THE 55TH MILE

By Michelle J. Wong

Feeling sleepy on the bus ride from Cuzco, I am suddenly refreshed by the breathtaking landscapes of the sacred valley of the Inca, a shining new world to my eyes. I went through Pisco and Urubamba towards Ollantaytambo, where the road to Macchu Picchu begins. Both Cuzco and Ollantaytambo are tourist towns, but the latter is also an important archeological site. It served for a long time as ceremonial center and as stronghold against the Spanish conquerors. Ollantaytambo is known as the heart of the sacred valley of the Inca, and it is usually the last stop before Aguas Calientes, in route to Macchu Picchu.

 

I wanted to leave Ollantaytambo as soon as I arrived. Tourists flood in the place and prices rise up, which is the stuff that has turned traveling into a dying art, when not a lost battle altogether. There are two ways to reach Macchu Picchu: by Peru Rail or Inca Rail—two lucrative train companies— or by crossing some parts of the Inca Trail, which are a series of roads that have been handed over to private administrators, who charge you between $385 and $470 to walk it up, not including lodging. Now the Inca Trail has become something of an overpriced commonplace in adventure tourism. These private businesses have closed down other access routes to Macchu Picchu, which allows them to charge excessive fees.

Peru Rail, for one, enjoyed a monopoly since it started business in 1999, and were known for using legal strategies to delay the opening of the market and the arrival of competition. They were finally fined for monopolistic practices and they had to open up the market to two other companies —Inca Rail y Andean Railways—, but they remain to this day the transportation service preferred by visitors. Still, prices are forbidding in terms of the local purchase power; they are obviously established for tourists, who end up paying between $71 and $330 for an uninteresting two-hour ride in seats that don’t even recline!

As I pondered about overpricing, monopolies and other incensing weeds, I noticed an indigenous woman sitting in a wooden chair and watching the battalion of visitors. I sat down next to her and asked her if she knew of other ways in which the locals get around to Macchu Picchu, apart from the businesses that sell you a Peru for export. She told me that I could follow the tracks, although that was illegal and also dangerous, according to local legends. The lady got excited with her own story and told me that there’s a mermaid in the Watanay River, who leads travelers to death. There’s also, she confided, the “Ghost of the Rail,” who scares people on their way, turning their hair white after they see him.  

I immediately wanted to go after the legends that keep the locals off the railway, but as soon as I started to walk I was stopped. “Sir, where do you think you are going?,” said a uniformed staff member of Peru Rail. I answered without hesitation: “I don’t want to pay to these exploiters, so I’m walking up to Macchu Picchu following the tracks.” The man, who had a strangely geometrical face and ghostly eyes, smiled and said, “Go, then. Good luck.” See? Never judge a person by their uniform.

So off I went into the long road, carrying coca leaves in my hand to help me with the altitude. No escort but my own shadow, no feeling but the volcanic spiritual joy of one who travels without defined routes.

A few hours later, and after dodging the trains that whistled me by, I sat down to rest at the tiny town of Tanjac, which was there already during the trying winds of colonial times but now has become a little more than a ghost town. There is, to be sure, more wood in a crucifix and more metal in a single nail than in all the mud houses of Tanjac. And yet it was there that I met Víctor Pérez, already a man in his eighties, ideologically left-handed and widely known in the vicinity as “Che Guevara.” We sat down to chat and he confided, as if remembering things not yet past, that “Communism is not the solution for the world.” After asking me if I worked for the CIA, the Peruvian Che added that “We are all the same.”

Besides being a communist, Pérez is a descendant of Incas and has witnessed important historical events in contemporary Peru, like the military dictatorships of the seventies, the return of democracy in the eighties, and the government’s war against terrorists and guerillas like Shining Path and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, a conflict that took the lives of more than 70 thousand people between combatants and civilians, many of them peasants.

