1. A Dozen Distinct Endowments

FORMAL HISTORY is supposedly limited to written History, according to the western system of scholarship which also treats periods with no existing written historical accounts as “pre-history,” and all non-written evidences of past events and cultural patterns are relegated only to the realm of Archeology.

It’s good that the word kasaysayan is not a mere translation of the term history! Kasaysayan covers the interconnected oral and written narrations (salaysay) of events and social behavioral patterns that members of a community or of a set of communities deem significant (mayroong saysay) to their forward or backward development as communities.

Our sense of history, or of whatever little of it remains in our hearts and minds, would serve us well if it can be developed within our self-image as an informed sense of pride that we collectively deserve to have. Living according to our heroic heritage would surely improve our lives and allow us to discern a collective sense of purpose for our nation and for the world.

For thousands of years, even preceding the time of Christ, we, the peoples in the archipelago now called the Philippines, had our own system of writing which, in the account of Andres Bonifacio, entire community populations knew how to use. This is now known as “baybayin” or “pantigan” (and also known by the foreign-based coined word “alibata”).

But almost all the pieces of writing that existed at the beginning of Spanish colonization and the artifacts of indigenous religions were destroyed on orders of the Spanish clergy who branded the whole lot as “works of the devil.” For this reason, entire libraries of written historical accounts vanished in giant pyres and this accounts to a large extent for our collective amnesia.

Over the centuries, even oral history suffered its own disconnections and all elders who possessed unpassed knowledge had had to bring all the information with them to their graves. We have scarce information on our traits and our lives over those millennia, but we have enough information concerning at least a dozen things that we should all cherish as treasured truths. They form part of a great inheritance from our forebears. Obviously, they did not write out a will for us to have this inheritance, but we are the ones who can have the will to really live and preserve this rich legacy!

As labeled here by titles that all begin with the same Tagalog syllable ‘ba,’ these points should strongly influence our collective self-image as the peoples of the Philippines:

a. Bathalang Kalooban: Divine Spark at the Innermost Core or “Loob”

OVERFLOWING GOODWILL towards one another and towards the rest of creation has been our nature. Coupled with this goodwill at the very core of our being (“Magandang Loob”) has been the innermost sense of self-confidence in our own individual and collective capabilities (“Lakas ng Loob”) in the pursuit of goodwill-directed endeavors. Our own genesis legend of Malakas at Maganda, far from being a mere copy of the Jewish biblical version, pertained not to beautiful and strong physical bodies as widely interpreted, but to the innermost being – souls with the divine attributes of being all-good and all-mighty, of “magandang loob” and “malakas na loob.”

With these divine attributes at the core of our traditional concept of Tao (Human), the two-fold prime directive, “MagpakaTao at Makipagkapwa-Tao” implies a profound quest for individual and collective perfection similar to the “Taoist” perfection ideal, and consistent to the assertion about the innermost core of our being created “in the image and likeness of the Creator.”

Such two-fold prime directive is all we need to keep in our spirit, thoughts and actions so we could all attain full development and harmony as individuals, as communities and as a nation within the broader Human Family. With “kagandahang loob” and “lakas ng loob” our ancestors worshipped Bathala as the deity that lived within them, with the intensity of adoration and prayer manifested in the intensity of their will to live these same divine attributes. This really beats physical gestures and words of adoration repeated half-consciously!

b. Bahay na Buháy (Living Quarters):  Within Nature’s Bounty

NOT YET CONTAMINATED with the intellectual framework of Scarcity, which underpins much of human greed that was later introduced by western colonialist behavior, our ancestors co-habited and interacted very well within healthy eco-systems. Our ancestors were like all other indigenous peoples the world over living in harmony and abundance with the rest of nature in their undisturbed home communities.  They cared for, and were nurtured fully by, their living quarters, with this last term deliberately meant to carry a double meaning:  they lived healthy lives in their common “house” as given them by the Creator, and this “house” actually lived with them as fellow family members in a home. Part of our natural resources has been our indigenous culture which values and cares well for the rest of such resources, fully enjoying the reality of symbiosis with them.

c. Bayanihan: (Teamwork in Producing): Loving Care in the Sharing

THE USUAL TRANSLATION of the contemporary word “bayani” into English is “hero.”  But “bayani” had much earlier emerged in our vocabulary as a verb, meaning, in infinitive definition, “to serve the community without expecting any equivalent material compen­sation or reward.” 

