapestries, new and
antique. Jewelry. Woven wall hangings. Little statues, like Tumi, the
Pre-Inca good luck symbol. Scarves. Socks. Sweaters. And, of course,
Peruvian ski hats. All of these beautiful items were being sold by
women sitting on blankets on the side walk. To a person, they were
dressed in the clothing of their indigenous heritage, and most of
them were attending to child care needs simultaneously with selling
their items - from infants to school-age kids. And they were skilled
in the art of hard sales. If you so much as glanced in the direction
of their blanket -- “Amigo! Amigo! Look! Real Alpaca!” Then they
would provide Spanish language
lists of every item on their blanket. If you walked over to them, you
were locked in a sales conversation that would take walking away to
sever. Really, there is no choice for them. How do you possibly get a
leg-up when you are one of a hundred women selling the same exact
items? I have to admit that I remember moments of being annoyed by
the women on the blankets. Their in-your-face sales tactics could be
a little much, stepping over and around them and through the crowds
they attracted made getting from point A to point B more difficult,
and you had to give your purchases from them a good hard inhale
before buying them, because so many of them had the worn-in smell of
gas fumes, burning firewood, and cooking meat that was quintessential
Cusco. But, to me, those women on their blankets with their children
were a beautiful part of the essence of Cusco. I liked to buy my
souvenirs from these women. Unlike my usual experience at stores in
the US, it made me feel like I was purchasing from the humans who
actually made the items (although that probably wasn't true in all
cases) and I knew that my money was supporting a human in much
need of financial support (which seemed unmistakably true in every
case).
As Miral and I walked down Marquez
Mantas Street on this trip and approached the Plaza de Armas, I
noticed a building I remembered well – one with a sidewalk in front
of it that was elevated a few steps up. I remembered that this
sidewalk was lined with these women on their blankets and I
remembered stepping over them on repeated nights walking around
Cusco. But there were no women there this time. Not even one woman.
Nor one blanket. No Peruvian souvenirs. No preciously dirty children
with crusted noses. In fact, on one side of the building was now an
upscale cafe serving Starbucks-like coffee drinks, with tables and
outdoor heaters on the elevated sidewalk, enclosed in a glassed
railing. On the other side of the building was a North Face store. I
did a double-take because I could have sworn I was at an American
shopping mall.
Second image: When I was in Cusco in
2000, the Plaza de Armas teemed with people (mostly children) begging
for handouts. Even as my ten days in Cusco progressed and I became
somewhat used to the constant requests in memorized English words
(“Senor! Your President is Bill Clinton. Some money please?”), I
still wasn't prepared for a sight I saw toward the end of my stay –
one of those sights that burns into your memory. A desparate man was
in one corner of the plaza. He was hobbling along with such
struggling that one had to conclude he was very sick. His hair was
long and matted and thick with dirt. His clothing was literally
tattered rags and what was left of his pants were falling off of his
body, exposing his own excrement that was running down his leg. I
remember thinking that this must be what the untouchables in India
look like. He eventually sat down on a curb. I remember wondering if
he would die there. The man who owned the store he sat in front of
handed him some scraps of food and sent him on his way. Flash to 2009
- as Miral and I entered the Plaza and I looked over to that same
corner of the Plaza and remembered that man, I was immediately struck
by what now stood maybe one or two doors down from where the man had
sat. A McDonalds. In the Cusco Plaza de Armas.
Changes like this seemed to be
everywhere. A little restaurant that served cuy (Guinea Pig – yes,
a Peruvian delicacy!) and clay-oven pizzas was now an Israeli owned
bagel shop. A nondescript shop
that sold pencil sketches of local landmarks that may or may not have
been sketched by the store owner who swore he was the artist, now
sold the kind of hip art pieces you'd find at Fireworks stores in
Seattle, with a loft for serving freshly made chai tea (not coca tea,
mind you – chai tea!). Another non-descript store with wooden walls
and floor that had piles and piles of classic Peruvian sweaters, the
kind where the owner had to fish through the piles when you described
what you were looking for, was replaced by a store with stucco walls,
lush carpeting, and 1/8 of the clothing inventory neatly
displayed on hangers and metal clothing racks, each one with a price
tag boasting a cost about eight times that of the sweaters I saw
there in 2000. In that kind of 'Rudy Giuliani cleans up Times Square'
style, the Plaza de Armas was cleared of beggers, allowing tourists
greater immunity from poverty as they admired the cathedral and
other buildings. Now there was only “legitimate begging,” from
restaurant and tour guide touts.
Like Times Square in the 90s, you
couldn't help but wonder if the poor people who used to be there now
had enough money, or if they had simply been sent away. It seemed
like a sanitized Cusco -- but was it? As I looked around at the
average people on the streets, I also noticed changes. In 2000, many
of the people walking the streets wore indigenous clothing and
sandals made from tire rubber. And, if not, they wore the rejected
t-shirts and other fashions of North America that are so common in
the third world – mostly covered in dirt with an appearance as if
they had not been washed in months. Now, the people were cleanly
dressed. Almost everyone wore fashionable jeans. And although the
shirts, blouses, and shoes may not all have been styles currently
typical in the US, they all looked like they had been bought at a
mall.
