Yoniso manasikara

Tomorrow I leave Thailand, back to Australia.  As Sam will no longer be in Thailand, I will not be posting any more on this blog.

However, my adventures (inner and outer) will continue here:

http://yonisomanasikara.wordpress.com/

I hope to see you there sometime soon!

What have I learnt?

My eight months in Thailand are nearly over – in two more days I’m flying back to Australia.  I’ve been reflecting on what I have learnt during this adventure.  I’ve learnt things during my time at the temple, on Koh Tao doing my dive master training, at the Rotary Peace Fellowship at Chulalongkorn University, and even on the plane flying over here!  There is far too much to fit into one blog post, but here are 10 lessons that I’ve learnt that will make a difference to how I live my life from now on.

1.  Fit your own oxygen mask before assisting those around you

Eight months ago, as I was settling myself into my seat for my flight to Bangkok, the flight attendant gave this very important safety advice.  However, the advice is useful in a much broader sense in life.  If you don’t look after your own well-being, you are not able to be any help to others.  This connects with another important lesson I learnt during my time at the temple:

2.  Be compassionate to others, and also to yourself

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” Dalai Lama

Being compassionate to others is not about pity, and it’s not about only being compassionate to those who are ‘worthy’.  True compassion is that which we feel when we are confronted by someone who we find incredibly difficult, ignorant, rude, violent or evil – it’s about understanding that those people are suffering and their behaviour stems from this intrinsic suffering.  It’s about wanting the best for them so that they have an opportunity to break free from their suffering and become the good person that is trapped within all the bad habits and thoughts they have built around themselves.

Being compassionate to yourself is about recognising that you are only human; that you are not perfect; that you have a lot of potential to improve yourself – and it’s especially about realising that this is ok!  It’s about understanding your own suffering and wanting the best for yourself, so that you can be the best person you can be, and be happy!

3.  Always see the good and rejoice in the merits of others

Encouraging and honouring the goodness of others is really important.  We do not do this enough in life.  We are quick to criticise others, and to notice faults. We may think that some casual compliments are enough to make up for this, but while commenting on somebody’s outfit or hair style is a nice gesture, it’s not very meaningful.

Think about the qualities and behaviours that you admire in others and aspire to develop in yourself, then look for them in those around you. Look actively for the good in others, and let them know that you have seen it.  There is nothing that makes a person feel so truly understood as when another acknowledges something good about them.  It builds a connection and motivates that person to continue with that goodness.

4.  It’s more important to be good, than to be right.

There is an important distinction between good and bad, and right and wrong.  A person may be right, but if they are not good, then they may be right for the wrong reasons, or by accident.  Whereas if a person is good, they may be wrong, but they will be motivated to try to make it right.  A person who is truly good will be right most of the time anyway.

5.  Wisdom is far more important than knowledge

No amount of knowledge in the world is valuable unless the person with the knowledge also has the wisdom to use that knowledge effectively.  Even if a person has no formal education, if they have wisdom they can contribute an enormous amount to the world.  We need to spend time and effort developing our wisdom, not just accumulating more academic qualifications.

6.  The worst thing you can be is unwise and active

The monks taught me that there were four different relationships between wisdom and action:

1.  You can be wise and active

2. You can be unwise and inactive

3. You can be wise and inactive

4. You can be unwise and active

The first relationship is clearly the best.  If you are wise, and you are active, you will do good.  The second relationship is, perhaps counter-intuitively, the second-best option.  This is because, if you are unwise, doing nothing is actually the most sensible course of action.  The third relationship is actually worse – if you are wise and inactive, then you are not doing as much with your wisdom as you can.  The last relationship is the most dangerous – if you are unwise and active, you are likely to do more harm than good, despite your best intentions.

The monks’ teachings were reinforced in our Peace Fellowship lectures on Mary Anderson’s principles of “do no harm”.

7.  Think about how you use the energy you consume

We think a lot about the purity of the food we eat – we take care to avoid artificial colours and preservatives, we try to eat low-fat, healthy meals.  However, the monks taught me that the purity of our food is more than just its nutritional values.  It involves four different factors:

1. Nutritional value
2. The origin of the food (e.g. whether we stole or killed for the food)
3. The mood in which you eat it (e.g. if you eat in a bad temper you might get indigestion!)
4. The way in which you expend the energy that you gain from that food (i.e. do you use the energy to do something bad, or something good and constructive).

How do you use your energy?

8. Remember to breathe

During my Dive Master training on Koh Tao, I was reminded of the first rule of scuba diving, and of life – always remember to breathe!

I would add to that the notion of mindfulness – and the usefulness of the breath to bring you back to the present moment.  Thich Nhat Hanh has a lovely meditation to use while concentrating on your breathing:  “Breathing in, I dwell deeply in the present moment; Breathing out, I know this is a wonderful moment.”

Learning to scuba dive, and breathe underwater, you are suddenly acutely aware of every breath in and every breath out, and there are pretty dire consequences if you hold your breath.  For me, working with first-time dive students was the perfect reminder about something that I had started to take for granted – how magical it is to breathe underwater.  It made me start to again notice every breath, how deep it was, how the pressure of the water affected the feeling in my lungs…Who’d have thought that scuba diving was so good for meditation!

