Sucre, spanish classes and Buddhist philosophy

Samiapata was beautiful. Picture a sleepy mountain village surrounded by secluded waterfalls and you're halfway there. I stayed in a hippie camp for a few days and had a very relaxed time playing guitar and trying to climb waterfalls (it is on my bucket list to climb a waterfall and I STILL haven't done it! They were all too high and slippery. I almost managed one but the trees were too thick at the top). From Samaipata I took an overnight bus to Sucre, totally unprepared for the bone-smashing 14 hour marathon I was in for.

There is no real route from Santa Cruz to Sucre. Some Bolivian has driven a bulldozer through the jungle and the government labelled the subsequent swathe of destruction a "road". In wet season half of it is flooded, at one point we drove up what I can only describe as a river for an hour. The bus was full of diesel fumes, a screaming baby, people sleeping in the aisles and the seat behind me had at least five kids in it who would take it in turns to kick my chair despite repeated "no empuje mi silla, en serio"s. To top it all off I had food poisoning so I was hanging my head out of the window most of the night trying not to vomit and simultaneously not to projectile shit all over the seat. The constant shaking and jarring did nothing to help the situation.

Anyway I got here alive this morning and am now feeling much better after a sleep and a salad and several immodiums. I spoke to a Dutch girl in a bar here who pointed me at Fenix spanish school. They are a non-profit with a focus on giving back to the local Bolivian community, plus they organise charity work and home-stays so it looks like a good option. I am going to go take a look tomorrow and perhaps stay here for a month to really get my Spanish up to par. Seven weeks of speaking mostly English in the park has put my Spanish learning backwards a bit, with one-on-one lessons and daily study on top of total immersion I think I can finally approach conversational fluency by the end of the month. Looking forward to staying with a Bolivian family as well, seems like a great way to really learn something about the culture rather than just pass through as another tourist.

I have become more and more interested in Eastern philosophy recently, particularly the Buddhist concepts of "right thinking" and Dukkha. I believe that we should pick our beliefs carefully and choose ones that have the most positive impact on our life. It would be foolish and naiive (not to mention lazy) to take all of the beliefs from ONE religion or philosophy and just live by those while ignoring others. But I do think there are some truths in Buddhist thinking that can benefit all of us.

Firstly and most importantly is the truth that:
Life is Dukkha

Now wikipedia defines Dukkha as Pali; meaning "suffering", "anxiety", "stress", "unsatisfactoriness". Buddhism states that life contains a lot of this, it's a fact and the first step to enlightenment is acknowledging it. We must be very careful with translations here because different words carry different connotations and what the original Buddha said can be easily twisted.

I take from this that Dukkha is similar to pain, and freedom from Dukkha comes with a total detachment from the outcome of our actions. It is essentially, the gap between what you want and what you have. Everyone will experience emotional pain in their lives, it is unavoidable. Some people try to escape it with heavy drinking and drugs. Some try by burying themselves in work. Some just get very lazy and are still unhappy without really realising why. Some travel the world looking for answers. Putting aside for a moment my arrogance in imposing my own interpretation on this belief in this way, what can we take from this?

Everyone is in pain a lot of the time. But once we acknowledge that everyone suffers, we respond to other humans with far more compassion and humanity. And I think escape from Dukkha lies down this path, along with realising that while we will always have Dukkha, if we live in the right way we can learn to CHOOSE whether we suffer from it or simply acknowledge it as part of life. The "right way" is outlined in something called the eight-fold path of Buddhism and includes concepts such as compassion, integrity and a high degree of control over your own thoughts. It is somewhat cryptic but I think there is some value in it.

Eliminating distractions, choosing what to focus on, these are the things that will take us forward in life. I truly believe that we can accomplish whatever we can imagine if we would just truly put our minds to it and take consistent, massive action in this direction. Pursuit of perfection in this manner demands an extremely high degree of self-discipline, as the Buddha said:

"As the Fletcher whittles and makes straight his arrows, so the master directs his straying thoughts."

But sitting around thinking these thoughts will not give you any gain. We must LIVE these thoughts and that means applying them through our actions. Only through application of beliefs and study of the resulting reality can we hope to learn anything.

If this whole diatribe seems somewhat confused, that's because I am very confused about it myself. But I do know that my opinions are changing. I look back on my view of the villagers who I gave shoes to and realise that my interpretation of this event has changed. These people are not to be scorned simply because their STRATEGY towards escaping suffering is different from mine. They are merely a product of their environment and it is a more enlightening approach to understand that they suffer pain and desire escape from it in the same way as you or I. By viewing other people with this compassionate eye, our approach becomes clearer.

This is just my sketchy and poor interpretation of these ideas. I encourage anyone who is interested to research these concepts more thoroughly and experiment with APPLYING them to their lives, remember there can be no learning without APPLICATION.