SOUTHEAST ASIA: Secrets of Angkor Wat

Southeast Asia: Water Is Life by LiDoña Wagner 34"x43"x1.5" 201

Angkor Wat: Sacred Antiquity

The shrieks of monkeys swinging among jungle vines sent shivers along my arms. Elephants that had appeared humungous moments before were mere specks on the surrounding fields below me. Last night’s moonlit Cambodian dancers seemed like a dream. It was 1968. I was climbing the steep staircases to each of three levels of galleries at the temple of Angkor Wat, determined to go to the top of this replica of Mount Meru, home of the gods in Hindu mythology.

Climbing higher and higher, through one narrow temple entrance into yet another smaller and more narrow one, all sense of time and personal identity seemed to drop away. I became an ancient human creature caught in the labyrinth of the mind, trying to give shape and form to its mystery.

Disorientation, not height, was giving me vertigo. The antiquity of Angkor Wat was occasioning something beyond awe. Its bas-relief figures were opening me to a world about which I knew little. I was stunned that a people who had created such a phenomenal culture had just walked away from it and allowed the jungle to take over. Trees growing at the tops of temples had roots that grew down the contours of the temple sides and into the earth beneath. Nature had triumphed over human inventions.

Rivers of Migration by LiDoña Wagner 16"x20"x1.5" 2014

The temples had been overgrown for centuries and were being recovered from the jungle with money and expertise from UNESCO. A small fraction of the temples had been uncovered and were in various stages of restoration. Where jungle growth still had the upper hand, one nearly fainted from a sense of being infinitesimal. Human beings had carved, and carried, and shoved and pushed rocks weighing close to a ton to build these enormous monuments. Then they had vanished and the jungle had claimed back the stones they had used. Once again human beings were scraping away the dirt, fitting the stones together, reassembling a vision of the birth of consciousness. But let them pause too long in weariness or stumble in their task and the vines, trees, monkeys and birds of the jungle would overtake them.

On the ground the elephants were imposing: their slow shifting of weight from one side to the other, enormous buttock, sagging grey skin, floppy ears, sad eyes and endlessly swaying trunks were new to me. I was puzzled by how they continued to thrive while the complex human culture which once occupied this exotic atmosphere had been erased by some unknown tragedy. I wondered at the power of life which their survival shouted at me.

Angkor Wat was the beginning of a life-long love affair with Asia. Herman Hesse wrote that the East is home and that was definitely what I felt as this pre-patriarchal culture filled me with awe and touched layers of my unconscious I had not previously known existed.
  
"The Cambodian people will last forever," smiled our guide. "We are a blend of all the Asian races. We love peace and believe in friendliness."

Unaware of Pol Pot’s killing fields, I believed him. The tumbling stones and insistent jungle pulled me back thousands of years, weaving around me an aura of mystery and beauty. I was in another world.

For three days we walked the wide stone-laid approach roads to the temples, climbed thousands of stone stairs, fingered the stone-carved monkeys, lions, Garuda birds, and listened to the stories of Sita and the gods and goddesses of Asian lore. Two nights we sat in the moonlight and watched the slow foot and finger movements of the Cambodian dancers dressed in cloth of the deepest, richest greens, purples, blues, magentas, their interwoven threads of gold shimmering with each gesture.

"How did it happen? Where did it go?" Over and over my mind chased the elusive thread of history. "How could such creativity, such magnificence, such imagination simply vanish from the earth?”

Himalayas: Water Source by LiDoña Wagner 8"x10"x.75" 2014

End of An Empire: Climate Change and Social Unrest

People had occupied this region of Southeast Asia since 3000 B.C.E. How could the phenomenal Khmer Empire, founded in the 6th century and a major power from the 9th to the 15th century abandon its glorious temple complexes and evaporate as an East Asian power? I am not the only person for whom WHY? and HOW? became obsessive questions.

The ruins of Angkor Wat were apparently found by a Cambodian king while hunting elephants around 1500. Spanish and Portuguese missionaries and Japanese settlers were in the region in the 17th century. Buddhist monks cared for the temples from the 15th to 19th centuries and continue to do so. But it was the 1863 travel notes of  French naturalist Henri Mouhot of his 1860 visit to Angkor Wat that brought global awareness of the these mind-blowing ruins and ignited scientific inquires.

Archeologists, anthropologists, biologists, and later climate scientists flocked to these majestic ruins in search of answers to our unsettling questions. Archeology is a slow process of painstaking excavation, reassembly, and interpretation. It has evolved into a myriad of interrelated sciences that study artifacts, flora and fauna, and connect to the genetic, climate, space, and mathematical sciences  as well. After my 1968 Angkor Wat encounter with soul-stirring questions I followed isolated and intermittent reports, mostly through National Geographic magazine.

Slowly, as the sciences began to cooperate and share across disciplines, a picture has begun to emerge of a wondrous water management system that centered around the capital of Angkor and reached its apex around 1181. A maze of canals managed by priests who also presided over temples to the gods, generally Hindu, created the region as a rice bowl for India and China. Angkor was the capital of a metropolitan region the size of New York City and home to 750,000 people. Their system of canals took thirty-two years of collective effort to build and sustain and became a primary communication system for the empire. As a crossroads for trade, new ideas were constantly flowing into this region known today as Cambodia.

Around 1330, the region’s climate changed. There were 7 years of drought that deforested the area. Interspersed with the droughts were huge monsoons that dumped tons of water so fast that it overran the canals. A bridge on the Ho River reveals how the river moved six meters and dropped six meters. Repairing the water system was an overwhelming task that came at the same time as religious and political upheaval.

Myanmar:Religious Crossroads by LiDoña Wagner  11"x14"x.75" 2014

In 1295 the last Hindu temple was constructed, representing the end of Brahminism. Sanskrit began to disappear. In 1308 the royal leader converted to Theravada Buddhism which is more individual than communal. Vassals were freed. The collective labor force for maintaining the water management system and the religious leadership that had overseen it began to crumble. At the beginning of the 14th century social upheaval blossomed, creating the setting for a fight or flight response. Migration out of Angkor Wat became the norm.

Indonesia: Spice Trade by LiDoña Wagner 11"x14"x1" 2014

Personal Epiphany: Crossing Thresholds

On a personal level, I have come to realize that, unbeknownst to me in 1968, the primary temple I was climbing through was a replica of my own life. I had crossed the first level’s thresholds of opportunity: acquiring education – the first in my blue-collar family to go to college; touring Africa – meeting revolutionaries in the struggle for independence; teaching radical theology – as an un-ordained female; and entering motherhood – giving birth to my daughter.

The second level thresholds ahead of me were not ones that I desired to cross. They were the thresholds of death: death of my mother within a year; death of millions of Cambodians and of my marriage within a decade; death of my social activism career within two decades; and death of my daughter within three decades.

Our Cambodian guide had said, “You must climb many steps to reach the central temple. It is difficult to ascend to the kingdom of the gods.”

What I found on the third level were the thresholds of life purpose: goddesses who inspired me to guide women to their strength and wisdom; history that demanded that I write about other parts of the world; beauty that encouraged me to become a visual artist; and ineffable mystery that instilled in me a spirituality that is not tied to any religion.

What thresholds are you ready to cross?

Borneo: Home of Original Migrants by LiDoña Wagner 11"x14"x1" 2014