Pérez claimed that his communist ideas, along with the reciprocal system of redistribution of goods he learned from his Inca ancestors, have shaped his hopes for a more egalitarian world. “My friend, I believe in Hugo Chávez,” he said, asserting his political leanings. “We have to pray and ask the Sun, the Inca god,” he added, biding me farewell with a tired smile.

The dreams of this deep Latin American seem to be made of real things; basic things, really: freedom, housing, jobs, food and, of course, education. But the only thing that prospers here is poverty, thanks to the huge gap in the distribution of resources of all sorts. Here the eggs of discontent and violence hatch. These beautiful and often desolate landscapes that have been so widely photographed by listless visitors are the birthplace of all Latin American revolutionaries, both good and bad.

With night falling, I discovered a little shack, presumably an un-official train stop that also worked as a store, and I went in to ask how far I was from my destination. Two men with thick quechua accents told me I still had quite a long way to go, for I was only at the 55^th mile, and the next town, Aguas Calientes, was 14 miles away.

They also told me, with concern, that at night the road was very dangerous. They looked at each other, exchanged something in quechua, and turning back to me with a curious look, they told me, “Brother, tonight you are staying with us. You look tired. Tomorrow you can continue your adventure.” 

Indeed I was tired, after so many hours stepping on sharp rocks and hard rails. I accepted gladly and took the beer that one of them offered me.

A train came by, however, and I considered buying one of their expensive tickets to make it that very night to Aguas Calientes. I tried to get in, but I was stopped and told that this train was for Peruvians only, not for tourists. They insisted they never carried tourist, regardless of how much in need they may be. Apparently, this run-down “local train” transports some 70 Peruvians every day, as if to make up for the flagrant inequality in all the services of the region, and to somehow promote the idea that Macchu Picchu “is for everybody.” This train is subsidized by Peru Rail, and it costs about ten Peruvian soles (some $3.5), it has five coaches for passengers and a few more for cargo. You need a DNI (the Peruvian citizen’s ID) to board, and you can expect to travel standing in the aisles while sharing space with somebody else’s carry-on that only fits on the floor.

 

So I went back to my new quechua-speaking friends, weighting my indignation and even rage at this form of racial and economical segregation. Just to give you an idea, Macchu Picchu receives about 2000 visitors per day; so those 70 Peruvians that Peru Rail so generously transports for a courtesy fee represents some 0.35% of the total daily visitors. Way to give back to the community! Somehow, numbers always work up well for the people on top, not quite for those at the bottom: in a country with over 28 million people, you have to wonder how many of them have actually visited Macchu Picchu with such limiting quotas as 70 per day. That’s 25 thousand people a year, as opposed to the 730 thousand foreigners in the same period.

Turns out my new friends worked for the railroad. One of them stayed in the shack and the other one asked me to follow him in the dark. “Let’s go home,” he said. As we walked along the tracks, two more men jumped in and they were invited to follow us. They were escorting me from behind and on both sides.  I feared I was going to get mugged, so I quietly held on to a knife I was carrying. We walked through some bushes and reached a mud house with dirt floors. There we were welcomed by an old woman who did not seem to understand Spanish. I put my knife away.

“Come in,” said my guest. “He is a brother from Costa Rica and he’s staying with us tonight,” he told the old lady. The woman did not pay too much attention to me and continued sweeping off the floor with a hay broom.

I shook hands with the other two men, who stared at the ground as we parted. I noticed there were other seven men lying on the ground inside the house, heated by a gas stove located in the one room that they all shared.

One of them was cooking. He asked me if I was hungry. I wanted to swallow whatever was in that boiling pot and I told him so. He went back to cooking and the men who spoke Spanish flooded me with questions about my homeland: “How is Costa Rica?,” they asked. “Do people understand English there?”

 

I was also curious about them, of course. So I fired back with my questions. I asked them if they all lived there in that mud-walled room. They assented, and added that they had families in other parts of Peru, but that they were working now repairing the railroad to Aguas Calientes.