With many of the early communities in these islands having come from many a large boat called balanghai, in these floating schools for synergetic living, we developed bayanihan, the love-based energy exchange of unmeasured community services and teamwork in various activities. The bayanihan praxis has persisted to this day, notably in small- and some large-scale tangkilikan mutual-support systems.

By teaming up our capabilities, which in many circumstances have been diverse, we would magnify the strength of the individuals in synergy and apply this synergetically-magnified   total  working strength on  the bountiful natural resources. The abundant fruit of such community efforts would be divided, not along the rigors of precise math­ematical accounting but in the spirit of love and caring that goes well beyond the minimums of fairness and equitability. 

d. Bangkâ sa Bangâ: Boat Figurine on a Burial Jar

ESTIMATED TO BE 3,500 years old when discovered in a cave in Palawan a few decades ago, the Manunggul Burial Jar exhibited something that easily distinguishes it from other burial jars.

On its lid is a figurine of a rowboat with two persons aboard, a boatman with a paddle and his serene passenger. Research has uncovered the symbolism behind this design:  Someone had just died and he or she is being accompanied (“ihinahatid”) across the river of death onto the opposite bank of the Afterlife.  This indicates an already deep sense of spirituality among us at the time of our ancestors who lived around that cave a millennium and a half before the time of Jesus Christ!  

It has also signified our “hatíd” culture which is still very much alive to this very day.

e. Bayad-Sukliang Matapat: Honorable,  Sustainable Partnerships

THE EXPERIENCE of the ancient Chinese in trading with our ancestors and their descriptions of us as super-honest trading partners, paying fully, at times even excessively, for Chinese goods that were simply left at our beaches with no one on hand to receive and assess them.

Such was the practice that persisted over centuries; accounts on these could not have landed in the official annals of Chinese history.  if the stories had a narrow experience base. The word “suki” has come to mean a sustained relationship of trust and of mutual concern for one-another’s needs, a pattern that could last only if founded on the trustworthiness of both parties.

We were really noble trading partners over many centuries before we were forced by colonization to adopt what Rizal called the ways of slaves.

It was also Rizal (in his essay on “indolence”) who discovered in Europe some very valuable references to the ancient Chinese chronicles describing the known honorable traits of our ancestors as trading partners. 

f. Babaylan: Doctors for Holistic Health

OUR LONG TRADITION centered on the babaylan (shamans, usually female) indicates the efficacy of folk health care systems that combined the well-studied use of appropriate herbs with spiritual rituals and practices to maintain health and to cure specific illnesses.

Much of our traditional health practices were drastically suppressed after having been dismissed as mere superstition or, worse, witchcraft. The colonizers even declared practitioners of these as open targets for murder.

But many of these practices are now being recognized and revived by bio-medical physicians and spiritual healers who understand and appreciate well the holistic health paradigm now gaining ground around the world since the last few decades of the 20th century.

g. Balanghayan ng mga Tagbalay: Genuine Community Spirit

THE WORD “baranggay” (with a single g if used as an English word) is currently understood in the Philippines as the political sub-division of a municipality, city or district and the word is now widely used to refer to a place, the territory under the jurisdiction of the baranggay captain/chairperson, with a council, a court and other instrumentalities and personnel.

The term has even been delimited further to refer only to the baranggay local government structure and officialdom. The term originates from the name of the large boats, called “balanghai,” that brought in early settlers into our islands. “Balanghai” as boat became the boatloads of people (families or clans) living together as a community. Formally, even the Spanish word barrio and its current equivalent baranggay, should really refer to community and not the local government setup.

Our earlier balanghai or baranggay communities, like their tribal counterparts, were real collectivities in effective joint stakeholder­ship, where collective creativity evolved, stabilized, and continually developed systems of mutually-beneficial arrangements and ways to meet their needs. Each of the adults forming the community was an active stakeholder, a “TagBalay,” and the tagbalays’ designated officials, if any, were not above them but were to be their servant-leaders.

With the enthusiastic cooperation of enlightened baranggay officials, we can revive our present-day barnggay communities into genuine communities uplifting the people’s lives and providing a firm foundation for genuine democracy to flourish in this country. Our ancestors had shown the way!

h. Bahaghari ng Paglikha: Appreciation of Abundance in Colorful Creativity

“BAROQUE,” a word applied in describing the “extra­vagantly ornate” and very colorful art painted on Filipino jeepneys of decades ago, is defined as a style in art and architecture emphasizing dramatic.