9.  Always leave a bit of air in the tank

Another important bit of advice for scuba diving and life in general! You never know when you are going to need that little bit of reserve for an emergency!

10.  Don’t waste a moment!

These eight months have flown by so quickly that it has reminded me that there is no time to waste!  If there’s something that you want to do – do it now!  If there’s something that you need to say – say it now! Live every moment to its fullest, learn from everyone and everything around you, do as much good as you can cram into every twenty-four hour period (including taking good care of yourself).

This morning prayer by Thich Nhat Hanh is now the first thing I read every morning.  It reminds me of how I want to live my life, day by day:

Rotary World Peace Fellows Field Study in Cambodia

[NOTE:  This is a very long post, as I try to make sense of all the things we learnt during this field study.  It may also contain some inaccuracies in parts, particularly around dates, and also no doubt there are important omissions.  I was overwhelmed with so much new information and often so caught up in the very personal and emotional stories of the people we met that I forgot to take notes!]

Before starting this part of our course, I knew a little about Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot and the Killing Fields.  However, after a lecture from Emma Leslie from the Cambodian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies and ten days in and around Phnom Penh and Siam Reap, I have a new depth of understanding of the very important context to these dark few years in Cambodian history.

The three year Khmer Rouge period was a massive eruption of violence against the structural violence that had been oppressing the lower classes for so long.  It came to a head in the pressure cooker environment created by the cold war dynamics around and influencing Cambodia.  China, Russia and the US had a significant impact on the conditions leading to the Khmer Rouge genocide.  Australia and Britain also contributed to the death and injury by training the Khmer Rouge in the use of land mines (currently one of the main causes of death and injury in the country).

Cambodia, like many South East Asian countries, began as a culture based in animism.  Hinduism then arrived with the Brahman system, along with its hierarchical caste system.  This form of structural violence forms an important part of understanding what led to the Khmer Rouge period in the country.

In around the 13^th Century, King Jayavarman VII introduced Buddhism and decided everyone should be equal and that he didn’t need to be a God King any more.  The upper castes became very angry about this and there were religious wars between Hindus and Buddhists.  In the 14-17^th Centuries, conflict in the area moved from religious to ethnic wars.  In the 14^th and 15^th centuries, Siam (now Thailand) conquered and sacked Angkor a number of times, eventually leading the Khmers to abandon their capital.  In the 17^th-19^th centuries, the Khmer Kingdom lost a great deal of territory to Siam and also the Vietnamese.

The Khmer Empire used to stretch right across Thailand to India and also into Vietnam.  The Champa Empire (predominantly Muslim) also existed in between Cambodia and Vietnam.  The Cham fought with both Cambodia and Vietnam and eventually the empire more or less disappeared completely.  Emma explained that the disappearance of the Champa Empire is also important in the Khmer mindset, as there is a strong acknowledgement that a people can simply cease to exist.  This prospect of potentially ceasing to exist seems like a real threat to Cambodians, especially given its demographics: it’s a reasonably large country with a population of only 13-16 million.  In comparison, its neighbouring countries include Thailand (with a population of 64 million) and Vietnam (with a population of 70 million).

In 1864 France had colonized southern Vietnam and also forced the Khmer King to sign a treaty making Cambodia a French protectorate.  In 1884 it became a French colony.  The Khmer people were mostly happy to be protected by the French (and still believe today that having foreigners around keeps them safe and under the world’s eyes).  Cambodia never really had a moment of liberation from colonization: the King quietly signed an agreement with the French in 1953.

In 1955 King Sihanouk abdicated the throne to form a political party, which subsequently won all seats in parliament.  In the next election in 1958 he won 99% of the popular vote, but under his increasingly authoritarian rule, all opponents were persecuted.  The Cambodian communists (who Sihanouk labeled the “Khmer Rouges”) began to form an underground resistance movement in the countryside.

In 1963, America’s involvement intensified in the wars of Vietnam and Laos.  While Sihanouk was of the non-aligned movement, staying neutral in the international context, he became increasingly worried about the surrounding wars engulfing Cambodia, so he cut off American Aid and diplomatic relations with the United States.

In the late 1960s, Vietnamese Communists installed sanctuaries for their troops along the Cambodian side of the border.  Sihanouk, worried about the increasing Vietnamese presence, resumed diplomatic relations with America.  However, under pressure from North Vietnam, he allowed them to pass supply lines through Cambodia.  When America discovered this, they indiscriminately carpet bombed Cambodia’s eastern side (the statistics tell a horrifying story – the Americans dropped more bombs on Cambodia during this time than all the bombs dropped in WWII in total).

In 1970, Sihanouk left the country for “health” reasons, leaving Lon Nol, the Prime Minister, in charge.  Lon Nol led a coup (supported by America) and Sihanouk was deposed.  Sihanouk then formed an alliance with his former enemies, the Khmer Rouge, dedicated to defeating the Lon Nol government.

