Buddhas and Bibles

If religion in Cambodia was a soup, it would be a pretty simple one. Very tomatoey - 96% of a very specific type of tomatoes, and a teensy bit of celery and a teensier bit of red pepper. In case you hadn’t gathered, tomatoes = Theravada Buddhists, red pepper = Muslims and celery = Christians. (I always find these well-worn analogies are the best.) Also, just as it would be baffling for a chef to list one of the soup ingredients as “Nothing!”, so too is this a strange way to describe your faith over here, as I have discovered many times now. And Judiasm, well that’s a rare, or altogether unheard of vegetable indeed.

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Apart from the bending and omming, the yoga retreat (see last entry) also offered us the chance to be blessed by some Buddhist monks. We knelt in rows as three orange-robed monks chanted low, mesmerising blessings, periodically dipping a branch into a bowl of water and thwacking drops of holy water onto us. After this, three of us crawled forward to offer them cartons of chocolate milk (seems kind of infantalising, but they aren’t allowed to eat after 12) and they tied red blessing bracelets, soaked in the holy water, around our wrists. (I am still wearing mine as I type, three weeks later – it is a remarkably sturdy little thread).

While this felt pretty special, I was distracted by wondering what the monks really thought of these rent-a-blessings of Westerners who based their “connection” with Buddhism on having got really into The Power of Now after a breakup. (I might be speaking from experience here.) But what was really excellent, was that after the blessing we had the opportunity to ask the monks, who were keen to practise their English, free questions. (I actually misheard this as “three questions”, and was mortified when someone wasted one precious question with “What type of flower is in the bowl with the water?” when I had burning metaphysical and societal issues to address.) Luckily we were in fact free to probe the monks to our hearts content, which I did. (Metaphorically of course - you can’t even pat these guys on the shoulder without seriously breaching religious code.)

The very nice monks

Some dorky and off-centre posing with said monks

What I found really interesting from their answers is that each of the three monks had chosen to pursue monkhood not because of a spiritual calling, but because of a wish to continue their education. For a sizable part of Cambodia’s population, schooling post-primary school is simply impossible to access. For the academically-bent child, one of the only ways to continue to learn is being becoming a monk. As one does not vow to stay in the Buddhist monkhood permanently (my lycra-wearing Angkor Wat tour guide was a former monk), this perhaps softens the decision to swap classroom for Pagoda. 

Cambodian monks are a highly visible part of society. You see them often, walking in height order on the side of the road under orange umbrellas, or going from shop keeper to shop keeper collecting alms in their cloth pouches. Monks are theoretically forbidden from being involved in politics but in reality have both shaped, and been deeply affected by, the political world. Monks led the “Umbrella Revolution” against the French in the 1940s. Three decades later, the Khmer Rouge expelled from the wats and forced them into manual labour – leading to the death of around half a million. And in 2013’s historic pro-democracy protest marches in Phomn Pehn, many of the vanguard wore orange.

It took me by surprise at how prepared one particularly monk was to talk about politics and Cambodia’s history. He condemned what he saw as the politicians’ efforts to disenfranchise the monks and marginalise Buddhism. He spoke candidly about the Khmer Rouge regime, and said the government relied on people’s poverty and low education levels to avoid confronting their own role in the atrocities and to continue to dodge real democracy. (Prime Minister Hun Sen, who has been Prime Minister for 30 years, was part of the Khmer Rouge regime before defecting to Vietnam).

For this monk, and others like him, an advanced education and the ability to read and speak English, had given him access to uncensored information that the rest of the population lacks. It is therefore little wonder that they are so often the forefront of movement for change. And judging by cool anger and quiet resolution of this monk, I would not be surprised if they are sharpening their umbrellas again soon.

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I went immediately from the yoga retreat to live for a week on the grounds of a Catholic Church in the province of Kompang Cham, which lies on the banks of the Mekong. Here, I spent a week working with children who were sponsored by the English division of Enfants du Mekong; visiting their houses with a translator to ask questions about their lives so I could write letters to each child’s sponsor on their wellbeing, and a help put together a report on the project as a whole. It was a really lovely project, getting an insight into the children's lives and meeting their families and seeing the type of places the children I teach actually come from. Here's a couple of photos, courtesy of Ravy Heng, who is a has a much better camera (and ability to use said camera) than me. 

I also briefly became part of a Cambodian girl gang. We hung around by the bridge while they waved to “handsome boys” on motorbikes as I tried to impress them with the range of songs on my phone. On the last day I spent two hours at one of their stilt-erected houses “doing makeovers” for the village “party” which comprised a really bad speaker system and a bunch of women and children crouching around a basket of eggs in the dark. Literally no handsome boys to be seen. 

Me and the Crew 

The church was presided over by Father Gerard, a warm and jocular French priest who had lived in Cambodia for 20 years and had a really nice beard. I  immediately warmed to Father Gerald when he asked what religion I was. “Nothing,” I said. “But no,” he said, with a big smile. “You are not nothing - you are human!” I take my compliments where I can. 

