The Creature That Lives in Angkor
by Bev Jafek
The heat of the Cambodian jungle is overwhelming, yet you have come by boat, then trekking through green plants that grasped you like conscious, purposeful beings. You have seen a cluster of tarantulas like a snake pit; passed through darkly tangled forests with one shaft of sun like a prayer answered in light; seen an immense flower with open petals of such lavender intensity that you were simply lost in it.
Then the sight of Angkor rose up before you, the ancient ruin of the Kmer people. There are regular buildings with columns; then, like a pure flight of fantasy, come huge towers in the shapes of lotus buds, perhaps unique in the world. The scene is bordered below by Tonle Sap Lake, covered with lilies. Existence seems to melt away in the presence of such beauty.
Yet soon, there are mysteries, questions. What is this extraordinary beauty of decaying ruin, perhaps more beautiful than the city when it was alive? Here is life from death, death from life, the first indication that there is dialectic afoot. The dialectic is implicit in Angkor’s discovery by Henri Mouhot, a butterfly specialist. The butterfly is perhaps the most beautiful of insects, yet most species only live a few days after the chrysalis state.
Even in decay, however, the city has powerful features: it is the largest religious building in the world. In 1000 AD when it was occupied, it was the largest building of any kind in the world. With three water bodies and an internal network of canals, it housed and supported half a million people in 38 square miles. It was built by Jayavarman, a Buddhist among Hindus, who saved his people from the warlike Javanese and declared himself a god-king.
Inside, the dialectic further plays itself out. This city may be abandoned, but it is full of marvels. Everywhere are statues and wall carvings of scenes from Hindu mythology; asparas, or bare-chested dancing girls with huge headdresses of snakes, fruit and more towering lotus buds; kings on elephants leading warriors into battle and also at ease, carrying parasols. In full-length wall carvings are scenes of violent combat: between elephants; between men fighting with clubs and spears; between men shooting bows with three arrows at a time. The finest internal building is Angkor Wat; a labyrinth of corridors filled with still more elaborate statues and carved walls.
The central mystery of Angkor is why it was abandoned. Its denizens had all they needed for life in an ancient metropolis. The land with its irrigation canals was fertile enough to produce four rice crops a year. The lake was heavily stocked with fish. There were huge teak forests and abundant sandstone for building materials and many area minerals for trade: gold, silver, copper, tin, and iron ore besides sandstone.
Historians have speculated that late-appearing Hinayana Buddhism encouraged Kmer pacifism, altruism and non-materialism, leaving them vulnerable to the Thai army that easily overpowered them. The Thais took home their dancing asparas, added more clothing, then used their exquisite hand gestures to create the famous national Thai dance of today. A plethora of other reasons have also been conjectured: malaria, weak rulers, rebellious slaves and flooding lakes, the last supported by Buddhist legend.
The Creature that lives in Angkor would say there are even more answers and mysteries. The Creature is the trapped spirit of Jayavarman, a being representative of painful dialectic. A Buddhist ruler with too great an attachment to the world, he had 200 giant Buddha sculptures carved with his own face upon it and exhibited all over Angkor. The Kmer descendants look very much like him. The Creature, like the universe, is a shape-shifter. He manifests himself as an angry monkey, a sympathetic old man, and a living crystal in the shape of a lotus flower. All manifestations have inspired a host of answers to the central mystery of why Angkor was abandoned.
Here comes a family of American tourists, five in number, all obese and carrying food with them. Sweating and out of breath, they sit down to eat their typically calorific, overly processed food. As they finish eating, they throw away their empty plastic bags and cups on the site’s floor.
Immediately, they are confronted by an angry monkey, a quick and leaping shadow with an intelligent face. The monkey pelts them with stones, of which he has a huge supply. The family flees and finds that this infuriates the monkey even more. It is still stoning them outside the building. Finally, they understand the monkey’s purpose and go back inside, gathering their litter and carrying it outside the building. Only this calms the monkey.
The father says furiously, “No wonder they abandoned this place! You can’t even drop a bag on the ground!”
The mother comments, “There is something strange and meaningful about that monkey.”
The youngest girl, a child of eight, cries, “I want to go back and throw stones at the monkey!” The two other children obstreperously agree.
The boy says, “He was playing with us. I want to play with him.”
The oldest daughter says, “Please, please, please let us go back and throw stones at the monkey!”