In the 1970s the Vietnamese moved further into Cambodia to avoid a battle with the American forces. By then, Sihanouk’s Khmer Rouge communist forces occupied half of Cambodia’s territory.  They aimed to push out the Vietnamese.  Lon Nol kept failing in attempts to do so.

In 1972 Lon Nol named himself President, prime minister, defense minister, and marshal of the armed forces.  He eliminated all opposition.

In mid-1973 the Americans withdrew from Cambodia, leaving Lon Nol to face the Khmer Rouge.  The Khmer Rouge continued to take over almost all of Cambodia, except Phnom Penh and a few other towns still controlled by Lon Nol’s army.  Lon Nol fled to the United States.

Rural Cambodians supported the Khmer Rouge who told them that they would fight Americans and capitalism.   In the wake of the historical decline of the Khmer empire, the Khmer Rouge also gained support by telling the people of Cambodia that they would rebuild the country and take back the lost land.

On 17 April 1975 the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh, and the city erupted into a huge celebration.  Soon afterwards the Khmer Rouge told the residents that they should flee because America was going to bomb the city. Almost all the residents of Phnom Penh fled, and the city was like a ghost town within a few days.  However, there was no plan to bomb Phnom Penh.  In fact, clearing the city was the first step in the Khmer Rouge plan for an agrarian revolution.

(As an aside, not only did America not bomb Phnom Penh, but from 1975 until 1991, it supported the fact that Cambodia was represented by the Khmer Rouge in the UN, despite the fact that everyone knew about the atrocities being committed in that country.  It appears that the Khmer Rouge was the lesser of two evils than Vietnam, America’s main concern at the time.)

The names of the Khmer Rouge leaders were kept secret for years after they took over the country.  Power was in the hands of a nameless “organization”.  Nobody knew that Pol Pot (real name Saloth Sar) was the leader of the Khmer Rouge.  (Even Saloth Sar’s brother and sister didn’t know.  They were both in the US during this period.  When they later found out that Pol Pot was their brother, they came back to Cambodia and worked tirelessly to repent the bad family karma.)  Saloth Sar was one of the Khmer elite who had studied in France.  He learnt about the French Revolution – peasants bringing down a king by violence – and was inspired by this.   The newly invented Pol Pot saw himself as the personification of Stalin and Mao.  He even had an artist paint a portrait of him that made him look like both of those men:

After taking Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge’s plan of ultra-communist social engineering began in force.  Their strategy included breaking down the family unit – they separate families to ensure loyalty was only to the regime.  They abolished money, and prohibited all private property, Western medicine, education, and religious practice.  Ironically, given that Pol Pot himself was an educated elite, the Khmer Rouge’s plan required the extermination of all educated elites. Pol Pot called back all Cambodians overseas, particularly students studying abroad, telling them that they were needed to rebuild Cambodia.  However, when they arrived back in the country they were collected from the airport and immediately taken to the killing fields where they were murdered.

We visited one of the killing fields.  There is a large memorial stupa that contains the bones of many of the people who were killed there.

Inside the stupa

The area around the stupa is a mass grave where thousands of people were killed and buried.  As we walked around the area you could see bones and pieces of clothing still sticking out of the ground.  Although the area was excavated and the bones collected and sorted, every rainy season more bones and clothes reveal themselves.  The dead don’t want to be forgotten.

The mass graves of one of the killing fields

Anyone who was identified as educated or elite was killed, including anyone who spoke other languages, wore glasses, was a teacher or any other kind of educated professional.  In total, about 2,500,000 people were killed (one-third of the population of Cambodia).  Many were taken to prisons such as Tuol Sleng S-21 Prison where they were tortured in order to extract detailed confessions of a variety of ‘offences’.

Looking out the gates of Tuol Sleng, now a genocide museum

Tuol Sleng prison used to be a school

In one of the torture rooms

Tuol Sleng

Tuol Sleng

The Khmer Rouge were very thorough in recording details of the torture and the confessions.  When we visited Tuol Sleng, we met one of the seven people who survived being imprisoned in Tuol Sleng. We asked him how he had managed to survive.  He said that because he was able to fix typewriters and machinery, the Khmer Rouge had found him useful and spared him death.

Those who survived were forced to perform physical labour under extreme conditions.  All 13-19 year old youth (boys and girls) were used for big infrastructure projects (e.g. building dams: the youth had to dig 1 cubic metre of dirt a day each, in return for 2 bowls of rice porridge).  The only problem is that since all the engineers and construction professionals had been killed, the projects were not properly planned and most of the work done on infrastructure during these three years went to waste.  Over 1,000,000 million people also died of starvation.  Although the majority of the Cambodian population was engaged in growing rice, people died from starvation because all the rice was being exported to China, in return for weapons (theoretically to assist the Khmer Rouge fight Vietnam).