This is often strained effect and typified by bold, curving forms, elaborate orna­mentation, and overall balance of disparate parts.

This is not only observable in jeepneys and minibuses of old (before they were regulated to be color-coded, by route) but also in a whole lot of practical tools and furnishings, leading some art critics to conclude that Filipino visual artistry “hates empty space.”

The abundance of elements and colors in the designs of Pinoy brush-wielders may have been derided by critics with views molded by western schools of art.

But this may have been more reflective of our ancestors’ gratitude for the abundance of natural blessings in our tropical archipelago, that contrasted with the European mileu of winters and scarcity which probably underpins the preference for visual minimalism.

Our people have always been abundantly creative, and our visual artists have always availed themselves of the limitless varieties of color in the palette of Mother Nature herself.

Thus we have very colorful weaves, paintings, sails especially vintas, even foodstuffs, thanks to our festive, abundance-oriented creativity. 

i. Balik-loob sa Unawaan: Justice as Compassionate Healing

OUR EARLY JUSTICE SYSTEM was founded on the principle of profound understanding (taróng) of one another to prevent offenses and redress them if they happen. It was reconstructive and reformative and far more effective than the vindictive and penal system we have later borrowed from western jurisprudence.

Whenever a community member commits an offense against another or others of the same community, the latter’s primary concern is for the genuine healing of the wounds inflicted. These were wounds of the aggrieved and even the spiritual and social wounds of the offender.

The community considered itself as the biggest victim of the offense, since the binding fabric of mutual trust ultimately is the one put in serious jeopardy.

With the aim to fully and deeply understand but not condone the offensive act, the community’s leaders and mediators work carefully to decide proper and constructive ways of restitution as part of the healing for it, and the community eventually emerges even more unified than before.

j. Banig ng Pagniniig: Synergetic Interweaving

OUR "WALIS TINGTING,” or coconut-reed broom is widely used in the Philippines where it is called " in the Filipino language. It has been a favorite metaphor in illustrating the saying, "in union there is strength."

After all, it is easy to break all the reeds one by one but together they are formidable.  This broom goes beyond the saying and illustrates synergism.

Still, as a symbolic illustration of synergism, the baníg or our native mat made out of leaf-strips woven together is apparently better.  Similarly, all the weaves, from g-strings to garments, to mats to blankets illustrate the same practical value. The groupings of indigenous peoples in our archipelago, including both the colonized and the preserved, have had long tradition of weaving, with the widely varied fibers or leafstrips representing the synergetic interweaving of the very lives and sentiments of the people making up each community or tribe. 

Long-range close companionship of all these divergent tribal and non-tribal com­munities across the archipelago, as symbolized by our closely-knit weaves, represent our deep-seated aspiration for building a dynamic unity (synergy) in real nationhood.

k. Baybayin: Universal Literacy

ALTHOUGH WE ARE PEOPLES of rich oral traditions, we have had a system of writing for thousands of years known by both men and women. But the Spanish colonizers had our writings destroyed as “work of the devil.” 

Some artifacts have survived, like the copperplate “document on a debt write-off” found about a decade ago in Laguna. It is known by such names as “baybayin,” “pantigan,” “alibata,” and even ‘panulatin” (panulat natin).

According to Andres Bonifacio’s “What the Tagalogs Should Know,” this system of writing was known by all, including the women. This is something superior to literacy under the Spanish rule where the women  were  effectively excluded.   

In fact, research on this indicates that such writing was used not only in recording literary works but in everyday communication among ordinary folks pertaining to day-to-day topics.

l. Banawe: Farming the Mountains

CITED YEARS AGO as a World Heritage Site by the United Nations, the Banawe Rice Terraces in Ifugao province were earlier dubbed “Eighth Wonder of the World,” while in many respects exceeding the merits of most of the “original seven.”

These were built up collectively as a technological wonder by our Ifugao ancestors and used productively for more than three millennia, applying the bayanihan system.  Each step in the sprawling giant staircase was called payao in our native Ifugao language.

THESE ENDOWMENTS provided the basis for the message of a pamphlet earlier written by this writer, titled, Mayaman Ka! (Di Nga Lamang Halata!), with a set of short stories, this pamphlet is still being developed to address the wide­spread lack of collective self-esteem among of our people, whether in the homeland or living abroad. 

