Personally, this photo taken here is a little disturbing visually. I think some form of control is needed to instill some discipline in a temple. I wouldn't say the poor and homeless should not be taken care of but inside the temple main hall should also be respected. I did raised the question to the a senior Monk at Sraa Chok Pagoda why this is allowed, he said no, they shouldn't and the temple does provide a shelter for them and no one bothers and care to respond to the monk's request to move out to the designated area. One way or another, the holy place has been "degraded" in its supposedly peaceful and serene atmosphere typically found in a Buddhist temple. Next, the air inside the hall projected a funny smell typical of heavily sweat people who didn't take bath; lastly, it also doesn't provide a sense of security to the visitors with the many curious watchful eyes of these homeless intruders. I do hope this can improve in time to come and reasoning out with them to rest at the designated areas prepared for them.
This is not entirely Sraa Chok problem, the temple next I went to also had such unpleasant scene.
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Other installations of Buddhist belief - all the atthe river side of the grand Mekong river. The income for maintenance is in the form of donation from devottees. The far left could be of Mahayana style and the center and right hand detailed view is of raw Cambodian images with distinctive Indian feel. |
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Well, I guess the domestic problem would sour your eyes. I know some may ask does actually Khmer temples have small, portable amulets ? Yeap. At Sraa Chok Pagoda; those friendly monks shown me a few concealed containers took out from the many images at the Chief Monk stage , opened and show me these. Most of the Senior who have been assigned to serve the public will have one of these. They will be soup into the water, blended with flowers and other herbs and used for blessing the worshipers. However, Khmer Wats do not usually produce batches of these portable votive images for public as with the Thai way of raising fund for up-keeping or maintenance of temples. I do have a little problem in acquiring knowledge how the fund are raised for such purpose. Anyway, the photo may perhaps provide a clue how the portables are like and their usage. |
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Another very local form of practice is this Baisai installation. It can be found at the outside of many local residence as well as Cambodian Wat/temples. The center photo below was taken with permission of a very wealthy family in Phnom Penh next to the hotel I was staying. The picture at bottom left and right was taken at the outside of Sraa Chok Pagoda and the picture at bottom right was inside one of the senior monk. It is like the Four-Faced Buddha in Thai but it is NOT an image, but rather, it is made of a kind of wood called "gal-tree". A friend of mine told me some rare species of such kind of wood may "GROW: by itself and some Thai guru monks are using the wood to make religious tongkat. I was told it can be easily acquire even on the Sunday market here. The wood, is wrapped up with foils - either in gold or silver but mostly packed in gold as well as the spikes. The photo at left shown with both versions and I took an explosive view of the Baisai at the bottom for your assessment on this very Cambodian way of ritual pratice. |
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