In 1979 the Vietnamese army captured Phnom Penh and Pol Pot and his government fled to the Thai border.  Vietnam installed a puppet government and changed the name of the country to the People’s Republic of Kampuchea.  Hun Sen (former leader of the Khmer Rouge, Eastern Division) becomes the new Prime Minister, and calls his party the Cambodia Peoples Party.

Bizarrely, the Khmer Rouge still represented Cambodia in the UN during this time, even though Vietnam was in power, because nobody wanted Vietnam involved.  The cold war dynamics come into play again here.  In effect, Cambodia was a pawn in the cold war between China and Russia.  China was backing the Khmer Rouge (a similar form of communism) and Russia was backing Vietnam.  The US began funding the Khmer Rouge to fight Vietnam.  The Australian and the British trained them in landmine use.

In 1989 Vietnam withdrew.  In 1990 the Supreme National Council was formed, which united the pro-Vietnamese government of Hun Sen and the Khmer Rouge.  In 1991 the Paris Agreement was signed, purportedly to stop all fighting and to create a new political environment.  UN troops arrive to implement the agreement.  A coalition government is formed between the four parties, however the agreement quickly unravels and political violence escalates.  In 1993 the Royalists win the election, despite political violence and intimidation by Hun Sen’s ex-Communist Peoples Party.  Hun Sen refuses to accept the result and is appointed as a joint prime minister.  (While to Westerners, the concept of joint prime ministers seems bizarre, Cambodian people point out that in Cambodia, where the Tonle Sap river flows two ways, there is no problem with having two prime ministers!  Also, by this time, the Cambodian people were exhausted and didn’t have the energy to stand up to corruption or for their rights.)

Hun Sen subsequently became very active as a co-prime minister and stablised the country, including negotiating amnesty for Khmer Rouge who joined the new military.  In the 1998 election, Hun Sen wins a landslide victory, and has been in power ever since.

In 1998 Bill Clinton announced that he would put Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge on trial in an international court against war crimes.  Many countries opposed this, largely because such a trial would reveal the extent to which they had supported the Khmer Rouge (especially the US, Australia, China, UK).  Two days after this announcement, a US journalist visited Pol Pot to do an exclusive interview.  He brought with him Pol Pot’s heart medication as requested.  The next day, Pol Pot was dead, and was speedily cremated by the Thai.  There are rumors of a conspiracy: that Pol Pot was killed to avoid the Khmer Rouge trials having to go ahead.

In 1997 Cambodia requested United Nations assistance in organizing a court to try the senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge.  In early 2006 the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) were formally established.  The government of Cambodia insisted that, for the sake of the Cambodian people, the trial must be held in Cambodia using Cambodian staff and judges together with foreign personnel. Cambodia invited international participation due to the weakness of the Cambodian legal system and the international nature of the crimes, and to help in meeting international standards of justice.

The ECCC is only hearing the trial of five of the main surviving senior Khmer Rouge officials.  Tens of thousands of mid- and low-level Khmer Rouge officers have been granted amnesty by defecting to the government.  Many of the best-known perpetrators were either killed or fled the country between 1979 and 1984 (mostly to Thai refugee camps, from which they were resettled to Canada, France and Australia – apparently there is a large community of them living in Perth, Australia).  Others simply reverted back to everyday life in Cambodia.  One man we spoke with told the story of a woman whose husband was arrested and killed by the Khmer Rouge.  In 1979, the Khmer Rouge officer who arrested her husband returned to her village to live and work as a tuk tuk driver.  He has driven past her house a few times a day for the past thirty years.  This must be a common situation for many older Cambodians.  We kept asking people how the victims of the Khmer Rouge could live side by side with the perpetrators of so much violence against them and their families.  The typical response was that Cambodian people are Buddhist, and so they believe that those perpetrators will get their bad karma sooner or later.

A more complicated explanation was provided to us by the head of the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, who demonstrated that the distinction between perpetrator and victim was not at all clear: many of the perpetrators were victims of fear and abuse by those higher in the chain of command, and had little choice other than to comply with orders, or risk torture and death to them and their families.  He contrasted the situation with Germany, in which you could fairly easily classify people as either Nazis or Jews.  In Cambodia, there was no such clear distinction.  He explained that many people had to cheat, lie, steal and point the finger at others simply in order to survive.  He said in such desperate times, a survival instinct kicks in, and sometimes saving one life (your own or others) can only happen by destroying another.  He told a story about how, years after he was tortured by the Khmer Rouge, he came face to face with his torturer.  He approached him and asked “do you remember me?” but the man did not remember him at all.  Later, he also came across a man who had, at great risk to himself, gone out of his way to provide him with food when he was starving.  That man did not remember him either.  He was struck by the fact that neither of the two people who had had such an impact on him personally, remembered him at all.

Just two weeks before we visited the ECCC, the Court handed down its judgment in the first case, against the man known as Duch (the head of S-21 prison).  He cooperated and confessed fully to his involvement in the Khmer Rouge atrocities.  He was given a sentence of 30 years imprisonment (which many believe to be manifestly inadequate).  His lawyers have filed an appeal against the sentence.  The second case, against the other four senior leaders, is still being investigated.

