Angkor Wat: Reflections On Our Modern World

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Angkor Wat is the crown jewel of a 400 square kilometer set of temples and holy sites, set in the jungles of Cambodia. Built as a Hindu temple in the 12th century, later transformed into a Buddhist temple, Angkor Wat alone is the largest religious monument on Earth. That says a lot about the culture that built such a construct. Imagine the enormous cost, in terms not only of money, wealth and resources, but of human labour. It says that spirituality is of prime importance, if not the greatest importance – like the cathedrals of an earlier era in the West represent. And what do we have in the modern world today, for comparison? We have glass and steel skyscrapers that are monuments to corporate and financial power – monuments to greed. That pretty much says it all. No wonder our “civilization” is collapsing. It has nothing to do with a vastly over-hyped virus. It has everything to do with spiritual and moral bankruptcy, and a degradation of the human spirit and mind. But, we should bear in mind, we can remember as well as forget. Collapse does happen. So too does renaissance, and rebirth.

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JTR,

April 15, 2020

https://www.bing.com/search?q=Angkor+Wat&filters=lite:%22.VHJpdmlhQ2Fyb3VzZWxeU1BPVExJR0hUQ0FST1VTRUxfRU4tQ0FfMV5QT0xF%22+BTEPKey:%22Encyclo_HPBS_20200319_0400%22+IsConversation:%22true%22&form=BTCAR1&crslsl=0&efirst=1

See also, The Keiser Report: The Bermuda Triangle of Pandemic

And the writings of Noam Chomsky, Morris Berman, Joseph Campbell, Alan Watts, Ronald Wright, Jared Diamond, James Howard Kunstler, Helena Norberg-Hodge, and John Michael Greer, to mention just a few important thinkers and writers, who can help to lift the veils from our eyes, and pierce the all-pervasive fog – or is that smog…?