The writing · Mayan Wisdom

What Maya wisdom says about balance

Balance is the word that comes up most often in Maya teaching, and it means something fairly precise: a debt kept even. You take from the earth and you give back, you speak and you listen, the day needs the night. Much of this lives in oral teaching rather than in a written text, so several of the concepts below carry no citation, and I have not invented one. Where the library names a source, usually the Popol Vuh, it is given.

Heart of Sky, Heart of Earth

Creation begins when two powers, one of the sky and one of the earth, speak together. The world starts as a pairing rather than as a single act.

Popol Vuh

Duality and Complementarity

Light and dark, life and death, are treated as halves that need each other. Wanting one without the other is the description of an imbalance.

Maya Philosophy

The Balance of Taking and Giving

Taking from the land creates a debt, and the debt is settled through offering and care. Nothing in this system is free.

Maya Wisdom

Gratitude as Practice

Thanks are given continually, for food, water, fire and breath. Gratitude here is upkeep of a relationship, not a mood.

Maya Wisdom

In Lak'ech - You Are My Other Self

I am you, and you are me. Harm done to another is counted as harm done to yourself, which removes the idea of a victimless wrong.

Maya Greeting

Balancing Energies

Each person is said to hold complementary energies that can run out of proportion. Noticing the imbalance is the first part of correcting it.

Maya Wisdom

Controlling Anger

Anger is compared to a fire that needs tending rather than one to be put out. It may be warranted, and it still has to be directed.

Maya Wisdom

Walking in Balance

Work and rest, giving and receiving, speaking and listening, company and solitude. Balance is described as a set of ordinary pairs to be kept level.

Maya Wisdom

The Middle Way

Too much and too little are both named as faults, and so are too fast and too slow. The centre is where things hold.

Maya Wisdom

What separates this from a general call to moderation is the accounting. Balance is owed to someone, whether the earth, the neighbour or the ancestors, and a person can fall behind on it. That makes it a practice with a ledger rather than a feeling.