False Dream, Hidden Lie

Children of a floating village off to school

In Cambodia everyone smiles. All the children, whether rural or urban, whether by foot or by boat (above), are dressed simply and smartly in their uniforms and go to school either for 4 hours in the morning or for 4 hours in the afternoon. And as one guide proudly announced, after 12 years of schooling “they go to university.” He also said in the same breath that the government is corrupt, that Cambodia’s democracy is a sham, but it is not important.

All this is true given that within my lifetime, 25% of Cambodia’s population was murdered under the Khmer Rouge of Pol Pot. Particularly targeted were the intellectuals. So the next generation is important, schooling is important if the country seeks to lift itself out of its past. And greeting each person with a smile is important so as to remember that each life is precious; there is no other.

Two Generations

 

We have now visited 2 shrines which remember the killing fields of Pol Pot. The one above is at Phnom Sampov, 15 km southwest Battambang. To get to the site, you have to climb a steep hill face (or as we did, rode our rented motorcycle up it). Toward the top, you are diverted to a cave. Down in the cave, you can look up to see the entrance where people were thrown down. 

These shrines are sobering reminders of what we are capable of when isms and fears label another as other.

But the shrines are more than simply remembering a moment in history. The skulls and bones are bounded within the unboundedness of the Buddha, of enlightenment. So next to the bones, the Buddha lays serenely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And on top of the hill in which the cave lies, there is further testament to the infinite ocean of light overcoming the finite ocean of darkness.

In these frames the lie is laid bare and the Truth made plain. In the small hours of a morning, I wonder what I am returning to in the US. Unfortunately the dream was always founded upon the lie of slavery. Nothing has been resolved. The founding story remains and the false dream which it enfolds. Yet we do not see the lie in plain sight as the book I am currently reading, Ta-Nehesi Coates’s “Between the World and Me,” makes abundantly clear. He too speaks of killing fields, but they are much closer to home.

So I muse about how to make more plain the killing fields of my own country. Perhaps there should be a tourist route to shrines marking the mass killings in our prisons, in our schools, and in our public places. Perhaps these shrines should be pointers to the great Truth and be peopled by a new wave of monks from our myriad churches, monks who are able to see beyond the cultural confines of building and culture. Perhaps as Friends we too need to get out of our comfortable meetinghouses and become itinerant, holding our worship in public spaces and at shrines which name yet place in perspective the lie that yet remains hidden. Food for thought.