They are completely omitted by historical accounts that start from a timeframe chosen from an outside point of view: from the time of the Magellanic expedition.

This is the viewpoint legitimate only for Europeans who were among the very last to know of the greatness and even of the sheer existence of our people and our archipelagic homeland.

We cannot afford to limit our timeframe of study to their grossly limited awareness at that time.

We Filipinos are often the last to realize or admit that we are mostly a people with very desirable character traits that many foreigners admire. While we often come across self-demeaning terms like “damaged culture” to refer to our own patterns of thinking and behavior, especially because a lot of our own compatriots have developed the overly-critical behavior to disociate our own individual selves from the overprojected defects of our people,.

But people of other races and nations have unabashedly expressed their great appreciation of our people’s good-neighborly relations, close family and extended-family ties, our hospitality to a fault, our willingness to share the very little that we have even with perfect strangers who come to our homes for whatever reasons.

Most of all we are admired for our positive disposition – we would humorously laugh at our own selves in ridiculous circumstances; we are patient and hardworking unless we are negatively-motivated by cirtumstances of being cheated of the rewards promised, and often without such promised reward.

We are risk-takers and prepared to accept, even to cheerfully suffer the consequences of wrong decisions.

We are passionately sentimental about bonds of friendship that have passed the test of togetherness over long stretches of time in danger and difficulty.

As a people we have been quick to forgive–and also forget–petty offenses especially if obviously unintend­ed. We have been quite good-natured – able to get along well with people from both the East and the Westwith cultural traits extemely different from our own.

As editor of a quarterly book magazine LightShare Digest, this writer has had the experience of receiving highly appreciative descriptions of the Filipinos, as written by people of other lands. Dylan Wilks, a British multi-millionaire who became the ninth richest person in the Great Britain at the age of 30, wrote his admiration of Filipinos, comparing us to gold nuggets:

“I go around the world telling everyone that Filipinos are heroic. I work with the volunteers of GK (Gawad Kalinga, a civic project building housing for the poor You (Filipinos) are hard-working. You’re always laughing, always eating, always singing. Even in your problems. You’re loyal. And honest.

“Sure, there are exceptions, but generally, that’s been my experience. And you have the bayanihan spirit. The pyramids of Egypt are beautiful but they were built by slavery. GK villages are more beautiful because they’re made through the bayanihan spirit of the Filipino. It’s especially this bayanihan and love of family and community that makes the Filipino more valuable than gold.

“If you take a golden nugget and kick it on the floor for 400 years, afterwards you won’t be able to see much gold, just mud. This was what happened to the Filipino. For 400 years you were slaves and then you suffered under dictatorship and corruption. This is where the crab mentality came from; I don’t think it’s a natural Filipino quality because every day I see the gold under the surface of ordinary Filipinos. If we wipe away the mud by bringing hope and being brothers to one another in bayanihan, the gold will shine through and the world will see it.”

Our Asian neighbors also gush out their admiration, in Koreans who have been coming to our country to take advantage of a business climate very favorable to foreign investors, wonder aloud, “You Filipinos have long been our models, because of your skills and character traits, we’ve always looked up to you for greatness as a people, but… what happened to you??? Why is the Philippines now lagging behind other Asian countries in economic progress? Why don’t you love your country at all?”

2.   Worldwide Deployment and Other Circumstances

MILLIONS OF FILIPINOS have been forced to leave the country in search of gainful employments. Fully, about 11 million Global Filipinos are working abroad today – that is already including some 3 million, the more fortunate ones, who are permanent residents or now citizens of other countries. Note that 11 million is 12 percent of the nation's population of 91.5 million or 30.7 percent of the country’s labor force of 35.79 million.

Unemployment in the Philippines plays around eight percent or about 2.8 million, while underemploy­ment is running at a crushing 25 percent or 8.9 million of the country’s workforce. Pursuit of wage levels needed to raise a family well and send children through the school system, has attracted many Filipinos to work abroad. This is what we have called “Filipino Diaspora.”

Just what diaspora? This term, according to Wikipedia means the scattering or dispersion of a group of people to anywhere else in the world.

Its history dates back to the Jews when they were forcibly expelled and scattered after their captivity in Babylon. As far as one can see, some 7 million Jews outside the State of Israel are everywhere in the world today.