 

They live as if in a commune. In fact, they shared with me their socialist ideas, and their custom of distributing equally and sharing with everyone, including me now. They all gave away a bit of their food to feed me, despite my insistence that I was no longer hungry. They also gave me blankets and one of the few dusty mattresses they had. There was no glass in the windows and the chill of the altitude ran about the room. At about eight o’clock they put on their hardhats, groped for their flashlights and started to leave. I knew their shift had ended at six, so I asked them where they were headed. “Off to work,” they all said. “How many hours do you work a day?,” I asked them. They told me they worked eight hours during the day and eight more during the night, taking breaks in between. In the few hours that I spent with them that evening, I saw them leave their daytime shift; then I saw them rest for a few hours and then leave to work again at night, only to return at around four for another break and start with this exhausting circle of carrying heavy rocks to the tracks over again at six in the morning.

I inquired as to how much money they made a day. “Thirty soles,” was their reply. That’s less than $18. How do these people manage to provide for their families with such an exhausting and ill-paying job and still have the will to take food off their plates to give to a foreigner? I may never know. But as a matter of fact, the next morning they all chipped in to buy me two loaves of bread and broad beans to eat on my way. They wouldn’t listen as I begged them not to spend their money on me. Their strong sense of solidarity made them insist that I brought food for the way.

I walked slowly that day, half surprised and hurting, stricken by a thunder of emotions. I have never tasted such stale bread.

 

I couldn’t help but wonder, after seeing the terrible conditions and the genuine solidarity in which these people work at the 55^th mile, just at what stage of the capitalist machinery is such injustice born. I was soon to learn that the Trans-Andean Railway (Fetransa) had been granted the rights of administration and maintenance of the South and South-East railways of Peru for a 30-year period. That kind of deal makes one suspicious. As it happened, it was former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori who granted this deal in 1999 as part of his privatization policies. That’s the same Alberto Fujimori who had to flee his country after a political scandal that made news around the world a few years back. He was President of Peru for two consecutive periods (1990-2000); then he spent five years in Japan (the home country of his parents) running away from Peru’s police. He was finally detained and sent back to Peru when he arrived in Chile in 2005. Some people still defend his economical policies –the same way some people in Chile defend Pinochet’s– but Fujimori has been found guilty on charges of corruption (appropriating State funds) and human rights violations (as the mind behind murders and kidnappings) and is now doing time in a Peruvian jail.

But life goes on. One of Fetransa’s main share holders is the English corporation Orient-Express Hotels, which also owns Peru Rail. That way, the operating and maintenance companies are linked by a single corporate administration that doesn’t seem to have much at stake in the country and therefore does not care much for the conditions in which indigenous workers live. According to Mariela Cabrillo, of the Human Resources staff at Peru’s Orient-Express offices, “the one in charge of hiring the maintenance personnel is Fetransa, a partner of Orient-Express, with which it shares offices and personnel.” The one setback that these two companies have had recently (earlier this year) involved a penalty for monopolizing practices. There have not been any scandals as to the workers’ conditions.

Unfortunately, this is not magical realist literature. The realism of the 55^th mile to Macchu Picchu has names, living flesh and walking bones. It is there in the lives of the people you don’t see, the ones who work to keep alive the Empire of Tourism and the Fantasy of Macchu Picchu.

An exclusive interview with President Laura Chinchilla as she completes her first year leading Costa Rica.

