The Long March Towards The West

        Just finished my discussion with Prof. Kang Pol about the history of my beloved country, Cambodia, under the influence of ” The Long March Towards The West. “.

I remember my Prof asked students in the class:

Prof: My Students ! I have a question to ask you. If one of you could answer my question I’d give you an interesting present after we finish class. My question is:” Why We Study History? “

Some of my friends said: ” We Study History, Because we want to know what happened in the past. Who is our friends and Who is our Enemies.Then We’ll continue our friendship with our friends or we have to revenge what enemies have done on our people and our country.”

After silence for a while, I started my answer: ” Yes Prof, we study history because we want to take good lessons from the past to correct our present and continue to develop our future by avoiding our past mistakes. Moreover, when we know clearly our and other countries’ histories, it’s the better way to reduce confusion between histories in each country. History Is History ! No need to take history to revenge someone or other countries. We all want to live in peace, non-violence and good relationship with our neighbouring countries towards the globalization era.”

Prof: ” You’re right, Good Answer ! History Is History. No need to take history to revenge other countries. We want to live in peace, non-violence and good relationship in the globalization time. Krishna, today after finishing class go to my house with me. My wife is preparing dinner for us.”

Below is some points I studied today:

                                    

                 Vietnam ( Dai Viet ) is considered as one of the most expansionist countries in Asia. In the space of a few hundreds years, this country has evolved from its small cradle located in the Delta of Tonkin to become a tentacle Empire. Its expansionist – annexation process is often known under the following metaphor: “the Long March Towards the West”. Because of this long March some countries were simply transformed into a province of Vietnam (Champa) and other are becoming, like Cambodia, the victim of its expansionist policy.

                                       

As mentioned above, Cambodia is not the only victim of this conquest policy. In the past, theKingdom of Champa (the Centre of current Vietnam) and Kampuchea Krom (currently South Vietnam) were totally annexed. And Lao PDR is currently facing the same problems as Cambodia. But due to time constraint only the Cambodian case is analyzed in this communication.

Just to remember what happened in Kampuchea Krom. After presenting Princess Ngoc Van, in 1630, to young King Chey Chetha II, Vietnam asked the king the permission for Vietnamese to settle in Preah Suakea (Ba Ria) and Prey Nokor (Saigon). The king Chey Chetha II had to accept the pressures made by his newly wedding wife, Ngoc Van. Thanks to this “sex and marital alliance ”tactics, which was already applied in the Kingdom of Champa with Princess Ngoc Khao, Vietnam managed to corrupt the soul of the Khmer king and to realize its demographic conquests. Once its bases are strongly consolidated, Vietnam was to commit ultra atrocious violence to repress Khmers’ opposition movement.

                                 

During the period 1813 – 1815, Vietnamese perpetrated the infamous massacre, known to every Khmer as “Prayat Kompup Te Ong”. It was the most barbarous torture style in which the Khmer were buried alive up to their neck. Their heads were used as the stands for a wood stove to boil water for the Vietnamese masters. As they were burned and suffered, the victims shook their heads. At that moment, the Vietnamese torturers jokingly said “Be careful, not to spill the master’s tea”.Other kinds of massacre were the beheading and human collective autodafé (keeping Khmers locked up in granaries and burning them alive). Thousands of Khmers were so massacred in such a human collective autodafé.

By: Heng Krishna

Unsent Letter

      My Dear, Tevie !    