The father says, “No, we’ve seen enough of that place, and that monkey has me spooked. Its face looks kind of like my Aunt Agatha, and she always hated me.”
They return to a much more hospitable world and gain more weight.
On another day, Angkor was visited by a tourist who was grieving. Her husband had recently died, and she was traveling to take her mind off her new life alone. A Swiss, she had a beautiful head of white hair and olive skin. Her mind wheeled through Angkor and the things she had experienced in the jungle. She had seen an astonishing red tree with a bulbous round trunk like a bowl and short, thick limbs that contorted into the sky like roots. She had seen midnight-black ducks on the water and eel-like fish with fierce black crests and orange stripes around their jaws. Here, now, the beauty of human images in corruption causes her to cry.
The mystery of Angkor’s abandonment enters her mind. How could they leave, she wonders. Suddenly, someone puts a hand on her back. She turns and sees a kindly old man with Jayavarman’s face, which she recognizes from its 200 appearances in Angkor. She smiles back at his enigmatic smile that seems to hold the answer to all mysteries. Instantly, she feels immeasurably better.
The old man vanishes before her, which does not seem strange to her, and she returns to see more statues, carvings and vistas of architecture. All the while, a thought forms in her mind. She notes the similarity of the old man’s face to the Kmer people of today. Perhaps that is the answer, she thinks. In fact, they never left.
On many days, Angkor is visited by highly curious and vigorous tourists from many nations. They walk over nearly the entirety of the site, camping outside an extra day if necessary. One of these is a young American woman of excellent health and wide interests. She is traveling the world in search of mysteries, deep questions and answers to life’s meaning. Many things she has seen in Cambodia have struck a deep chord in her.
Along the trek, she saw a monkey with a thick, black coat and a face like a white-powdered samurai in a Japanese No play. She saw a flower with blood-red petals and mysterious needle-like tendrils sticking straight out. A guide told her that it was called the peacock flower, which she found apt.
Then, barely visible, hidden in endless shimmering layers of greenery, she had the luck to glimpse a jungle cat with slanted eyes, a tender brow and a gently smiling mouth, seemingly, of deep compassion: a feline Buddha. How did it live, she wondered; it must hunt prey.
She is seated now, in mindful thought of everything she has seen in Cambodia. She wonders why the inhabitants left such a wondrous place as Angkor. Her mind travels over the 200 heads of Jayavarman, and she decides that his face is the most wave-like of all Buddhas she has seen. There is not a single straight line in his haunting, tilting, lilting face. She decides there is the answer to Angkor’s abandonment: it was perfect. Human beings must always strive for perfection and never achieve it.
Suddenly materializing before her is a living crystal in the shape of a lotus flower, the last of Jayavarman’s manifestations. She touches it and feels fresh, living petals, all the while gleaming in crystal. She is enchanted, aware that she is being given a supernatural gift. For an instant, she considers taking it but quickly withdraws her hand. Instinctively, she knows that it would vanish.
What, then, is this decaying city that seems to suggest life from death and death from life? The dialectic is that of life itself, and even more mysteries abound here. Why, for example, is Angkor built in the shape of a pentagon, and why does it have those amazing towers like lotus buds? Buds are an obvious symbol of life’s dialectic: life to death and death to rebirth. So is a pentagon. The five-fold shape is intrinsic to life: it is present in the human body itself with its five senses and limbs ending in five fingers and toes. This is true of five-fold animal paws and claws. You can see the five-fold structure throughout nature. All leaves can be enclosed within a pentagon. Many flowers have five petals. If you slice apples, pears and blueberries, you will see their five-fold germination in the center.
The five-fold shape appears associated with life throughout human culture, from the Chinese “five bats of happiness” to David’s five stones used to defeat Goliath. The flags of over 60 countries have a five-pointed star. Such a star has been a magical symbol to ward off evil in Babylon, Egypt, Greece, India, China and the Americas.
The dialectical pattern is therefore an archetype within us, as the Creature knows from his manifestations. But how do we reach it directly? Where is it physically? Think again of the 200 faces of Jayavarman, the most wavelike representation of Buddha. The up-down tilts of his eyes, even his nose, and most strikingly in the lips of his smile make him the human face glimpsed in a wave. The most complete answer is therefore the simplest, as the Buddhist would say. The up, down dialectical pattern is that of a wave. What finer answer to all our mysteries and questions is there than a wave?
Copyright © 2019 by Bev Jafek