January 28, 2011 Tico Times

At times, Laura Chinchilla feels like she has the sword of Damocles over her head. As the first female president of a country that has until now been led by men, the pressure is on for her to not only lead Costa Rica, but advance the status of women in a traditionally male-dominated society. If she succeeds, it might open more doors for women in Latin America. If she fails, critics might judge her more harshly than they would a man.
It’s a pressure she is familiar with, having been the vice minister of security, and later the country’s first female public security minister. Rumblings in the street during the 2009-2010 presidential campaign seemed to indicate that some people were both intrigued by the idea of a woman president and still doubtful she could succeed at the highest political level.
“The biggest strength during my presidential campaign was my faith in my people, in Costa Rica. It is to me an exceptional country among nations,” she told The Tico Times, speaking across a small but fancy table in her well-appointed presidential offices. The ease and elegance of her manner belies the kind of pressure she is under, as she deftly handles discussions with representatives from the most powerful sectors of Costa Rican economy on a regular basis.
Nearing the end of her first year as president, Chinchilla is facing a serious border skirmish with Nicaragua, and the lingering effects of a worldwide financial crisis.
Born in San José in 1959, Laura Chinchilla, 53, is the oldest daughter of a former comptroller of Costa Rica, Rafael Ángel Chinchilla Fallas, and the only female among four siblings.
“My brothers say I was bossy, that’s the word they used,” Chinchilla said. “But the fact that my mother never made a distinction between me and my brothers is what made the difference for me.”
The makings of a political life came early for a young Chinchilla. During high school and college, she campaigned for classmates during school elections and she organized cultural events. As Chinchilla grew older, she began to refine her political ideas.
“During my time at the university I became an agitator in my group... I pushed for alliances with mainly left-wing groups,” she said. Still, from an early age Chinchilla had admired the strength of the “Iron Lady,” as British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was known, though she did not agree with all of her conservative political viewpoints.
Chinchilla’s affinity for politics became stronger during her college years, as several civil wars and innumerable political upsets roared throughout Central America, including the Sandinista uprising in Nicaragua, and civil wars in El Salvador and Guatemala.
“I lived with great intensity the Central American wars during those times, especially the war against the Somoza dictatorship,” she said. Chinchilla and her like-minded friends helped refugees fleeing from political unrest find shelter and legal aid.
“During college, Central American politics was what marked my generation,” she said.
Twenty years have passed since she first sought government office. Security matters appeal to her most, thanks to “an intellectual orientation” from her husband José María Rico, a penal code expert from Spain. She attracted criticism early on and was called “alarmist” for predicting the rise of organized crime in Costa Rica amid general fears that her pronouncements would scare off international investors.
“Look what happened twenty years later,” she said.
When she began her presidential term last May, critics labeled her “la marionetade Oscar Arias,” or a puppet successor to the previous Nobel Prize-winning president. They doubted she would bring new ideas to the job.
And here, perhaps, is one of the times that Chinchilla admits to one of the realities of being the female leader of a still-patriarchal country – the refusal of many to believe she can lead on her own because of her gender.
“This is a discussion that has seen no end. If people see me too close to [Arias], then I am taking orders from him. If they notice me distant, then we are fighting,” she said. “I do want to tell you, of course, that it is possible that the fact that I am a woman has to do with it. During my campaign, the principal attack from my opponents was to call me, ‘the Marionette of Oscar Arias.’ They would have never said that if [the candidate] had been a man; but they said it to me.”
Coming to terms with a female in power is something the entire country is going to have to do at some point, she said. Projections of weakness would “not [be] convenient” for the country. Thus, she tries to walk a middle line, one where she adheres to the conservative dress code on one hand, but on the other, continues to attend concerts and special events that project a down-to-earth image.
“It seems to me that it’s about time the country gets used to and understands how we women are,” she said.
But there are other things Chinchilla knows she needs to concentrate on, including the need to reduce crime in communities, partially a result of an economy that has suffered from ongoing financial crises at home and abroad.
A lifelong member of the National Liberation Party (PLN) – a group that Chinchilla said understands the need for convergence of the market and the state – her left-of-center approach is to unite ideologies along the goals of common good, social justice and integrity. Analysis of public policies and their social effects is vital, she said.
“It’s not just the topic of economic efficiency and competitiveness, but also its impact on society,” she said.
It’s still too early to tell just what the social impacts will be of some of the public policies she has set in motion, like a tax reform plan meant to address Costa Rica’s $2.3 billion fiscal deficit but which detractors, both in and out of the PLN, have said is unfair and a burden on Costa Ricans (TT, Jan. 21). The “solidarity” tax reform, presented to lawmakers Jan. 17, has yet to overcome many bureaucratic hurdles.
The solidarity behind this and future ideas are bound to be tested rigorously, as President Chinchilla moves into the second year of her four-year term. In politics, she said, political ideologies need to be relativistic.
“From the second we consider that a rigid frame has to orient our actions, we lose the possibility to enrich ourselves with all the good ideas that come from all currents of thought,” she said.