           You, Tevie, always encourage my weak mind. You  know, my mood is changing almost every moment. At one moment I  get quite resolute and feel myself quite strong, but at another moment I get weak and nervous and worried. Especially seeing others doing their routine with perfect ease, I feel somewhat  guilty of my \(quite reckless\) plan. But anyway this is general speaking.
Suppose I should come to you without a single  money, what shall you do? This is a mere supposition and means nothing. I’m just thinking of money. Once, you said money isn’t everything, and I think so too. But sometimes without enough  money, one can’t be happy. I admit there are many degrees in the  word enough; I mean, to be very rich is not my future dream, but  frankly, I think after all that the more money, the better. On  the other hand, it’s often said that the more one has, the more one wants to get. There’s no limit in human monetary desire.  Anyway, I want to let you know how much amount of grant I can get from the government monthly. It’s a small money ! And during the terms students in Russia are not allowed to do the side jobs. Because in Russia, the government adopted the law to ban foreigners to get  works.
And I want to tell you how long does it take for my study. Frankly, I don’t even know how long I have to study here. I know only that I have to get higher education. The more higher, the more better.
And you asked me what is my idea about marriage in general.
My idea about marriage, (if you want to hear), is not so clear. I remember, I told my closed friends with the kidding talk that I don’t want to marry. I’ve  already said, I don’t want to marry, I want to live alone or to die, to quite a lot of people so far. I’ve never told you about my parents’ marriage, but I hope you can better understand me. And because I  have long seen this nasty khmer custom of marriage, I’ve been fed up with it and this has affected my idea about marriage very much.  Many boys of my contemporary seem to want to be a husband and father. But to my eyes, in their  way of living, they seem to forget their very existence as a  human being. Maybe if I meet somebody whom I want to spend the rest of my life with, I can marry. But I think it hard to lead an idealistic marriage life. Maybe I’m just thinking too much about marriage in a vague and abstract way before I get nothing  started. If you think me your somebody who may be all right to  live just ten years or so but who may not be a person at all to spend the rest of your life, it’s a pity, though I know nobody can tell what happens after ten years, nor do I force you to look much further through the future. It’s impossible both for you and  for me. So marriage is a very difficult thing, I mean it’s easy to get married, but it’s very difficult to be married. I’ve never thought ‘you want to marry me’ because you show me everytime, especially when talk we are never in accord, don’t know why. However If happens, it has given me such an extreme sense of happiness. And these your words have brought me the greatest feeling of relief. I don’t know why. But before you say so, there have been always somewhere in my mind something which have made me feel somewhat guilty of just living with you. I’m extremely thankful of your utmost seriousness and sincerity. But I’m ashamed that I have such generous and tender heart toward you while I am In abroad, I have so little which I can give you. I have been so selfish and have my own way egoistically in my life. All I can say and do now is I love you, though my love is so uncertain before I see you actually, nor can I say I can love you all my life. And I also apprehend that when we come to know each other more, many of my defects will be revealed and I’ll find myself unworthy of you. Further, it may be a kind of risk for you to say you want to marry me before you know me much more. Maybe you are right in saying that we can speak more freely, but at the same time I’ve always been thinking that outside look one tends to deceive oneself and expose only the positive things. Maybe I may not be what you think I am. Besides, one of my friend who got married months ago once said, her husband is quite an another person from what she knew he was before she got married. What she means is that, before they got married, her husband perhaps did not expose what really he was in front of his future wife, though my friend seems to lead quite a happy marriage life. Maybe this is a too personal matter, and you may wonder why others should know about their marriage life in detail. Anyway their marriage was the arranged marriage, and even during their association period, a trivial news, such as they were going to have rendezvous on such and such day, quite frequently came to us relatives’ ears. … Sorry, I’ve digressed quite a lot. Anyway about marriage I think it the next step after I finish my higher education and have my own money. Now just taking time only to study and to build myself to be a real man. Maybe I’ve wrote so many unnecessary worries and obsessions in the letter but I really hope you’ve not taken offence. If you have even once, tell me so. Do you feel rather comical to see me get easily upset and almost wailing out at every word of yours? But I really appreciate your patient attitude to answer my every stupid question.
           Your love if I may call it love, will make me strong. But  dear Tevie, it’s still very difficult for me to make me aware  that there’s you in the world who is thinking of me in such a  faraway land.
So this letter is too abstract, Tu ne trouves pas?  (This phrase I learnt today. I’m still reviewing French.)
I’m a little tired with thinking of you because I’ve thought of  you too much, already. But cannot stop thinking of you.

With my deeply love to you,

         sorrow heart

* I decide not to send this letter to my love, Tevie. It’d make her feel bad when she read this letter. I don’t want to see my love,Tevie sad and hopeless ! I want to see Tevie, my girl in life, lives with the beautiful smile and in happiness even those things so far from my hands now…..

Samdech Preah Maha Ghosananda( 1929-2007)

       Samdech Preah Maha Ghosananda (1929 – March 12, 2007) was a highly revered Cambodian Buddhist monk in the Theravada tradition, who served as the Patriarch (Sangharaja) of Cambodian Buddhism during the Khmer Rouge period and post-communist transition period of Cambodian history. His Pali monastic name, ‘Maha Ghosananda’, means “great joyful proclaimer”.

He did not believe this could be done through grand temples or enclosed institutions. Certainly he could have gone that way. Like many others he had been a dek wat, a “temple kid”, washing the monks’ dishes and carrying their alms-bowls. Unlike others, he became a monk and remained one, getting all his education in temples and eventually gaining a doctorate in Pali, the scriptural language of Theravada Buddhism. He was a polymath and an intellectual. Yet he could not stay out of the world. Rather than devoting himself to monastic scholarship, he built hut-temples in the refugee camps and handed out dog-eared photocopies of the Buddha’s Metta Sutta, or Words of Love:

                                   With a boundless heart
                                   Should one cherish all living beings:
                                    Radiating love over the entire world
                                    Spreading upwards to the skies,
                                    And downwards to the depths…

On his walks his message remained the same. It needed no complication. The work, he knew, would be slow: “step by step”, as he liked to say. It would continue as long as Cambodians felt divided from each other and brutalised by their past.

After 1980 he was made much of. He represented the Cambodian government-in-exile at the United Nations, and was influential in the peace talks; in 1988, he was made Supreme Patriarch of Cambodia. Several times he was nominated for the Nobel peace prize. He founded more than 50 temples across the world. Some he spoke at; but his first priority lay elsewhere. It was to appear, birdlike, out of the Cambodian forest, to surprise a man digging or a woman washing; to remind them that the power of love was stronger than the forces of history; and then to move on.

                                      For the pure-hearted one
                                      Having clarity of vision,
                                      Being freed from all sense desires,
                                      Is not born again into this world.

                                               

           I’d like to express my deeply respect to the spirit of Samdech Preah Maha Ghosananda. He helps to pave my way and builds the firm confidence in my thought. I’m walking step by step with my strong hope and confidence to my dreams with his advices. I understand, Now there are still important challenges facing Cambodia- poverty, corruption, a narrow political base concerned with making money rather than providing service. Yet thanks to people of compassion such as Samdech Preah Maha Ghosananda, as he would say,” listen carefully, peace is growing in Cambodia, slowly, step by step.”

By: Heng Krishna