Angkor Wat Temple: Day 2

December 4, 2010

On our second day, we arrived at the Angkor Wat temple at 5:20am, before sunrise. My guide and I entered from the rear, walking through sparse jungle with a flashlight. It felt like we were a swat team, doing a rear attack on Angkor Wat. We snuck up the rear stairs and he showed me the famous Angkor Wat bas relief (see above) by flashlight in near-complete darkness. The bas relief depicts the 12 century Cambodian view of Heaven as being filled with near-naked celestial dancers. Hell, on the other hand, was filled with liars having a nail hammered into them, for every lie. And, it included women who did abortions, with a knife put into her stomach as punishment. Then, there was the thorny tree the adulters had to climb, over and over again.

We watched the sun rise, and I took a picture of Angkor Wat with its reflection over the moat. My guide then explained to me how Angkor Wat was designed as the earth, in miniature. The oceans were the moat, the continents were at the base of Mount Meru (some call it "The Olympus of the Hindus") which is said to hold Heaven filled with Hindu gods. There are three levels to the mountain, all of which I climbed. And, as any good Hindu world would have, there was a caste system to who gets to go higher and higher up. The plebians stay at the bottom. The ministers and nobles are at the second level. And, the king and high Hindu priest were the only ones who could go to the top level, the top of Mount Meru, at least until tourist like me line up promptly at 8am to race up to the top of the shrine.

And, it's worth being the first up (I was!). I can see why the king (who saw himself as a heavenly God) and the high priest kept it to themselves. The view was incredible and they were surrounded by ritual baths, they used the sacred water to bathe the Hindu god statues, and they were surrounded by hundreds of statues of topless celestial dancers (note that the statues' breasts were particularly shiny from the regular manhandling they get from tourists). Often, the king disappeared up to the top of Mount Meru, in the shrine, for weeks on end. No one knew what he did up there. They just waited patiently at the second level for him to descend. Me, I was ushered by a guard to descend so more tourists waiting below could ascend.

The "Churning of the Sea of Milk" bas relief was near the end of my Angkor Wat visit, and it's in the pictures above as the demons on one side and the good spirits on the other side, looking as if they are doing tug of war against each other. But, they are actually working as a team to churn the sea of milk. If they churned the sea of milk to a frothy curdle, then they all could be immortal. The hindu god, Vishnu, helped them by reincarnating as a turtle who acted as a base for the churning, and Shiva floated above, adding magical strength to the churners.

As I left the Angkor Wat temple, I walked down the long bridge over the moat and stood next to the snake statues who were said to take Angkor Wat inhabitants on a rainbow bridge connecting earth to the heavens. I felt transported too.

Spirituality in Cambodia: Angkor Wat Temples - Day 1

December 3, 2010

There's a reason why Angkor Wat was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1992. It's outrageously beautiful, serene, and reeks of spirituality. You may practice voodoo, but you'll still be moved by the Hindu and Buddhist shrines here. And, the word's out because most everyone of all stripes of religions come visit and after Tomb Raider was shot here, even more tourists come.

They started building these temples back in AD 1002 and had active cities filled with huge and numerous temples. Almost a million people were said to live in one city, at a time when London only had 50,000 people. Each king from AD 1000 on created more and more Buddhist or Hindua temples, or temples dedicated to a mix of Hindu and Buddhism. Over time, Hindu religion has been synthesized with Buddhism here in Cambodia. Cambodians may say most of them are Buddhist, but they've actually borrowed a lot from Hindus too. One king couldn't handle combining shrines and statues from both religions, so he just chopped off the over 200 Buddhist heads that created beautiful ornamentation around one shrine. Or, he'd add a beard and change the meditation position of the Buddha to make him look more Hindu (see decapitated statue and bearded Buddha converted to Hinduism above). But, there are still a lot of Buddhas remaining. Almost 215 in one temple you can see above, with 4 Buddha faces on the head that tops each of over 50 towers at one temple.

My Buddhist practice is expanding while living here in Asia. And, I found walking around Angkor Wat temples like meditative prayer, slowing down every moment to where I feel incredibly present and alive. A guide named Bond, who's a Cambodian who's incredibly well-read in Hindu and Buddhist mythology, took me to the most hidden temples, where you have to hike through jungles. He also took me to the most overcrowded temples at the least crowded times of day.