Program aims to help inmates recover : Sheriff's Treatment Program aids in recovery from addiction

5.10.2010 Santa Barbara News-Press

Robert Maynez was 12 years old when he first got into drugs.

"I started abusing heroin," said the 52-year-old father of four from a housing unit called East-23 in the Santa Barbara County Jail. The drug wasn't hard to get; he had older friends he looked up to who eventually gave him some after he persisted. After that, he was hooked.

He was clean a few years when he was into boxing, he said. But then life got complicated: he grew up, his marriage was difficult. The stress led him back into the arms of drugs such as heroin and cocaine.

For years he was a furtive user, but still functioning in other areas of his life. But then he lost part of his thumb to a work-related accident, and that, he said, was when he upped his usage.

Fast forward to today. Mr. Maynez is in jail on gun and drug charges. He's looking at a serious amount of time.

That's just one of the many stories that are told between the concrete and metal walls of the Santa Barbara County Jail. The accounts may differ slightly. For some inmates, their addictions started with alcohol; others discovered their addictions later in life, some are in on relatively minor charges while yet others are looking at spending years in incarceration.

What they all have in common, though, is now they're locked up. With Chuck.

"About 80 percent of the inmates that are incarcerated — this is nationwide — are in jail because they committed a crime around alcohol and drugs," said Chuck McClain, who heads up the Sheriff's Treatment Program, a suite of addiction recovery- related programs run by the county jail. Eighty percent means that a huge majority of inmates are in jail now for offenses related directly to the alcohol and drugs, like possession or sales; or because of things that happened while they were under the influence, like vehicular manslaughter or vandalism. Another set are in for choices they made to get drugs, like prostitution or robbery.

Chuck McClain is a large, candid, self-described "confrontational type of guy." He started counseling at the county jail in 1999; three years after Chief John Dafoe started the Sheriff's Treatment Program with the idea that incarceration wasn't enough, at least for inmates who come in addicted to alcohol or drugs. For years, said Mr. McClain, STP was the first and only program of its kind.

The thought was: if you didn't do something to give inmates the tools to cope without drugs, or help make choices that kept them clean and sober, it's likely they'll fall back into that environment and will be back in jail. In fact, said Mr. McClain, three quarters of the inmates who come in because of some activity around drugs or alcohol are likely to be back in a year, if they're not put through some type of rehabilitative program.

So it's Mr. McClain's job, the confrontational type of guy that he is, to get as many inmates into the program, which has been expanded from the basic offerings like 12-step program to include life skills classes, computer training, as well as programs to cope with triggers like loss or anger, or process the underlying reasons that led to addiction in the first place. It's not easy to get volunteers. Most people are referred by the judge. Others he will persuade.

"By the end of the second week it's like a light bulb goes on in some of them," he said. "They realize it's not about looking good for the courts or their families; they've got a serious problem."

And for some addicts the only place they may ever get seriously cleaned up, is in jail. Alex Raya knows. He came in hooked on cocaine, he said. It was all he could do to sleep and eat and sleep again until the drugs left his body.

"Thirteen months I've been incarcerated and I've been in STP for 10 months," he said. "It's the longest I've had clean." It isn't the first time for Mr. Raya; he's been coming in and out of the criminal justice system since the 1980s. Now, he said, he's taking stock of the toll his choices have had on his family and he's doing his best to change.