In terms of numbers, the Filipino Diaspora, at 11 million now outnumbers the original Jewish Diaspora. Each year, the Philippines is sending out more than a million to work abroad through its overseas employment program. Every hour, some 100 migrant workers leave the Philippines. Overseas Filipinos are typically known to be as doctors, accountants, IT professionals, engineers, technicians, entertainers, teachers, nurses, seamen, military servicemen, domestic helpers and caregivers.

The Filipino workforce is a skilled one, as aptly represented by our overeas workers and professionals. But the vast majority of our population has been neglected in terms of basic services because their “more unfortunate compatriots” have been able to leave the homeland instead of remaining available to serve the Filipino people. These Filipinos have been admired as “modern-day heroes” of the country because the total amount of foreign currency they send home to their families alows the government to partake of their earnings through the current system of foreign exchange transactions.

To be sure, these overseas workers are indeed heroic --enduring for the sake of their respective families the sufferings of being away from home and learning from a distance how their families have been having social problems or, worse, falling apart. Actually, they have really been heroes and heroines of their own families and veritable victims of policies and mismanagement of the economy.

The sufferings of our overseas brothers and sisters as workers abroad have not been measured and fully considered by economic managers who look only at the money they send home and not at the social cost to the country especially these sufferings and the breakup of families.

Still, we should all realize that such diaspora has deployed Filipinos to so many countries in almost all continents of the world, possibly for consequences much larger than the economic survival their hard-earned money abroad has made possible.

Our sharing of the well-admired Filipino character traits, obviously including our bayanihan tradition, can be facilitated by our current worldwide deployment if only our sense of history and self-knowledge could enable us to discern at all a col­lective sense of mission in the evolutionary history of the world.

And if the ‘bayanihan spirit’ is to be a part of our gift to Humanity as a whole, we still have an urgent under­taking to accomplish for our own sakes and the world’s.

We still have to revive and refine our Bayanihan spirit, because centuries of direct and indirect colonialism have almost completely destroyed it, except, perhaps, only in conditions of sudden disasters and calamities that we cannot simply blame fully on the greedy and the irresponsible.

3. Currently Urgent: Revival of the Bayanihan Culture

With many of the early communities in these islands having come from many a large boat called balanghai, in these floating schools for synergetic living, we developed bayanihan, the love-based energy exchange of unmeasured community services and teamwork in various activities. The bayanihan praxis has persisted to this day, notably in small- and some large-scale tangkilikan mutual-support systems.

By teaming up our capabilities, which in many circumstances have been diverse, we would magnify the strength of the individuals in synergy and apply this synergetically-magnified   total  working strength on  the bountiful natural resources.

The abundant fruit of such community efforts would be divided, not along the rigors of precise math­ematical accounting but in the spirit of love and caring that goes well beyond the minimums of fairness and equitability. 

The "Power of One" is in the sharpness of focus of its oneness. This is why laser beams can slice through hard solids.

Filipinos can share with the world our Revived Bayanihan culture to help Humanity meet the challenge of global climate change; the challenge of global financial crises; and the elusiveness of real lasting world peace. Let the big and small gains in our "Balik-Bayanihan" campaign create real lasting solutions to a whole lot of solutions to many of our collective problems.

We all have to learn fully well the profound lesson articulated by our youthful Filipino revolutionary sage, Emilio Jacinto: "The Humanity of all is one."

4. Further Development of the Beyenihan as our very own Gift to Humankind  

To the world’s vocabulary and values of consciousness, the Indians contributed karma and everything that it implies, the Romans gave quid pro quo, the Chinese shared their feng sui...

Can't we Filipinos, deployed all over the world as we have been, getting along well with all other peoples, offer to the consciousness of Humankind our synergetic bayanihan?

Yes, but we’d have to revive it first in the mainstream of our lives, and then we’d be ready to "preach what we practice."

And one valuable explanation is to offer to the world, particularly all those countries we are in, the living lessons of "Sycone," of Synergy in Conscious Oneness, a "Grand Bayanihan" for the entire Humankind. The word "Sycone" is preferably pronounced as "seek one," as in "Seek One Humanity!"

Conscious oneness is the only sure bet for Felt and Applied Oneness, the current imperative for Human Evolution to finally attain..

And it can start right now among a history-consious nation of heroes living in bayanihan synergy right here in this string of pearls between the world's largest landmass and its widest sea!

Mabuhay ang Sangkatauhan!