THE FOOL
Unfortunately, in recent times I have not been able to maintain a consistent writing schedule due to numerous commitments that still take up a large part of my free time. Fortunately, this period of my life is very prolific as I am carrying out numerous projects, including of course the platform that you are using right now. I have also been involved in the preparation of a course in which I will be present as a speaker, in the company of Emanuela Grazian, a friend and expert in the field of essential oils. A unique opportunity to put into practice what I am realising is a sort of vocation, namely teaching - or rather, the ability to pass on knowledge to others. This is not just a profession or a role, but a true art form that allows the individual who uses it to expand his or her learning field, whatever the context. Moreover, this activity catapults me, first and foremost, into a dimension of continuous exchange with the course user who, through his curiosity, conveys new possibilities for deepening his understanding of the topics dealt with. It is therefore not only the student who acquires information, but also myself.
The form of teaching would not be such without a teacher on one side and a student on the other, but it is not certain that the two positions cannot be reversed.
One of the topics I wanted to cover in recent months was the trip to Cambodia that I made last November together with my brother Massimiliano. A journey, whatever the destination, transports the individual into the dimension of the 'Fool', the Major Arcana 'Without Number'. Goethe's 'Wanderer'. Heinrich Heine's journey through the Harz. The Odyssey of Ulysses. Siegfried in the Song of the Nibelungen. These are literary archetypes that represent the intrepid traveller who - not without a few vicissitudes - fearlessly traverses a series of circumstances in order to reach a set goal. The entire Greek tragedy is based on this model, and this is precisely the principle of one of the most beautiful words ever coined by mankind: passion, from the Greek pathos, also synonymous with 'pain'.
Greek tragedy is presented as a succession of acts that lead to ever more emotional excitement, until it reaches its peak in what Aristotle called 'catharsis'. In the literary and philosophical movement of Sturm und Drang, it was also referred to as the 'sublime'. The journey, as a generic concept, carries with it all these connotations and can be seen as the set of stages or circumstances that lead the madman to reach a precise destination, sometimes totally unknown to him.
If we observe the major arcane “without number”, we will notice that behind him there is a kind of undefined animal (it might look like a cat, like a dog) clinging with its nails to his buttocks. We might pick up in this figure that principle of resistance of which I have written much in previous articles, and it is precisely that portion of human consciousness that tends towards inertia. That parametric structure that would lead the traveller to stop for fear that 'something might happen' or that 'something is not going according to plan'. A blocking structure whose only goal is to find a 'safe' place where no one can access it. Its goal is to make the Fool do the opposite of what he was configured to do: stand still.
The Fool represents the fundamental element of life, namely movement. Life in the absence of movement is death, stasis, inertia.
Modern man, as he is currently configured, does not conceive the concept of 'pick up and go'. This is to all intents and purposes a paradox, the figure of the explorer being the highest expression of the human structure. However, travelling still allows us to breathe in that remote portion of ourselves that still yearns for the exploratory model. Especially when travelling to places whose cultures and traditions are diametrically opposed to those we savour on a daily basis. Cambodia, in this sense, made me realise many things, but let's start from the beginning.
THE JOURNEY
Twenty years ago I had the opportunity to visit Southern Mexico with two friends. We were very young and totally reckless. We had no idea what we were doing, let alone the possible dangers or factors to look out for. I don't deny that there were some situations where a little extra thought wouldn't have hurt, but overall I think I can say that I enjoyed the trip to the utmost of my ability.
Making such a trip in your forties is quite another thing. The over-structures and ways of reacting to life events are now well established and it becomes increasingly difficult to disengage yourself from those patterns that basically lead you to repeat the same things over and over again. There are people who live to travel and in my opinion it is precisely those individuals who have somehow kept alive that explorer consciousness that everyone, bar none, is endowed with by nature. Personally, I have always found it very hard to get away from daily routines and have always experienced movement and change as a buggy to be transported. Imagine a trip or simply the idea of having to take a plane. Fortunately, especially in the last two years, I have developed such a conscience that I have been able to transcend these patterns to which I have voluntarily adhered for a lifetime, and have therefore been able to face this opportunity with a serenity I never thought I would experience.
This new 'modus operandi' towards change - in this case travel - turned this experience into a sort of personal 'epic poem', with the only difference being that Cambodia was not to me what the Land of the Cyclops was to Odysseus, a battlefield. Cambodia was my Ithaca.