Elsewhere, in a classroom, instructor Christine Springer is lecturing a group of women on how they can respond to a fussy baby. It's one of the kinds of life skills classes Mr. McClain wants to expand, because women, he said, are devastated by incarceration, often much more so than men.

"It's unfathomable," he said. "They lose their kids, they lose their lives...the men, they get visitors almost every day. But the women get very few visitors.

"It's not a whole lot better when they get out. According to Mr. McClain if they wind up back in their old relationships and environment, they get back into the lifestyle. For many women, it takes severing many of their ties to improve their situation.

What everyone is racing against is institutionalization, where inmates cross the line from functioning in the outside world, to needing the jail system to take care of them. The longer they stay locked up, the more difficult it is to deal with the outside world.

RECIDIVISM RATES 

After several years and over 7,000 inmates going through the program, rates of recidivism for those have been classified as "drug involved" inmates at the Santa Barbara jail, have dropped to around 40 percent for men and 35 percent for women. Participation in any rehabilitative program in jail is likely to reduce this recidivism to about 50 percent, said Mr. McClain, but the STP program seems to have pushed it lower. He says they're in the process of a long-term recidivism study, which may reveal more information about what works and what doesn't.

But the real effect is one that's hard to see if you're not looking.

For example, with an average stay of about 90 days for the jail, the county spends roughly $5,900 per inmate.

According to Mr. McClain, they put about 800 people a year through STP, so the county spends at least $4.7 million on drug-involved inmates per year. With a recidivism of 75 percent from this population without a program, it's expected that something like 600 inmates would return in about a year, which means, using the 90-day stay average, the county would spend something in the neighborhood of $3.5 million on returning inmates.

With the program, according to Mr. McClain, the money spent on the returning inmates would be about $1.6 million as the recidivism rate is typically 35 percent, which has reduced spending dramatically. "We're talking millions here," he said.

In fact, if this program works really well, ideally, you wouldn't notice at all.

"People need to know that 90 percent of the people that are incarcerated today will be our next door neighbors this time next year. Do you want someone in your neighborhood that just got out of jail or prison to have had treatment for their drug and alcohol problems or do you want that person to come out of the system just (angry) and ready to improve on their crimes?"

To taxpayers, perhaps the most significant number is zero, as in that's how much taxpayer money goes into the STP program. It's funded largely by the inmates themselves, through purchases made at the commissary, as well as a small grant from the county. According to Mr. McClain, the method can give the participants some feeling of investment in their own recovery, and it's a scheme that can be duplicated in other jails and prisons.

However, in jail, just like outside, spending fluctuates with the economy. So a poor economy also means less money spent on STP. County budgetary problems may also put a personnel squeeze on the program. Meanwhile, the list to get in has a wait of months.

State cuts and early release 

In a perfect world, the rate of recidivism drops to the point where everyone who goes through the program and leaves to become responsible tax-paying members of society. Alcohol- and drug-related crime lessens throughout the community and everyone's happy. But at the Santa Barbara Jail that's just not so.

Sometimes, people re-offend and return, which might mean another go-round through the program. But these days there's also the twin blows from the state cutting its rehabilitative programs in its prisons to counteract the budget crisis, and the recent early release program, which would let thousands of nonviolent offenders in the California prison system out to save more money (It takes about $46,000 to house one inmate in the state prison system for a year).

The scenario that Mr. McClain wants to avoid playing out is one where unrehabilitated prisoners are released and go back to their old lifestyles, re-offend, and wind up in county jail en route to the state prison system. The county winds up paying, he said.

"It's like we save a penny now, and pay $50 tomorrow. Where's the savings?"

Of course even with a program like STP, or any rehabilitative program for that matter, there's no guarantee an inmate will stay out, said Chuck McClain. Try as they might, some inmates will come back. So it's hard to tell which participants from E-23 would be able to function, long-term, on the outside. It's hard to tell which women taking the life skills lessons will leave their precarious positions behind. But if the numbers bear out, then less than half of the inmates who come in today are likely to be seen again next year. And, added up, it makes a big difference, he said.