Meditative peace is the only way I can describe the feeling of going to the first temple, Ta Nei, hidden deep in the jungle (see first pictures above). And, NO ONE was there. It's hard to imagine that at Angkor Wat. It's like being able to see the Statue of Liberty on a day when no one shows up. You feel like the statue is yours. And, that temple was mine, for the moment. My temple was broken down and rubble-filled but it had all these huge blocks for me to climb over before I could get into the narrow corridors, former libraries, statues, and shrines from the 2nd century. All the buildings were covered by celestial dancers named Apsara who would bring heaven to earth, especially when they acted as concubines to the King.

Ta Keo shrine took me up a huge number of temple steps to an outrageous view. Then, Ta Prom temple (known as the Tomb Raider temple to most tourists here since the film was shot in it) is covered in huge trees named Spung with roots draped over the side of the temple (see pics above of me next to roots).

The great city of Angkor Thom was the largest city in the world by the end of the 12th century, with almost a million people. It is surrounded by a wall that has a victory and a death entrance. The Khmer army of the time would return from battle either via the victory or death entrances, depending on the outcome of their battles. And, 3 headed elephants (see 3 trunks holding up the archway of the wall entrance above) were at each entrance, said to hold up heaven above the city, keeping God close by.

Angkor Thom was the largest city in the world, until the Thai army raided it in the 12th century. The army couldn't break into the walled city, given its moat and huge walls, but it waited patiently beside the city for one and a half years until they starved the citydwellers into submission. The Thai army then took most of the millions of pearls, diamonds, and gold that adorned the sparkling interior tower that lit up with bejeweled light once a day when the sun would hit the top of the tower just right, leading to a transcendent, sparkling Buddha at the tower base. Nine centuries later, my guide is still bitter towards the Thai, as a result of that and a laundry list of other even more recent Thai invasions.

But, before the Thai took over for a short time, Angkor Thom was a thriving city filled with the 217 Buddha faces I described above, and still, today it has practicing Buddhist monks who keep Buddhist shrines alive there. I was ambivalent about meditating at the Angkor Thom Buddhist shrine. But, I forced myself to do it, despite the watchful eyes of those who collected the money from me for the incense. It was probably the most spiritual place I've ever meditated but it was also the shortest and most uncomfortable prayer for me, with all the locals and the monks watching, with some locals tittering and staring.

At the end of that first day, my guide gave me a gin and tonic to watch the sun set by the side of the Angkor Wat moat that we planned to cross the next day to see the temple of all temples - the official Angkor Wat temple.

Eat, Pray, Run: Half Marathon in Angkor Wat, Cambodia

December 3, 2010

I'm in Angkor Wat, Cambodia, at the world's largest set of religious buildings, and I'm running a half-marathon here with my Kuala Lumpur running group. The kids and Ken aren't here, since we'll all be returning here in a couple weeks for our holiday travels (alert: upcoming holiday posts will be from Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam!).

The half marathon is tomorrow, Sunday Dec 5, around the outrageously beautiful Angkor Wat which is in the middle of a vast jungly National Park. Compared to KL, it's such a relief to think about taking a long run in humidity-free, crisp early morning, fresh, unpolluted air.

I've been training with a running group in KL consisting mostly of parents and teachers from the kids' school, International School of Kuala Lumpur. They have become buddies of mine here, helping me get a babysitter a couple afternoons a week to relieve Ken (a much needed break from caregiving!) and night-time sitters. And, I've started socializing with some of them. But, we also ran every Saturday morning since September to train for this race, building up to a 15 mile run a couple weeks ago.

That long run put most of our bodies over the injury edge. We'd actually done a great job of systematically building up to such a long distance but all of us except for 2 had knee or hip injuries by the time we finished the 15 mile longest training run. I'm convinced the KL city streets are brutal on your joints and tissues. KL is not a pedestrian-friendly city, and the same goes for running KL. The sidewalks are made of ceramic tile and often broken or nonexistent. We are jumping on and off the sidewalk, running on the side of the road often. It's a rough surface on the body.

So, my IT band, at the back of my knee, got hurt and I limped through the last half of the 15 mile run. It's an injury that responds well to stretching, I've heard, so I've stretched and taken it easy on my knee ever since, in hope that it'll make my running the half marathon do-able. While my knee's improved, the pain's not disappeared, especially the longer distances I run. So, I'll let you know how the long distance of the half turns out for me.

Even if I have to walk some of it, I'm excited for this race! It represents my having a life and taking care of my body via exercise in the face of a lot of work and family activities that could easily make me sacrifice my exercising. In the end, I'm convinced that my running is what's allowed me to have such fun and joy in my life abroad, despite some of the pressures of living abroad.