From the first moment I set foot in that green land, I felt at home. I felt a strong sense of welcome wherever I went. I am not used to kindness, the kind that comes from the heart, free of expectation. A peculiarity that is certainly available to anyone, but whose use has perhaps been totally forgotten in the western model of society to which we belong. An availability that at times made me uncomfortable. It did not matter if my interlocutor was the hotel clerk or the street-side fruit seller. The manner was always the same: a total and unrelenting availability towards one's neighbour. Even my brother, an experienced traveller that he is - and well aware of the frenzy and ecclecticities of the Asian world - admitted that such a level of attention from other human beings towards him was something totally unheard of. Pure, authentic, unfiltered attention. Something that hits you straight in the heart, with no margin for error.
I started asking myself questions. Why are these people so kind to me? Is there an ulterior motive? Do they want to 'rip me off'? Am I a mere westerner to be drained? Finding the answer did not require too much mental lucubration. One simply had to visit the Holocaust museum in the capital Phnom Penh.
Cambodia experienced the most egregious case of self-genocide in human history. An event that for its brutality and brevity would make even the most heinous Nazi shudder. Officially, there were about one and a half million dead men, women and children over a period of time from 1975 to 1978. In reality, locals speak of much higher figures than those described by official sources. The instigator of the massacre, again according to the official reconstruction, was the dictator Pol Pot who, with the support of the Khmer Rouges militia, seized power and deported the city dwellers to the outskirts of the country with the aim of establishing a communist regime and destroying the western free market model.
KAMPUCHEA
When you set foot inside a place like Tuol Sleng, it is impossible not to feel the pain and amenity that was perpetrated against innocent people. In some rooms you can still see the blood stains of prisoners who were tortured in order to extort information from them about possible conspiracies against the Pol Pot regime. Again, the numbers are quite 'ballerine', but the ascertained number of victims is at least ten thousand dead. Pol Pot is said to have decimated one third of the Cambodian population within a few years. In addition to genocide, culture was also targeted, with the destruction of books, libraries, schools and universities. Everything that had to do with knowledge and traditions was destroyed without hesitation.
Some of you may be rightly wondering why I have used the conditional tense. The reason is the fact that everything that is reported in the media - in any context - should always be verified 'on the ground'. The truth should be investigated and sought, not treated as a package delivered to the doorstep by some well-meaning journalist. A lot has been written about the history of Cambodia, yet nothing has ever touched on the issues I have been told by some locals. I do not want to go into the heart of these conversations, not least because it would take me away from the 'scope' of this article, but I feel I can tell you that what we know of Cambodian history today should at least be revised in some respects. I also tried to call some of the protagonists to see if it might be possible to engage them in an official interview, but what I received was a mixture of silence and resistance. I therefore decided to let go and not insist further. Faced with an experience like that, probably the best choice is to remain silent.
Cambodia is a poor country, but it attracts many tourists because of the ancient temple of Angkor Wat, located near the city of Siem Reap. It is the most important religious temple in the world and together with the ancient city of Angkor Thom constitutes the largest conglomerate of temples on the planet. The prestige in terms of prosperity of the Khmer empire, together with the high fertility of its lands, gave rise to a dispute between the two neighbouring populations: the Thais and the Vietnamese. For this reason - and indeed many others - there is bad blood between their respective 'neighbours', especially with their cousins across the Mekong River, protagonists of one of the bloodiest wars in history: the Vietnam War. In the Angkor Thom complex is also the temple of Ta Prohm, which became famous for the filming of the movie Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie.
I think it is useless to explain to you the feelings one gets when visiting these places. I can only tell you that it almost seems as if time has stopped in an unknown era. The sounds, colours and smells are something totally foreign to my senses. Unheard of information that is difficult for my neurons to process. Even the architecture of the temples themselves appear as something totally unfamiliar.
The faces representing the Buddha or the Hindu deities Shiva and Vishnu are practically everywhere, almost as if they wanted to recall their majesty and omnipresence. The main feeling is that of having landed on another planet and with this statement I think I have exhausted any further attempt at explanation.
There are no highways or particularly structured communication routes in Cambodia. Every move becomes a real adventure where you never know what might happen. As there are few roads connecting the country's four most important hubs - the capital Phnom Penh, Siem Reip and Angkor Wat, Koh Kong (the gateway to Thailand) and Sihanoukville beach - the locals take advantage of this to load up with goods every single vehicle that 'would' be used to transport people. It is not uncommon to travel with sacks of rice or other foodstuffs next to you, usually inside a mini-van where there is not a single square centimetre left to move. In addition, high temperatures and poorly maintained vehicles cause breakdowns that can turn a two-hour journey into a full day's travel. Not a problem, a traveller also counts this as part of the adventure. I'll tell you more. It is precisely at times like these that the personality of the locals emerges.
Just imagine being stranded in the city because of an engine failure. It could happen on your way to work, or to the gym, or to pick up your kids from school. Imagine yourself inside the car - with the phone in your hand without the slightest idea what to do - filling the cockpit with expletives and insults at undefined people or things. Such an occurrence, experienced in the context in which we are placed, would tend to try anyone's patience.