After visiting the ECCC, we met with Theary Seng, the author of “Daughter of the Killing Fields” and the founding director of CIVICUS.  In her opinion, one of the strengths of the ECCC was that it involved the victims.  Victims could register a civil action to be heard in conjunction with the criminal proceedings.  These people then had a personal interest in following the progress of the Court hearings.  However, she pointed out that for many people, the ECCC process was very theoretical and disconnected from the public who don’t have faith in the justice system and are not educated.  Although the judgment in the Duch case was widely disseminated, most Cambodians cannot read, and even those who can are unlikely to have access to the internet, or be able to read through the 400 pages of the judgment.  Accordingly, she was skeptical about the ability of the court to produce reconciliation, justice or peace, despite the fact that the peoples’ expectations had been raised by publicity about the court.  She was, however, optimistic that the court might be useful in jump-starting the legal system in Cambodia.

Theary Seng also pointed out that there were 9 million people now in the Cambodian population who were born after the Khmer Rouge.  In 2010, 70% of the population of Cambodia is under 30, and so did not experience the direct impact of the Khmer Rouge atrocities.

CIVICUS is engaged in a country-wide public education campaign, conducted by community forums and radio broadcasts, to teach people about their history and their rights, and to empower them to spread this learning to others in their community.  She calls this work the “informal truth and reconciliation commission”.

We visited a number of organizations working in the area of Human Rights, including the Cambodian Human Rights and Development Association, the Khmer Institute for Democracy and the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.  These organizations, particularly the local Cambodian ones, are fighting an uphill battle.  The local staff are at significant personal risk, and a number had recently been imprisoned for criticizing the government (the crime of “disinformation” is frequently used to silence any political opposition).  People have been placed under pressure to stop any political activity and there have even been some mysterious deaths.  However, in recent times there has been less political intimidation, and certain kinds of human rights violations are decreasing.  The current major concern expressed by all organizations was the issue of land-grabbing.  As all records of ownership were destroyed by the Khmer Rouge, there has been a painstaking process implemented by which people can demonstrate ownership of their land.  However, those with money and power can bypass these procedures and also the government has been granting large areas of land to international companies in return for financial support for development.  The judiciary and conflict resolution mechanisms in the country are weak and corrupt, so there is generally no recourse for people whose rights have been violated.

Development in the country has been phenomenal in the last 15 years.  There are sealed roads throughout the country, an enormous amount of infrastructure, and in Siem Reap particularly, a multitude of luxury hotels.  In both Phnom Penh and Siem Reap there are areas of obvious wealth – large houses and expensive cars.  However, as Theary Seng pointed out, in all the places where there is obvious wealth, most Cambodians don’t feel comfortable.

Much of the development is funded by China and Korea, and in return they share in the spoils of tourism and trade.  Even Angkor Wat is now effectively ‘owned’ by foreigners.  The current government sold the rights to the site to a foreign investor (some people told us it was Vietnamese, others said Korean).  Importantly though, none of the fees taken from visitors to enter the site go to the Cambodian people.

The NGOs in Cambodia, working in the areas of human rights advocacy, are being blamed by the government for inciting unrest in the provinces.  The government has recently introduced draft legislation to further curtail the activities of NGOs.  The legislation includes prohibitions on NGOs being engaged in political activity, public disorder or instability, but there is no clear definition of what those terms cover.  Also, there is a new criminal code due next year that extends the already problematic crime of “disinformation”, including making it an offence to criticize a court decision.

Recently in Cambodia, people have been prosecuted and jailed for the crime of disinformation for publishing:

• an article on corruption in Cambodia
• a statement that the Mekong River dolphins were at risk of extinction
• an opinion that the new lighting system at Angkor Wat may damage it

While Cambodia seems quite stable and developed on the surface, the conflict has scarred the country very deeply.  There is also the major difficulty that the current government is a product of that conflict.  Major issues are now simmering very close to the calm surface.

We also visited NGOs working to stop violence against women, those promoting labour rights, and those working on environmental, health and other development issues.  These organizations are doing wonderful work and gave us some hope and positive perspectives.  Our meetings with local villagers also gave us all an enduring love for Cambodian people.  They seemed to be consistently resilient, welcoming and optimistic about the future.

It seems that Cambodia is at a cross roads and we all hope that the chosen path will be one filled with positive developments and not one back towards violent conflict.  There are many good people working towards a positive future for all Cambodians, and we wish them strength and motivation to continue their good work.

Cambodia – Phnom Penh

On the day we arrived in Phnom Penh we visited the Royal Palace (where the royal family was kept under house arrest during the Khmer Rouge period).

Royal Palace Phnom Penh

Palace statues

We also visited the Russian Markets, where the local stall holders tried excruciatingly hard to get us to buy something, anything, everything…!

Market bargaining is exhausting!

You can buy the most extraordinary things at the Cambodian markets.

Breast soap!

We travelled around Phnom Penh in the local tuk tuks, often squeezing six people into a single one.  We were even involved in a tuk tuk traffic accident, when our tuk tuk and another tuk tuk tried to pass by one another in a narrow street and the side wheels collided.  I think the other tuk tuk was worse off, but our driver didn’t stop, and just drove madly on!