I wondered if Cusco had been
artifically cleaned up to enhance its tourist draw – or if the
tourist draw of the city had boosted the localy economy enough that
the city had money to clean up. I must have said, “This is not the
Cusco I remember,” a thousand times to Miral. Still, I don't think
she really believed my descriptions of how the city used to be. I
kept flashing on a recommendation from a book we read before we left
the US (I think it was called The Practical Nomad or
something like that). The author warned not to feel let down
when going to those magentizing “once-in-a-lifetime” tourist
destinations in exotic locations only to find cities that looked
suprisingly like cities back home. He warned against regret for not
having traveled there sooner to see “the real city – before it
modernized” -- for whatever you are seeing when you are travelling,
he noted, is the real city. Still, I fould myself saddened by the
sight of a more Western Cusco and wished it had more of the texture
of the city I remembered from 2000.
Some people say that the destiny of our
world is a monoculture – a single culture shared by all nations and
peoples. It is sobering to think of the beautiful diversity that
would be lost in the development of a monoculture - diversity of
dress, music, dance, language, interpersonal style, custom, ritual.
And unfortunately, the monoculture that seems to be taking hold is
looking a lot like our Western culture, with billboards and strip
malls lining four-lane highways, fast food and other instant
gratifications abounding, and sex-based advertising that artificially
creates desire for unneeded goods. A Cusco looking more and more like
Seattle, Kathmandu like L.A., and Denpasar like Las Vegas. Worst of
all is the globalization of values that elevate material gain over
internal peace, material gain over relational connection, and
material gain over spiritual growth. Material gain over everything.
It was interesting to have this intense
reminder that everything in this world is impermanent and changing –
my own ways of looking at and working with life, my own life
circumstances, cultural expressions, economic conditions - everything
changing. Nothing is immune. And with that change comes judgment. “My
life is better in 2009 than it was in 2000.” “Cusco felt so much
better in 2000 than in 2009.” Making judgments, even though without
being able to take the complete birds-eye view of eternity that is
the wisdom underlying this universe, it is so hard to know which
changes will truly lead to good and which to bad. Who could have seen
that as Cheney and Bush were planning pre-emptive invasions and Rice
and Rumsfeld were okaying torture that they were setting the stage
for us to have a President Obama? How could I have been certain that
the struggles I felt in 2000 would give birth to this precious period
I am experiencing now – and how can I be certain of what beauty
and/or pain this precious period will give birth to? So what is
happening now is nothing more or less than what is – and judging it
as right or wrong is kind of silly. As Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche so
elegantly put it, “Good and bad, happy and sad, all thoughts vanish
into emptiness like the imprint of a bird in the sky.”
So, as certain as I felt that I didn't
like 2009 Cusco as much as I did 2000 Cusco, and that the rise of the
Western monoculture feels like a terrible tragedy, I have to admit
that I don't know. In the short-run, I have to acknowledge the
possibility that Cusco is now a community much better off, through
reduced poverty and disease that came from embracing Western
marketing and commercial culture. And in the long-run I have to
acknowledge that good could come from the rise of a monoculture.
Like, maybe nations sharing the same culture will have less reason
for conflict and war. Maybe if all peoples of the world shared a
culture John Lennon's imagined country-less world would be born. I
just don't know.
My dear friend Pam recently returned
from Kenya and Tanzania, where she was deeply moved by the Massai
peoples and the many modern threats to their way of life. She emailed
me about her experiences there and discussed her growing need to find
ways to give these dying cultures voice – just as much for our
benefit as for theirs. If a monoculture is truly our destiny, I can
only hope that it ends up being a weaving of the best of what the
world's current cultures offer. Pam's emails reminded me that as much
as so-called third world nations would be sure to benefit from the
scientific, technological, and medical advances of the West, so do we
have so much to learn from more traditional cultures with people who
seem so much more connected to their bodies, their inner well-being,
their families and townspeople, their natural envrionment, and the
great Spirit that infuses all of that. In actively sharing our
culture with the world we could have more compassionate motivations
than financial gain, and end our blindness to the need to just as
actively invite the other cultures of the world to share with us.
Rather than delivering messages of
their backwardness, we should be asking them to help us regain the
ways of being more deeply human that we have lost. The Learning
from Ladakh program I will be participating in Ladakh, India,
during the month of August has this mission in sending Westerners to
live among the indigenous peoples of this Himalayan region. (It is
based on the startling and beautiful wake-up call of a book called
Ancient Futures by
Helena Norberg-Hodge.) And as we bring our technology to these
cultures, so should we be asking them to come to us to share their
wisdom. Pam is right now trying to figure out new and creative ways
to help make such visits a possibility. I hope she is successful,
that programs like the one in Ladakh grow, and that many others are
inspired to help in this effort. Because even though we never know if what is
happening now is “good” or “bad,” and can never be fully
certain if what we want to see change is what is best for the world
or not, we still have a deep responsibility to do our best to take
the steps that bring what we feel is needed into the world – and
only then, to let go and see what happens.
