Spring-cleaning at the pagoda

On the way back from Koh Ker, we stopped at the local family wat in Bakong (where Ton's wife grew up) to take a bath. Well, not just any old bath, but a ritual washing away of the bad spirits from the old year (the year of the rooster) and cleansing for the new year (the year of the dog). The rite involved sitting on the steps of the monks house being doused in cold water by the chief monk while he chanted Buddhist blessings. Even the minibus was given a splash or two. It did have a cleansing effect in a strange sort of way, and certainly washed away the dust of the road from Koh Ker and the remaining stickiness from the condensed milk. I felt honoured to have been invited to take part, like a traveller who is invited out of the cold to sit by the fire.

The extent to which Buddhism remains at the centre of Cambodian life is startling after so many years of ideologically-inspired turmoil. No important event takes place without acknowledging in some way the Buddhist tradition. It is usual, for instance, for monks to attend and bless the many conferences and colloqiums that the Government and NGOs organize continually in Phnom Penh. It has a strangely humbling effect on even the mightiest of this nation, even if in other aspects of their lives it is hard to see any adherence to the Buddhist virtues. Every able-bodied Khmer male is supposed to spend some time as a monk in a wat at some stage of their lives; it's a kind of pacifist national service. Chinese Khmers are apparently exempt, for some reason. Women get to be nuns in their old age, once they have performed their duties as wives and mothers.

The wat constitutes not only a religious centre for worship, but also a kind of surrogate community providing basic social services to those that cannot survive in this desperately poor, but superficially and ostentatiously rich, country. Living alongside the monks in any wat is a small community of people who serve the monks in simple ways and in return survive on the charity brought into the wat through the alms received by monks. When there is no basic social security system, the wat at least allows some to keep themselves alive and feel part of a community. It is not a million miles from the medieval monastery or the Jesuit missions of the Parana.

Many former Khmer Rouge sought refuge with the monks when their regime collapsed and have lived for years as 'holy men' alongside the bonzes. Cambodia is a palimpsest in which blessings obscure tragedies at every turn...