Squishy tuk tuk ride

Another squishy tuk tuk ride!

One evening Vicky, Joanne and I sat on a balcony down by the river and watched the world go by.

Joanne and Vicky

Interesting traffic on the main street!

We decided to go to see the shadow puppet show that had been recommended by an expat living in Phnom Penh.  We showed a TukTuk driver the name of the arts centre where it was being held and he nodded and drove off.  After driving around for a while he admitted that he had no idea where it was.  We stopped and he was looking at his tourist map, when a man on a bicycle stopped to help.  The man on the bicycle didn’t speak English, but mimed a puppet show for us and we laughed and said yes, that was where we wanted to go.  He gave the tuktuk driver some instructions and off we went again.

Trying to figure out where the puppet show was

After a little while, the tuktuk driver pulled up at a roadside food stall and asked the stall holder if he could borrow her phone.  He then called the arts centre (our little booklet had a phone number) and they explained how to get there.

Calling for directions

Off we went again, and eventually we arrived at the arts centre a few minutes before the show was to start.  We looked at the display of the leather shadow puppets and Joanne started to laugh.  It turns out that she had imagined that the leather shadow puppets were something like a cross between these things:

Joanne's shadow puppet

Leather finger puppets

Here’s what they actually looked like:

Shadow puppets and dancers

Cambodian village

Today one of the NGO staff that we have been meeting with to talk about post-conflict reconstruction in Cambodia invited us to a small village to talk with the local community about their projects.  We met in the village school and talked with the village head man (through a Khmer translator).  The headman then took us on a tour of the village.  He told us it was the first time a group of international people had visited his village.  Everyone came out to see what was going on, and the children had lots of fun watching the strange foreigners and giggling!

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Wisdom from Michael Leunig

We give thanks for places of simplicity and peace. Let us find such a place within ourselves.

We give thanks for places of refuge and beauty. Let us find such a place within ourselves.

We give thanks for places of nature’s truth and freedom, of joy, inspiration, and renewal, places where all creatures may find acceptance and belonging. Let us search for these places in the world, in ourselves, and in others. Let us restore them. Let us strengthen and protect them, and let us create them.

May we amend this outer world according to the truth of our inner life and may our souls be shaped and nourished by nature’s eternal wisdom.

Michael Leunig

Back to the temple

On Saturday I took some of the Rotary Peace Fellows out to the temple.  I was a little bit nervous about it, because I wasn’t sure what they would think.  I am used to the temple after having spent four months living there, but I knew that when people saw it for the first time it was kind of a surreal experience.  I needn’t have worried though.  Everyone had a ball and loved all the same people I love for the same reasons!

First we met Om and Anita at the visitors centre.  One of the taxis had become lost in the temple grounds and when we spoke to them on the phone we realised they were in the underground carpark under the mediation hall!  Om explained to the taxi driver in Thai how to get from there to the visitors centre.  After we were all finally in the right place, we met Luang Phi Pasura and he gave everyone an introduction to meditation.

Luang Phi Pasura

After that I was excited to find out that we were going to travel around the temple in the little transporters that I called the “monk-mobiles”.  I had never been in one but always wanted to ride in one.  I often saw big trains of them carrying hundreds of monks around the temple grounds.

Andrezza and I with the monk-mobile

We went to see the Chapel and then went to the local food stalls where I always used to eat when I was living at the temple.  It felt like I was home again!

Walking around the Chapel

Charlie ordering his papaya salad

After lunch we were lucky to have a meeting with the Vice Abbot, Luang Phaw Datta.  I was so excited about seeing him because he is always very interesting and he makes me laugh with his cheeky grin.  Everyone loved him!  Luang Phi Pasura and Luang Phi John translated for him when he needed it, but he spoke mostly in English to everyone.

Luang Phaw Datta, Luang Phi Pasura and Luang Phi John

Luang Phaw told us a bit about the history of Thailand and he explained the basis of the Buddhist Five Precepts.  He also presented everyone with a bundle of books each.

After that we had a whirlwind tour of the Cetiya and a quick visit to the Vihara. Everyone went back to Chula after that, but I stayed for the whole weekend.

Ping Ping told me that I could stay in my old apartment that night.  It was so weird, and yet so familiar, to be back there.  I went and said hello to my former laundry lady, the Hom Krun coffee hut girls, and some of the food stall holders.  It was so nice to see them all again.  Unfortunately my Thai has not progressed sufficiently to have more than a very halting conversation with them, but we got by with lots of hand holding and smiling!

On Saturday afternoon I was back in the Peace Revolution container office with the crew!  It was just like old times (and there were even some ants that I carefully avoided)!  After we had a meeting about recent developments, everyone got all giggly and announced that they had a special gift for me.  They dimmed the lights and put on the projector and showed me a movie that they had made especially for me.  It’s brilliant!  They basically made a movie about my time at the temple. They had compiled photos of me at various events and some film footage that I had never seen before.  At the end everyone recorded a personal message for me.  There was even a bloopers part at the end, where they included funny mistakes that they made when trying to put the film together.  We all laughed and cried all through it, especially me!  The film goes for 20 minutes, and it must have taken them a long time to put it together.  I absolutely love it!

