When traveling ancient historic sites, it seems that our mind goes back to the primitive mind. It feels that we can know what thoughts ‘I’ who lived a long time ago had and what kind of life ‘I’ lived. Although the material civilization was not developed like now, cultures developed. People’s minds would have been much more innocent than we have now. However, the mind is like something original so I assume that how people lived back then would be how I live now. With that assumption, I leave for Ankor Wat in Cambodia.
Stone beds scattered about tell us about the transience of time. People and time ‘existed’ back then but do not exist anymore. If there were no remaining structures, these stories would have been completely forgotten.
Like most of the ancient structures, Ankor Wat was a shrine for God. The king would have come up to the altar where he performed ceremonies for God, communicated with God and governed the country. In the generation where God was everything, God would have been life itself, beyond just a religion, to ancient people. They believed in God and built a shrine throughout their entire life for God. They even devoted their self for God.
I am not talking about God of any specific religion. Leaving the label called religion behind, ‘God’ is an absolute being and its origin always meets our original mind. It is the mind before it was contaminated with individuals’ prejudices and self-centered minds. It was the origin of everything and the mind of oneness. It seems that mind was also embedded in Ankor Wat.
Such beautiful structures are even difficult to reproduce with modern technologies. It gets easier to understand the mystery of this historic site, harmonized with science and culture, if you understand the ‘original mind’ that we have in ourselves. The modern science and technology we are proud of seem to be well developed; however, we have forgotten our original mind, just as much. That’s why we cannot reproduce the’soul’ embedded in ancient structures.
The pure mind that we originally had and the yearning to become one with God are embedded in every hole and corner of Ankor Wat. You get to walk quietly through doorways and feel the mystery when stopping and standing at doorways connecting the adjacent spaces.
God’s shrine took a role as a way of connecting this world to the world beyond. This has kept its holiness as a space that connects god and man. It still tells us lots of stories even though hundreds of years have passed.
While strolling down the hall where only silence exists, I think. If god was our original mind, it must be an obvious logic that god is living in me. However, if I look into my mind now, there seems to be no space for god to live. When emptying out my selfish mind, it is revealed; that must be my original mind. If god lives in me in this way, my body would actually become ‘god’s shrine.’