Which is not the case in Cambodia, where the first thing that springs to the local's mind when faced with a broken-down vehicle is to find a solution to the problem. I won't bore you with detailed explanations, but I can assure you that even roadside rubbish can become an effective expedient to get a broken-down engine back on track. When faced with such situations, it is practically impossible to see anyone getting angry or expressing any kind of complaint to anyone else, as we westerners are wont to do. In all my life, I have never seen such a level of patience and dedication to solving contingent problems. One could discuss a lot about their way of life which is diametrically opposed to ours, such as the level of hygiene, about which one can certainly discuss, the treatment of waste (I have seen with my own eyes drivers throwing cans out of the window with the vehicle running) and many other things. However, it is not my right to judge the customs and traditions of peoples far away from my own, also because, as we all know, everything that may appear 'strange' to me is nothing more than commonplace to someone else.
For a Cambodian, it might in fact be quite abnormal for me to go and work forty hours a week in order to buy a car that I need to travel to work. So let's understand each other. Any judgement in this sense is totally misleading and anti-functional to the greater understanding of a culture certainly different from ours.
SMILE
I have done a lot of thinking with my brother on the behaviour of the locals and on that damned vice of theirs that is so incomprehensible to us Westerners: smiling. But what do these savages have to smile about so much? With all they have lived through in the past, how can they be so meek and generous? People who have seen their loved ones deported to extermination camps. Tuk-tuk drivers who have seen their parents and uncles disappear one after the other in a matter of weeks. A people who experienced first-hand unspeakable horrors and saw their country turned into a bloody totalitarian regime. In the extermination camp of Choeung Ek in Phnom Penh, I saw with my own eyes the tree against which the little Cambodian babies were thrown. The guardians of the site continue to find remains of human bones every day, almost as if the horror will last forever. The whole of Cambodia is littered with places like these, where millions of people were barbarically murdered. Despite this, they stubbornly continue to maintain that incomprehensible custom. It is plastered on their faces, every moment of their day.
Everywhere I turned, even if stopped at a traffic light in the middle of chaotic metropolitan traffic, there was always someone looking at me with that strange grimace on their face. Why are they always smiling? Or perhaps the question is misleading. I should rather ask myself: why don't I smile like that too?
I think I have fully explained why I have such an attitude towards life in the entirety of the articles in the philosophy column. The trip to Cambodia simply confirmed for me what I already knew. There is a portion of me, let's call it 'atomic consciousness', that leads me to judge everything that does not fit within my parameters of likability. It is an obtuse, inertial, self-referential consciousness to which I allow full control over my life. I have also called it 'valet parking', to emphasise the static dimension that this portion of me so craves. A consciousness that is based on judgement, complaining, avarice and the desire for prevarication. A true pathology that I see spreading like wildfire in all the contexts to which I belong. Cambodia showed me the fictitious and artificial nature of this structure.
When all you need to keep alive that marvellous biological container that is the human body, what follows is the pure pursuit of pleasure, not to be understood in speculative terms - as we Westerners are wont to understand it - but in terms of enhancing one's self-consciousness.
A Cambodian probably starts from an 'advantageous position' due to the fact that he or she is born into a predominantly Buddhist culture, where principles such as non-attachment, kindness, concentration and equanimity are taught from an early age. No matter what may happen, the important thing is to live in the moment to one's full potential. This is what makes a man a powerful being and not just a potential one. A man seeks solutions instead of creating problems that do not exist. He moves according to the principle of interconnectedness, aware that the achievement of his own realisation will be of benefit to all mankind and in general to the entire natural system to which we all owe life.
I really would have so much more to say about Cambodia and my trip, but I don't want to risk turning an article into a short story, so I'll reserve the opportunity to come back to it in a while. Cambodia is not a country without its contradictions and there are some aspects that should definitely be explored in greater detail.
The dimension of the traveller, symbolically embodied by the figure of the Fool in the Tarot, is one that allows the human being to experience the world in its entirety. A world understood as a 'space of movement', not necessarily as a place to visit. The Fool can also experience it in one's everyday life, standing at a traffic light, waiting for the green light to go off.
The Fool explores every single aspect of life, without judging, savouring its essence and making it his own. That kitten attached to his buttocks will always be there and will not budge an inch, but as you may have guessed, it is also his greatest ally. It is what Buddhists call 'duhkha', or 'suffering', a necessary condition common to all sentient beings who experience 'samsara', or the cycle of life. Buddha is simply telling us: that inertial principle will follow you everywhere, but if you can understand its essence with the help of your heart, it will become the most powerful weapon you can ever wield.