The church in Koroka is more than a place of worship. It’s the only public place where the community can gather. Children come here to take dance lessons, celebrate national holidays and just hang out with their friends. There are lively youth services, all in Khmer, every evening, and nearly all of the children I interviewed around the village cited "cleaning the church" as one of their favourite free time activities. I hope for everyone's sake that Candy Crush and snogging never catch on here. 

As established, I am not a Christian, and I came to the church feeling very attached to the moral principles, and basic gentleness, of Buddhism. I also think it’s healthy to be skeptical of cultural imperialism in all forms, and evangelism has often been the worst example of this. But I think Koroka is very lucky to have, in Father Gerald, a man who is unusually sensitive to these issues and has taken great pains both to learn both Khmer and as much as possible about Buddhism.   

I arrived at the church during a retreat, organised for the elders of the surrounding villages, the vast majority of whom were women. Women in the area have really embraced the Catholic Church, Father Gerard told me. Religion is typically a female domain anyway, but the priest argued that women often gain a sense of empowerment from Christianity that they do not from traditional Buddhism. In Buddhism us women have no chance of attaining enlightenment. In fact, women cannot even reach be a bodhisattva, which someone on their way to enlightenment. A bodhisattva can be human, animal, serpent (the evilest of animals under Buddhism so much so that it is not even classed as an animal) or a god, but is never a woman. 

The person who stayed in the church longest on each day, sitting by herself in prayer at the corner of the room, was a lady in a wheelchair. Father Gerard told me that this woman had been refused to visit monks in the Pagoda as she was incapable of sitting lower than them. Being disabled itself is seen by many Buddhists as a punishment for sins in a previous life, an even greater punishment than than being a woman. 

Me, probably impressing Father Gerard with my theological insight

I had dinner with a yoga-teaching Buddhist nun the other day (I know, the circles I move in). She was the model of serenity and elegance, immaculately dressed in white robes. But when I told her I was attempting to write a blog about the position of women in Buddhist, the vehemence of her response took me aback: “A nun?! You might as well be a prostitute in their eyes.”  Nuns had sit lower than the monks, eat after the monks, bow to the monks, she said. Even a nun of 75 must bow to a monk of five. As far as it is possible for a yoga-teaching Buddhist nun to get vexed, she was pretty vexed. 

This is not my personal attempt to find out once and for all, which religion is really the best. It is worth noting that with his forward-thinking, tolerant views, (this is a man who believes women should be ordained) Father Gerald stands apart from most of the Catholic clergy. Try as he might to integrate into Khmer society, his position is ultimately influenced by his modern French upbringing, just as the monks, however highly educated, are influenced by their own rural Cambodian upbringing in their views of gender and disability. 

Nevertheless, there is, I think, a tendency to romanticise Buddhism in the West – to buy a Buddha head statue, get a lotus flower tattoo and start lecturing everyone about the benefits of mindfulness without grappling with any of the finer, and potentially less attractive points of what is a vastly complicated and diverse religion. It is a phenomoum the Dalai Lama has called the “fashionable corruption” of Buddhism in the West, and which he has gently condemned.

I have really benefited from learning about and practicing mindfulness meditation, but am left cold when a yoga teacher starts talking about chakras, and feel only aesthetic, rather than spiritual, pleasure when I enter a Buddhist temple. In lieu of a miracle, I will never be a religious person. However, something I appreciate both about Father Gerald’s brand of Christianity, and the general practice of Buddhism in Cambodia, is that there seems to be a wide acceptance of differences 

between faiths and of combining different religions within one family or even within an individual. 

For many the children I interviewed in Koroka, the highlight of the holiday being a huge water fight, organised by Father Gerald, as a sort of of mish-mash of the Buddhist water festival and Catholic baptism ceremony. "And what did you do afterwards?," I asked. "We went to the Pagoda," came the reply. 

And long may the richness and blendyness of the soup continue.  

On hols with my Chakras

A couple of weeks ago week was Khmer New Year – hence no school for the children and none for me either! As I mentioned in a previous post, the anti-malarials I have been taking – Mefloquine – temporarily ruined my brain. (Don't take this stuff.) I was feeling quite anxious and  paranoid, and being in a country where you don’t speak much of the language and look so different, just heightens the problem. It’s easy to imagine everyone is talking about you the whole time, when to be fair, they very well might be. They're almost definitely looking at you. For a few, agoraphobic days, it was tempting to stay indoors with just my ceiling fan and Parks and Recreation for company. Which is kind of a travesty when you’re in such a new, and remarkable country. 

Anyway, this is the mental background to me choosing to book into a Buddhist-inspired yoga and meditation retreat in Siem Reap for my holidays.

I arrived, grumpy and tired after an 8-hour bus journey with a strangers' child on my lap, with some reservations. I feared the other people on the retreat would to be couples, or people obsessed with yoga, or the worst possible scenario - couples obsessed with yoga. People who bandied around words like “chakra” and “zen”, described themselves as “spiritual” without a cringe and stayed behind after class to ask serious questions about "deepening their self-practice”. I can’t say these fears were entirely allayed when after our first dinner (lentil stew) , the retreat manager asked us to read aloud the Buddhist-inspired mantras and saying on our placemat, and “share with the group” how this message reflected our own point in our own life journey. Mine was something about tough trials leading to high mountains. I could hear my mother’s snorts all the way from Streatham. 

