On making travel sacred…

From Phil Cousineau’s The Art of Pilgrimage, here are five guidelines for making travel sacred or transformative:

• Pay attention and listen
• Renew yourself every day
• Meander toward the center of every place
• Read sacred texts regularly
• Offer praise and gratitude

Point one: paying attention and listening. Only by being in the moment, by being mindful of the moment, can one really pay attention. Paradoxically, paying attention is a way to become mindful. Listening, of course, is along the same lines – you unclutter your mind, quieten the monkey inside it, and take in whatever is there, without judgment, without distraction, and with full focus. Sometimes, you have to pass by something numerous times, which is a way of saying you learn to shed the clutter in your mind over and over again, before you can really see (or hear) something.

It does start with intention, though. We’ve been to the Zocala many times in the past 12 days, and each time, we see something different about it. We notice an aspect of it we never did before. We have the time to pay attention, but we had also decided that we had nothing else to do, that we wanted to experience slow time. Today, we watched the people strolling by. It was the middle of the day, and the square wasn’t as crowded as it is in the evenings, so the people-watching was even easier.

There was a shoe-shine boy resting on a park bench, watching the world go by. He had no customers, but he didn’t seem worried. He smiled at me, not an intrusive smile but one of acknowlegement, respecting his privacy and mine. A young girl came by with things to sell, and as soon as we showed the slightest interest, a half dozen others came by. To some, we had to say “No Quiero“, but we did buy a few small things from others. Then, someone a few yards away started shouting profanities at no one in particular – something along the lines of “Chinga su madre!” (well, you figure it out) and someone else shouted back “Chinga su tomale!” Everyone else smiled and shook their heads, but no one seemed offended or concerned. Spanish is a wonderful language, even better to curse with.

Our Spanish lessons have paid off – slowly, we are able to understand more, and to say more short sentences or phrases. We are able to order food more precisely as we gather more vocabulary on foods. In my first week, I ordered dishes from Spanish menus without knowing exactly what I ordered. This week, I pretty much know the major ingredients of my meals, before I get them. We can bargain in Spanish more effectively – “menos un pocochitto, por favor” (less on the price, please), or “dos por dosciente?” (two for two hundred?).

I now know how to make excellent quesadillas from observing the cook at La Salsa Verde: you put your cheese right on the hot griddle and let it sizzle for a few seconds. Then you add on top any filling you like – cooked meats, onions, peppers – and you let that steam/cook for a couple of minutes. You finish it off by patting a tortilla on top of the pile and pressing it don, then flipping the whole thing over. Leave it for a few more seconds, and fold the tortilla with filling into half, and there you have it – the perfect quesadilla! Serve with fresh tomato salsa and plenty of jalapeno sauce.

The point to travel is to let your senses (sometimes dulled) come alive again – to experience different sights, sounds, textures, tastes, and smells – and in this way evoke the life force within you. You become a part of something else in order to become yourself again. You look for special, sacred places (such as hidden doorways and pathways, inner courtyards and hidden rooms) without as metaphors to rediscovering your own special, sacred places within (either within your own heart and soul, or within your own life). You climb mountains and hills to find the ruins of ancient places in order to find you own ancient soul. You look for innocence, delight, purity, and yes, sometimes even weariness, cunning, or despair in others in order to remind yourself of your own humanity.

Point two: renewing yourself everyday. To renew means to refresh, to rejuvenate, to replenish or restore the worn, damaged or depleted parts. How many of us go from day to day, week to week, and year to year on reserves, only to plunge headlong into a crash that had been happening all along. It’s not hard to bring our hurried selves with us, unknowingly, when we travel. Soon we act as we always did, rushing from place to place, sightseeing, touring, greedily taking in as much as possible in the time that we think we have. That’s why people arrive home from vacation exhausted, rather than refreshed and rested.

My way of renewal on this trip is to savor everything – the different sights & sounds, the tastes & smells of the rich variety of foods that are available. For example, our favourite place for chocolate (a hot cocoa drink made from unsweetened cocoa, milk, cream, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, and occasionally a pinch of chilli powder) is at a cafe called Yik, and a cup costs 11 pesos (about $1.10). They also roast their own coffee beans on site, and a 45 minute stay leaves us coming out smelling like expresso roast. Today, we had a light lunch at a Lebanese restaurant on Real de Guadalupe – the lamb shwarma was a little dry and ordinary, but the chicken soup, ah, the chicken soup was flavored with Mexican oregano, which far surpasses anything I can get at home – you could smell and taste the fragrance. Sensational.

Most of all, I’m savoring time. Time, when taken in slowly, is sweet like honey, and fine like good wine. You can breathe it in, taste it on your tongue, feel it wrapping around your skin, see in in the haze of the afternoon, and smell it in the fresh morning dew on the bougainvilleas. And when everything is quiet and still, you can hear it lingering seductively, in the whisper of the breeze, the gentle flutter of leaves. Being alive essentially gives you access to all the time you need. But you have to be slow to really savor it. Take your time, there is no hurry.