For some, STP means more than the decreased recidivism, or a means to ease the strain on what seems to be an intractable crowding situation on the state's jails and prisons, or saving tax dollars in the long term. For inmates like Robert Maynez, it's a lifeline.

"You know, I may not get out for a long time," said Mr. Maynez. "I'm looking at ten years right now. With my charges it could be 37 years. I want to get into a program...I want to continue doing what I'm doing here, and that's a program. That's what makes me feel good.

" I'm moving forward."

Buddhist Monks Erase the Sands of Dalai Lama’s Time

04.26.2009 Noozhawk.com

The day after the Dalai Lama's visit to Santa Barbara on Friday, Tibetan Buddhist monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery brought to an end the sand mandala they created in honor of their spiritual leader.

Called the Mandala of Compassion, the work of art, at UCSB's University Art Museum, was a tribute to the monks’ patron saint, Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. All the Dalai Lamas are seen as manifestations of this patron saint.

The dissolution of the sand mandala, created after five days of painstaking and exacting work by the monks, was meant to symbolize the Buddhist concept of nonattachment, as the monks ritually destroyed their work, mixing and mingling the colored sand they carefully distributed on their work space. After blessing the grains and anointing themselves with the sand, they offered samples to the crowd that had assembled to watch the dissolution ceremony.

]A procession led by the monks followed the ceremony at the museum, with the throng following close behind.

The monks took a small urn filled with the sand to the ocean, continuing their prayers and chants. In the seaside ritual they poured the grains into the ocean to fully dissolve the work they had done, leaving no trace of it behind. In pouring the sand into the ocean, they said, they hoped that the water would take the sacred grains to touch shores all over the world.

Dalai Lama Shares Wisdom on the Mind, Ethics and Economy

Noozhawk.com/04.24.2009

Tibetan monk finds a receptive and enthusiastic audience at two UCSB lectures

With a head cold and a sense of humor, the Dalai Lama shared his wisdom with thousands of people Friday during his visit to UCSB.

“My voice is unusual today,” Tibet’s exiled spiritual and political leader said as he settled cross-legged into a divan onstage, interpreter by his side.

Using Tibetan to explain his finer points and English to kid around with the audience, the monk broke down topics as heady as the primordial qualities of Buddha that he says we all possess.

“We have to know the ultimate nature of the mind,” the Dalai Lama said during a morning lecture on the mind. Through it we can control destructive emotions, he said.

In the afternoon, he discussed compassion in a lecture on ethics for today and commented that the economic crisis might be an opportunity for people to establish limits on material things.

Along the way he told stories like the one of his life as a 7-year-old Buddhist monk, already recognized as the reincarnation of the the previous Dalai Lama and the manifestation of Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.

“I had no interest in Buddhism,” he said. “My only interest was playing.” But with the aid of a stern tutor and a “holy whip” kept just for him, he learned the root Buddhist texts by heart, he said.

The visit to UCSB was the Dalai Lama’s fourth. He was welcomed by Chancellor Henry Yang; religious studies professor Jose Cabezón, who holds UCSB’s XIV Dalai Lama Endowed Chair in Tibetan Buddhism and Cultural Studies; Humanities and Fine Arts dean David Marshall; and Richard Blum, chairman of the UC Board of Regents.

Friday’s lectures were the apex of a series of recent events relating to the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhism at the university, including talks by Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman and local author PIco Iyer, a friend of the Dalai Lama’s.

The University Art Museum is currently holding an exhibition called “The Sacred Art of Tibet,” featuring centuries-old paintings of Buddhist deities, some of which served as a guide for tantric meditation, or as symbols of devotion. Buddhist monks from the Drepung Loseling Monastery created a sand mandala to be ritually destroyed Saturday.