But it was difficult to remain cynical; the retreat managers – Margo and Steve – an Australian couple in their 50s - were so unflappably upbeat, overwhelmingly positive and seemed so genuinely keen for us to enjoy ourselves, it was contagious. I found myself laughing more than I have done in years, loudly, and for no reason. I got really into "Yogi Tea", whatever that was. I knew I had reached the point of no return when on the second day we were discussing plans for the afternoon and I suggested we could just “be”. It was too late to think of another verb to folow – I had meant "be”, as a verb complete in itself, content to stand (or sit crossed-legged) alone. 

The retreat involved some meditation, sitting half-lotus while the fan ticked and the dogs barked outside and pins and needles climbed up my left calf. I have never very good at meditation. My mind is like a fly at a barbeque, buzzing from one anxious or banal thought to the other, however many times it is swatted away.

I’m not much of a natural at yoga either, I can’t touch my toes and tended to laugh like a loon when the pair stretches got all sexual/child birth like (one involved your partner standing between your open legs and stretching them apart while you told him how hard to go and whether you were ready for another contraction). I really enjoyed the yoga though – and not purely for these intimate moments. The classes were incredibly varied – one teacher used golf and tennis balls which we rolled around our feet and hands, another smashed gongs above our heads in the period usually set aside for quiet reflection – a technique that actually brought me closer to a meditative state than any other.

Like this guy (sleeping Buddha, Siem Reap province)

And most importantly, the people I shared the retreat with were really awesome. I mean, I have admired the passion and debating skills of the French with whom I have worked so far, and the Khmer have been almost without exception, wonderful, warm and engaging people, but it was nice to be with people who I felt an instant, and genuine connection with, and shared a mother tongue. It soon became clear that every one of us had visited the retreat for some personal emotional reason, and also became clear that we were also pretty willing to discuss and analyse these emotional reasons, and listen to each other, in great detail, intimacy and length. And as everyone who I have forced to play 90s board game Therapy will know (SHOUT OUT!) , I am a great fan of all that stuff. By the end, after every single one of us had delayed our departure date to spend more time at the retreat and were referring to each other as a family, I began to be slightly suspicious that our hosts had been slipping something funny into our Yogi Tea, and we'd end up staying there forever, locked in an endless cycle of downward dogs and empahsising with each other's love traumas. Although, even this thought makes me feel kind of whistful...

Anyway, after all that yoga malarky had finished what we really needed was a night of heavy drinking to really relax. Luckily, it was New Year's Eve, or rather day three of the New Year's holiday. (They like holidays here). We left the warm maternal embrace of the retreat and ventured into Pub Street - the hub of Siem Reap. Actually we had paid a brief visit the evening before, but found everything quite calm, albeit for a few very camp pop bands on a stage, but it turned out that the third night was the night everyone turned up to party. The streets were packed with people dancing to the thud of massive speakers, most of whom were armed with a bottle of talcum powder which they spiralled in the air or threw and smeared on everybody's faces. Of course, being three of the only foreigners there we the talcum powder targets of choice, and the some parts of the night felt like we had inadvertantly joined in a game called "How much whiter can we get the Barang". (Although we did eventually though purchase our own bottle of talcum powder and exact some revenge...) 

Here's me, Alison and Hollie with a new Khmer pal 

Somebody told me that talcum powder had some sort of historic or spiritual significance, but I haven't been able to find anything to correborate this. 

Attempting to work the ghost look

In the lead up to Khmer New Year, I'd been warned so many times about crime going up - "Be careful of your bags"; "It's Khmer New Year - everybody's trying to get money to go back home to see their family." I have to say though, despite the obvious annoyance of having talcum powder constantly shoved in my mouth, nose, eyes and all over my clothes (my bag still has traces two weeks later), I never felt in the least bit threatened. In fact, people always grinned in a very friendly way before they shoved a fistful of white powder in my face and wished me "Sur Sdei Chham Thami". Apart from among the Barang, there didn't even seem to be much drinking, everyone just seemed super excited to be out, dancing on the streets, and having an excuse to touch strangers' faces. It was a kind of crazy atmosphere, but also a completely unthreatening one, where not a single person, or Khmer person at least, was abrasive or rude or needed to be avoided or told to fuck off, and no possessions were lost or stolen in the process. I don't want to draw any comparisons with Trafalgar Square on 31st December, but, you know, all I want to say is that we live in a closed and materialistic culture where people just don't share their white powder which such abundant genorosity. 

 

Some revellers

Anyway, the retreat was called Angkor Bodhi Tree and here's the link in case you're ever in that neck of the woods and in need of some spiritual uplift. 

My next blog will be about something very important. Possibly religion or politics.

Namaste! 

Village temple decked out for New Year (I wonder who gets to sit on that chair)