Lekil Kuxlejal

Just in the day of my first Tseltal class (the language of Chacoma, the community I’m working in), I leave you with what we want to achieve in this community, what Tsetales call as “good life”.

Tseltal has its own meaning of “good life” a complex concept which is called Lekil Kuxlejal.

First of all, there cannot exist Lekil Kuxlejal without peace – slamalil k’inal. Lamal means silence and k'inal, environment. External environment is called ecosystem and internal environment is called mind.

In Tseltal, ecosystem is a collective reality where nature and society are necessarily integrated.

The prefix ‘s’ indicates that we’re talking about someone (in this context, the peace of someone) because in tseltal as in other maya languages, every being, person, animal or object are subjects that influence and are influenced in a constant interdetermination, a constant intersubjectivity, because we all make part of the same big heart. Something or someone don’t exist by themselves, cannot be separate, it makes part of something bigger.

Slamalil k’inal (peace) is a state of silence of the person, of his/her mind. It is also a state of ecosystem harmony. Peace is a social and a cosmic question but experience at an individual level. The conception of peace for Tseltales assumes the sacred and perfect dimension of silence. Silence is sacred and an essential element for generate harmony and with it, good life, Lekil Kuxlejal.

Slamalil k’inal presumes the unit of individual wills that intersubjectivitely create it and like that will form one heart. If someone is experiencing an internal peace in his/her mind it is because it lives by any form a collective harmony where all of us are included. And this is Lekil Kuxlejal and it cannot belong just to this World or just to this material life, its one of the multiple dimensions that soul will travel when leaves this world.

Lekil Kuxlejal supposes a perfect integration between society and nature. The happiness of the community is projected and felt within the environment and ecosystem, which in its turn, makes people happy (the internal environment, mind). In Tseltal these analogies are frequent since one cannot separate human from nature, they share the same identity: nature and birds laugh like us and we fly like birds (Tseltal song). Nature is happy with our laugh and we are light as their fly, this is Lekil Kuxlejal, total harmony.

And for Tseltal, peace is has important as the sun: when there is peace, there isn’t any sadness in our heart, there’s no angriness, no crying, no fear or death; there’s the “good life” in all is splendour, we’re all one heart; we’re unity, there are the same rights for all, everyone sees equally the gratitude of everyone, there’s love, there’s fairness in our hearts. Peace is the centre of Lekil Kuxlejal. And when we’re in peace our heart is happy.
But how to apply the concept of Lekil Kuxlejal in our day life? Lekil Kuxlejal it’s a set of ecologic and moral conditions.

Lekil Kuxlejal and matrimony

Lekil Kuxlejal cannot sustain by itself, it’s born by men and women relation and their actions; Lekil Kuxlejal arrives with the kids of our family; it is generated by the strength of our work – “economy” -, with the corn germination, with the germination of our work; Lekil Kuxlejal develops with what exists in the world. It is also generated with the celebrations made by our communities.

Tseltal writings show that a union between men and women is complex – we all have problems once in a while; that happens to everyone – but Lekil Kuxlejal happens when husband really takes his woman seriously and his woman takes her husband seriously. Both take care of each other. An if they learn together and if both men and women puts effort in its job, then it will be very pleasant if we follow each other efforts, and that will improve our duties and by that our family is born. Concerning raising children, despite the difficulties that can appear; our children need our word of love and caring.

Lekil Kuxlejal and Caring

Tseltal believe that we cannot mistreat what God gave us, we cannot disturb it because is that that give us the “good life”: If we mistreat the work of God, our life will not be long. Therefore, we must take care of our houses as our gardens and our forests.

Lekil Kuxlejal and respect

Lekil Kuxlejal arrives to us when we are able to see other’s greatness, your friends and family, your community. It also comes to you when you respect other’s work, by your right speech, by not saying lies, by not making any harm to anyone. No problem will come to you if you’re always practising Lekil Kuxlejal. Life will be truly beautiful if we can see each other’s greatness.

Rectitude, knowledge and justice

Lekil Kuxlejal demands that we make justice with rectitude, and this is possible when there’s any resentment in our heart against a brother, making us able to feel the harmony in the environment. For Tselatles, problems are subjects. There’s a responsible but since we’re talking about a subject, all community must be united to eliminate the problem, since it exists by itself.

Knowledge is acquired by our heart, it gets inside of our heart and for correct learning we need a harmonious affection. Therefore, problems make us loose our knowledge, because individuals loose their capability of recognition, the capability to address adequately to the situation (since there’s no peace in our heart). To solve our problems all community needs to discuss it and find together a solution.
Putting someone in prison isn’t solving the problem, since that is addressing the problems with rancour and hate in our hearts, and like this, problems are not going to be solved.

Autonomy, word and Lekil Kuxlejal

“No one can make peace for us”

It’s in the community that we will say how to do it well. What is decided it will say how to achieve the “good life”, because no one else can decide how to do solve our problems. So the word of each assembly would be the word of good life. Words that give life, words that give harmony to our hearts. Words with what life touches your partner’s heart and the heart of your community. These words search where and why life starts in our fellows. Not the words that perish life, that hurt the feelings of all of us and each one of us, that aren’t pleasant. We should not learn the words that destroy us and destroy our community.


I wonder, how different is this from Buddhist principles? And isn’t this what we all want? What happened? How was it destroyed? A utopia? Tseltales say it isn’t because it doesn’t refers to an inexistent dream, it had existed, nevertheless it has been in declining but it hasn’t extinguished and it can be rescue. Shall we try?