Point three: meander towards the center of every place. To meander towards the center is to wander aimlessly, taking the turns and windings that lead towards the heart of things. This has been our almost daily ritual – to wander towards the town center for a meal, or a coffee, or to find a particular shop. Except for three day trips, we’ve opted to hang out in San Cristobal for the majority of the time. So we have done a lot of wandering. I now know where in the market place to buy fresh basil, or dried ancho chillies or eggs. We wandered around yesterday, looking for a tortilla maker, and went from store to store without finding anything remotely resembling one. You’d think that in a land where tortillas is the staple food, they would be everywhere… In the end, in the most remote corner in the labyrinthine market bazaar, we found a senora who had them – crude, unfinished pine tortilla presses that came in 3 sizes – large, medium, and miniature (toy-sized). We bought the toy-sized one. Well, who wants to schlepp a heavy tortilla maker around anyway?

Mexico is a very religious and culturally rich country; it’s not the religiosity that moves me personally. but rather the cultural diversity. I’m not turned on by the ornate and elaborate churches and temples, though they are interesting to visit and they do tell a story about the historical and contemporary importance of religion to the people here. rather, I am moved by the people – their habits, customs & values, their worldviews. And how better to learn these things than to wander around a place and be with people in their everyday lives? That’s why we haven’t been interested in fine dining, preferring instead to eat where most locals eat, hang out where they do, and shop where they shop.

The center of a place can be its literal center, a place in a village, town or city where people congregate. Or it can be its metaphorical center, referring to the traditions, values or customs of the people there. Often, one is linked to the other. In this place, the Zocala is the main town square where people gather, especially in the evenings. There is much activity there – music, sometimes dancing, eating & drinking, buy & selling, people talking, strolling, laughing, sitting around. In this activity, you can see and feel the spirit of the people, and you can appreciate their traditions, customs and values. They are a family-oriented people who love leisure, and who are very religious. There are a lot of activities and festivities centered around religious events and holidays. And there is a lot of consistency around daily life.

It is not hard to adapt to the pace of life here, and I’m surprised how much time there is in a day, which is a thought that I’ve never had back home. Time is what you decide to give yourself here to live life. And wandering anyplace takes time. If you are in a rush, you refer to a map to find the shortest route from where you are to where you want to be. If you are hurried, you cannot meander, and you miss out on discovery.

In essence, meandering is about taking time, getting to the heart of things, and also about discovery. In wandering around a place, we learn of its soul, and we also discover bits of our own lost souls.

Point four: read sacred texts regularly. Something is sacred when it evokes in us the feelings of awe, tranquility, reverence and compassion for all life. A sacred text can be a religious text such as The Bible or Koran, but we must remember to interpret the teachings metaphorically, rather than literally. The reading of sacred texts should lead us to become more of who we are, and to feel more awed, tranquil, reverent and compassionate towards all life. The acts that follow from such feelings should be acts of non-violence, wholeness, generosity, and compassionate kindness.

In my opinion, sacred texts need not be traditional religious texts only, but rather any text written that can evoke those feeling qualities and actions that can make us wiser and more spiritual (of spirit) human beings. Life itself is the most sacred thing, so anything that urges us to cherish life is itself a sacred thing. So we can have sacred texts that lead to sacred thoughts and sacred actions and deeds. Here, the word “sacred” doesn’t mean “untouchable” or even special in any way, but rather it means deeply human, deeply cherishing of life, completely non-violent in nature.

Some of my favourite sacred texts that I’ve brought along on this journey are: A Joseph Campbell Companion (Reflections on the Art of Living) by Diane K. Osbon (Ed.), The Art of Pilgrimage by Phil Cousineau, Tracking the Gods (The Place of Myth in Modern Life) by James Hollis, and On Being a Photographer by David Hurn.

Each of us has to discover what is sacred, what can drive us towards rather than away from our humanity.

Point five: offer praise and gratitude. The one thing about travel is that it can lead us to develop perspective. It isn’t hard to feel grateful for what we’ve got when we see with our own eyes how most other people in the world live. That is if we can truly see. If you travel only to expensive resorts and places that seclude you and protect you against the realities that most other people live with, then you travel blindly. If you seek out things and experiences that can open your eyes, the eyes of your heart, then you are going to cultivate praise and gratitude for what you do have.

I once heard a wise man talk about the difference between being thankful and grateful for the good things we have and cultivating a dispositional gratitude. The former is specific and evoked in the context of good fortune and good things. That’s okay. But dispositional gratitude is more far-reaching, enduring, and greater-serving. It is about feeling grateful and thankful everyday of being alive, incorporating it into our consciousness, living it, not taking anything for granted, and cultivating a deeply generous spirit. With these qualities, we do not feel entitled, but rather humbled, grateful and thankful. For to be alive, to have the breath of life and wake up every morning – that deserves the utmost praise and gratitude. Everything else we think and do is in reverence of and service to that.

So in going away, the right way, we return to ourselves. When we make travel sacred and transformative, we bring something vital back into our everyday lives, something that can be a boon to ourselves, our families, and our communities.