On Sunday (after a night on a very hard bed, with no dinner and a cold shower – how quickly we take for granted little luxuries!) I went to the temple with everyone for morning chanting and meditation.  While we were there, Fon found me.  Fon is in training to be upasaka at the temple.  She was one of the first Thai staff I met and she is very sweet.   She used to give me massages every day! Anyway, she had made me a gift and she shyly gave it to me.  It was in a little bag that she had handmade:

The bag Fon made for me

Inside the bag was a book that she had also handmade.  It contains the story of our friendship, from the first moment she met me (in the bathroom at the meditation retreat centre) until the present.  I was so incredibly touched.  She had drawn pictures and inserted photos to make the story.  I was amazed at all the things she remembered.  It was just the sweetest gift and I got all choked up as I looked through it.  I will treasure it forever.

The book Fon made for me

When we first met

The last page of the story, but not the last page in the book - to be continued...

On the page above you can see that she has called me “P’Sam” which in Thai effectively means older sister Sam.  So sweet!

After morning chanting and meditation the Peace Revolution crew, including Luang Phi Pasura and Luang Phi John went out to lunch.  We had an absolute feast, and there was a great deal of laughter!  The monks (as per the rules) sat at a table nearby and ate silently.  We served them their food by offering it to them on their yellow cloths that they laid out on the table in front of them.  After we had all finished our meals, they chanted a blessing for us.  I wondered what the other people in the restaurant thought, but I expect that the Thai people are used to this kind of thing happening.  I giggled to myself as I imagined this happening in the middle of a restaurant in Australia!

Luang Phi Pasura and Luang Phi John over the remnants of our feast (taken with my 'old style' camera setting)

Peace Angels: Nicky, Joy and Anita

The monks even gave me a present!  A buddha pendant:

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After my weekend at the temple, I came back to Chulalongkorn feeling full of peace and very loved.  All my wonderful Peace Revolution family are so genuinely caring. They go out of their way to give you compliments, and they are not just those kind of shallow “nice dress” kind of compliments that we Westerners throw around without much meaning.  They truly observe the things that you do that are good, and they actively “rejoice in your merits”.  For example, sometimes I would be doing something like trying really hard to cheer up a student who was a bit homesick, and later that day one of the crew would come up to me and say “I really love the way you notice when the students are feeling a bit sad and how you go out of your way to cheer them up”.  Or I’d come into the office out of the steamy hot weather outside and say “ahhh, airconditioning nirvana!” with a big grin and someone would say “I love how you are so enthusiastic about all the little things”!  There should be more of this in the world.  We really should learn from the Buddhist philosophy of always “seeing the good” in others and “rejoicing in their merits”.  It’s so easy to criticise, or to give half-hearted compliments in order to be “nice”.  It’s much harder to really see the good in others, and to make the effort to tell them – but I can tell you from experience – it’s truly worth the effort.  You end up surrounded by happiness and feeling truly loved!  Thank you Peace Revolution crew and the teaching monks – you have given me some of the most precious gifts of my life, and so much more than the video, the book and the buddha – you have taught me invaluable life lessons and been such good examples for me.  I rejoice in your merits and share mine with you with much love!

Australian election day in Bangkok

The four Aussies headed off to the Australian Embassy in Bangkok to cast our votes.  There was an air of optimism and festiveness to the occasion.  Getting into the embassy building was high security.  We had to hand over our bags and were only allowed to take our passports and wallets into the building.  We were also told to “spread ’em” while we were scanned with a weapon detector.  After going through several layers of security, we finally made it inside to the voting area.   There was none of the usual hustle and bustle of party representatives handing out how to vote cards and negotiating last minute with undecided voters. Instead, there was a lonely Greens supporter (bless him!) handing out how to vote Greens flyers.  I was ridiculously overjoyed to be in a room surrounded by Aussies, and enjoyed chatting with embassy staff about the election.  We asked one of the embassy staff where we might be able to watch the election coverage that evening.  She laughed apologetically and said she had no idea, there wasn’t that much interest or support for the election in Bangkok – apparently even their proposal for a traditional Aussie sausage sizzle had been rejected!  That’s just un-Australian!  We asked the Greens guy on the way out and he suggested The Australian Bar and Grill – normally it only showed sport, but he thought we might be able to convince them to at least put one TV onto the Australia network.

As we left the embassy we wanted to take a photo, but the security staff would not let us take a photo that actually showed inside the embassy compound, so we had to settle for the sign next to the entrance gate!

Optimistic Aussie voters!

Later that day we arrived at the Australian Bar and Grill and negotiated to have the election coverage put onto the TV right next to our booth.  They even turned the sound up for us (although at times it was hard to hear over the music)!

In a fit of patriotism, I ordered the vegemite chip sandwich!

