Tag Archives: ecology

Ayni

Posted on July 25, 2011 by Oakley Gordon
Women of a village Club of Mothers

I would like to turn now to what may be the most fundamental aspect of the Andean Cosmovision, ‘ayni‘.  Ayni is the principle of reciprocity. The essence of ayni is that when you receive something you give something back in return. This keeps balance in the relationship, but it also does more than that, it nourishes the relationship as well. Ayni informs the Andean people’s relationships with each other, and in that context it can be easily understood. It is when the Andean people apply ayni to their relationship with … Continue reading →

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The Three Centers of Being (Part 2)

Posted on July 8, 2011 by Oakley Gordon

If you have yet to read Part 1 on this topic I recommend that you read it first. This post covers the same concepts introduced in the post The Crazy Ape (which I also recommend that you read), but with a slightly different slant that we can now consider given what we have covered in this blog. The three centers of being (yachay, munay, and llankay), when applied metaphorically to cultures, provide a useful way of thinking about the environmental crisis we face and how we might approach it. Western … Continue reading →

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Fate of the Machukuna

Posted on July 4, 2011 by Oakley Gordon
Chullpas near Paucartambo

There are many stories woven into the fabric of the Andean culture. It is difficult to know which stories are a pure reflection of the pre-conquest era and which were influenced by the conquerors and their religion. It is also difficult to know to what degree the stories have been shaped by the expectations and desires of those of us from the West who seek to find in the Andes what our own culture lost so many centuries ago. In addition, being an oral tradition, the stories may vary from … Continue reading →

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The Crazy Ape

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Oakley Gordon

We humans have all the technology and information we need to turn this planet into a garden of Eden, a planet abundant with a diversity of life, healthy, unpolluted, with little disease, no starvation, and no poverty. Sometimes in my despair over the state of the world I forget the very good news that we actually have the tools we need to create such a future. We also, however, have the choice to move toward a mass extinction of species, the destruction of all the beautiful places on the planet, … Continue reading →

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