I walked along a path of reddened dust, on the road to reality. The road was long, the dust in my heavy shoes, in the parched dryness of the blazing sunlight.
Among the green undergrowth of forest, among the rubble of an ancient world, I walked. Around me were crumbling ruins, rising up majestically. On the horizon, the sight loomed up before me - Angkor, the ancient city of temples. Vast, timeworn erections of stone among the forest undergrowth, surviving since time immemorial, built by the Buddhists and Hindus of the empire of Khmer. On the walls of the temples all around, their faces were carved into the stone.
Angkor Wat stood colossal, engulfing the horizon. Five vast towers shaped like giant round lotus flowers of crumbling stone probed into the sky. I crossed the moat into the ancient temple and entered through the gate, into the scene beyond.
In the distance, a Buddhist monk draped in orange robes walked by, through an opening inside the temple ruins, and disappeared from view. I followed him in.
I sat down among the ruins and closed my eyes. And then I opened them again, and looked.
Travelling through Cambodia changed my life. Before and after I was in Cambodia, I was reading a lot about Buddhism, though firstly, I am atheist with an interest in science. Buddhism has elements of religion, such as reincarnation ideas, which are wrong. And it is about the aspirational ideals of nirvana, or some kind of ultimate deliverance which are wrong. However, Buddhism is not a religion. Buddhism is a way of living. It is the most important idea perhaps ever, in history. This is because Buddhist monks practice engaging with reality. They engage with reality directly. They observe reality. They meditate. And mediate. They are in the present moment. They let go of the ideas going round in one’s head, the psyche, and they come out of the impulses and illusion in one’s mind and they focus on what is real. What is touched. What is seen. And when they keep looking behind what first appears in front of them, they see that thing, such as a tree, for the first time. And this gives a profound, deep joy, or at least a liberating feeling of peace and calm.
Because behind the chaos of nature, there is peace and calm. And there is balance. This is the ultimate aspiration of science. All science starts with observing the real, physical world, and finding an explanation. And ethics ought to start with seeking a more peaceful, happy life. And all scientific ideas such as the selfish gene copying itself in order to survive, represent through evolution the consequence of the greatest mathematical amount of the most common form of energy, the environment as a whole being composed of the same common balanced building blocks. So by living in a Buddhist way, the person is aspiring to exist as the common energy, which is the foundational building blocks of their selfish genes. That common energy is mostly found in the wider environment, e.g. carbon, oxygen, even just energy itself. Living in the Buddhist way is the future goal of all people and the genes that drive them, whether they realise it or not. To live in a communal way and to live in a way communally with their environment, where they become at one with reality and not subject to the chaos within their own individuality. To exist, mathematical probability will ensure that we exist together.
To me travel is a form of Buddhist practice. I learned this especially in Cambodia. For example, when you travel in new environments and new situations, you are forced to adapt to the new environment and become one with it. And this is also why photography is a way of living through Buddhism. Through photography one is perceptively and accurately observing the real world. The traveller is like a child - in wonder at the world and at the greatest stage of up-taking new ideas and curiosity. It is a wonderful, humbling experience and the way to grow.
Not a lot of readers will know this, but each of my photographs in the series Cambodia is based on the Buddhist cycle itself. Each name of each photograph is a stage in Buddhism. For example, we start with Dukkha, the unhappiness and pain that comes from attachment, we come to mindful awareness practice and compassion, then we pass through metaphorical “gates” of understanding. And finally we find peace and liberation, Nirvana, once we are aware of the reality in front of us.
Each of my photographs is therefore a symbol of Buddhism. And each of the temples in Cambodia is a symbol of Buddhism too. For example, the temple of Angkor Wat was designed so that each spire and the whole formation represent the shape the Buddhists and Hindus believed the universe to be in. This is called the “mandala”, and each of my photographs is a mandala. A way to understand the world, here through visual observation, I do and I will forever do it through photography.
A key theme of all my photography in Cambodia is the orange robed monks, the faces in the stone, and the empty doors and frames of the ancient temples, signifying metaphorical “gates” of understanding and the passing though the empty doorways into a journey of knowledge and peaceful awareness.
From Dukkha, the dissatisfaction with the illusion of the material world, we pass on to Bhavana, the cultivation of the deeper life on the road to reality. Drsti, Samkalpa and Vac are ways of thought and experience and the right ways of thinking to achieve awareness for yourself (and others in Theravada Buddhism). To escape from the cycle of reincarnation (Karman), which I personally view as a metaphorical cycle, ajivana is a way of living so as to posses only what is essential, through the physical practice of awareness (Vayayama). The factors of awareness and mindful practice include Smrti, Samadhi, and Dhyana, the training of the mind to perfect equanimity and mindful awareness. Metta, Karuna, kindness, compassion, are ways of being that spread the awareness and balance to others in the wider sphere of existence. Through them comes Prayna, wisdom and insight. And so, we now pass through the three gates of understanding on the road to liberation - Sunyata, Animitta and Apranihita. And from here, we reach the ultimate joy of liberation and awareness - nirvana. And the final, ultimate, blissful release that comes from the awareness of the reality of all things - Moksha.
My photography showed this cycle, and each photograph is a symbol of one of the stages of awareness, as described above. I hope one day that this story can be told, and that you too will be able to achieve your own story through your awareness and understanding on the journey of your life.
And for nirvana, I chose to represent it through the image of the most serene lake I have ever been to - a final release and liberation of the cycle of photographs that followed the Buddhist cycle to its ultimate freedom.
Buddhism may seem to be vague, but awareness is vague and ultimately needs to be in order to be adaptive to the rapidly shifting illusions of the modern world. At its heart is a vague form, energy, and a state of awareness and consciousness, which no precise words or forms of communication between people can currently describe. So much for vagueness.
The faces in the stone are carved into my memory, like they are on the walls in the Bayon temple, where the orange clad monks emerged into the road to reality. I followed it all the way to Banteay Srei, the reddish tinted Hindu temple, far away on the road, to the House of Shiva.
I was a long way from home, but I was here in Cambodia, in this place and of this place, at peace with the surroundings.
I walked into the temple of Ta Prohm, where giant trees grew into the sky, intertwined with the temple ruins, growing together for around eight centuries, forest roots among the temple rubble, running up to the sky, some trees up to 1,000 metres tall. And like the trees growing together with the ruins around them, I knew that I would be forever entwined with this place.
But with awareness comes freedom, and I moved on. I travelled on the Mekong River, on a journey to the Tonle Sap lake. We drove by on a boat, past the lives of the people of the water, living in their houses on stilts, elevated on wood above the swaying brown water below. Fishermen cast their nets out wide into the empty waters, living in hope. Children ran joyfully through the green wetlands around the lake, the sunlight glinting, reflecting, shimmering off the spray of the puddles, as they ran and played in the fields of a joy that wants eternity. Among them, water buffalo roamed among the wet paddy fields all around. Somewhere along the journey I came across a boy, in the greenery of the jungle surrounding the river’s heart. Child of the Mekong, he is a representation of Cambodia, and there is something haunting the boy’s eyes, a memory I cannot quite forget. Perhaps I was once too like that boy, lost in the jungle, a man trying to understand my life, looking at me but being unable to see.
The boat continued to float slowly into the misty horizon. Eventually we arrived into the centre of a giant lake, when the boat stopped in the centre of the water stretching still for miles around, and I was able to sit in a silence that speaks more than words could ever hope to do. I was there in the present moment, as I am again through my memory, and through these pages, I bring the memory once again into life. And I am able finally to exist at peace.
Read on for the next chapter via the home page - My Childhood...