Not the healthiest meal ever!

As the evening progressed, the election results were more and more depressing and the patrons in the bar became equally so.  In the booth next to us were two of the worst specimens of gross Australian sex tourists with their Thai ‘girlfriends’. It was sickening listening to them, particularly as they became drunker and progressively more offensive towards the girls, who either didn’t understand or were prepared to accept that kind of behaviour for the chance of a decent income.

In the ladies restroom, there were signs on the toilet doors – they really needed to be in Thai.

Sigh… some days it’s hard to stay proud to be Australian…

Tell me why

One of our lecturers today started the class with this song.  A few people were blinking back tears…

Do you believe in ghosts?

This is where the Peace Fellows are living during our time here at Chula:

Vidaya nives ("place of knowledge")

The building is accommodation for staff and for visitors.  The inside looks a little like a hospital, with dimly-lit linoleum corridors with room entry doors on each side. Each room is pretty basic, with a (very hard) double bed, a wardrobe, a desk, a kitchenette with sink, and a small ensuite bathroom.  Because security is not that great (each door just has one of those push-button locks in the handle) each Rotary World Peace Fellow was given a padlock with a key that we can use to lock the door from the outside when we leave our rooms.  The only problem is that the cleaners can’t get into the rooms when they are padlocked, so we have to make sure we are around to let the cleaners in.

Anyway, since we have been staying here, some of the Fellows have been reporting some very strange incidents:

• Firstly, Olja kept mentioning that she has been having nightmares about being strangled or dismembered.
• Earlier this week, Olja also approached one of the other women in our group and told her that she had had a very vivid dream about her.  She recounted the dream, which included some particular personal details, which turned out to be very accurate in relation to things going on in this woman’s life.  She was quite freaked out by what Olja said to her.
• Ben says that every night he goes to sleep with his windows closed, and every morning when he wakes up his window is open.
• Tito’s Badminton racquet disappeared from his room during the night while he was asleep, as did Manisha’s bunch of bananas.
• On Sunday Joanne and Vicky went shopping and Vicky bought an outfit for a friend’s new baby.  Joanne ended up with it in her bag and so put it out on her dresser on Sunday night so that she would remember to give it to Vicky the next day.  The next day it was gone, and in its place was a “lucky bean”.  Joanne thought she was going mad, so she looked everywhere in her room for the baby outfit, but couldn’t find it.  She looked again at lunch time and Monday after class, but the outfit was gone.  On Monday night Joanne and I went out to dinner and we were puzzling over where the outfit could have gone, and how the lucky bean appeared in its place.  Joanne laughingly said to the sky “Whatever spirit took the baby clothes, please return them”.  I laughed and said it would be funny if she went back to her room and the outfit had returned.  She laughed too and said it would be very freaky because she had padlocked the door so nobody could get in.  Guess what happened???  Yes, she went back to her room and the outfit was there.  As you can imagine, she was really freaked out.

Yesterday we asked Jenn during a break whether anyone had ever reported anything unusual happening at the building.  Jenn immediately asked “what room?” and rushed down to the office to consult with the Thai staff.  They all came back to the classroom in an excited state and proceeded to tell us this story:

Some years ago, there were two gynaecologists who were husband and wife. They were having marital difficulties but the husband didn’t want to get divorced as he would have to split their fortune with his wife.  One night he had dinner with his estranged wife to discuss their breakup.  He put a sleeping tablet into her drink during dinner and then took her in a taxi to our building in Chulalongkorn, where he rented a room.  Two weeks later when the woman had not re-appeared at work, police investigated and discovered body parts in the building’s toilet system. Apparently he had killed his wife and chopped her into little bits and flushed her down the toilet in this building.  He was later convicted of her murder.  We were all a little shocked and quickly googled news reports to see what room this had happened in.  It turned out not to be Joanne’s room, but one on the same floor.  Thankfully, it also turned out that none of the Peace Fellows were staying in the room in which this happened.  However, Ajarn Pitch, one of the professors here, who was lecturing us that afternoon, noted that “ghosts can travel through walls” so it could have been the wife’s ghost that took the baby clothes.

The Thai staff then talked with us very seriously about ghosts and how we should not be scared of them.  They don’t want to hurt us, but they want something.  If we can tell what they want, we can give it to a monk (e.g. one of the Thai staff dreamed that she was catching a train and a ghost was sitting next to her who wanted a certain kind of fruit, so the next day she went and bought that fruit and offered it to a monk), or we can make some merit on the ghost’s behalf (e.g. by dedicating some good deeds to the ghost, or by praying or giving food to monks) and we may be able to help the ghosts in this way so that they don’t bother us any more. They also told us some stories about other Peace Fellows in the past who had had encounters with ghosts during their fellowship.

Needless to say last night everyone had a bit of a restless sleep – well, everyone except Joanne who says that she slept very soundly – perhaps the ghost has moved on from her room now…?  Just in case, Joanne, Vicky and Olja have gone this evening to the Erewan Shrine to make an offering on behalf of the woman who was murdered.