29/12/2025
When the current POTUS rages on about how he’s stopped eight wars (untrue; eight ‘Pax Trumpias’ perhaps) while not a very subtle pitch to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, it may be a dog-whistle to a least suspected population segment, the Vajrayanaist. As a fledgling disciple of the modern Sakya Master Deshung Rinpoche Ill, back when a Tibetan Tangkha* was a novelty and seemed to broadcast so much hope and fear at the same time, one of his students asked why there were always graveyards or charnel grounds around the paintings’ perimeter. Choosing to answer her question on the outermost level of significance—the others being ‘inner,’ ‘secret,’ and ‘real’—he flatly stated: “Because of all the wars.”
There may have also been a discussion about the fathomless piles of mulching dead remains from battle casualties. And perhaps the ancient custom of burying the more ‘prominent’ people on higher ground, where temples were then eventually erected. Not entirely convinced of war’s centrality to human misery, I remember only considering these: the American Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WWI and WWII, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, which had scarcely ‘ended’ a couple of years before.
Now finding this macabre imagery much more interesting than then, I would want to include to our tragic and ghoulish list hundreds of more wars.
In truth, war has always been ‘on my mind,’ and perhaps that’s Rinpoche’s point. For years I’ve had this series of dreams about living in the forest and having to flee an invading army. But that’s not all that’s going on. There’s also parallel imagery in this series that’s all about living in the air, which makes it feel futuristic. These dream portions are all about me learning to fly, both in the conventional sense, like piloting an aircraft, and also flying under my own power. This dream imagery suggests new freedom and ecstatic attainments being foretold or predicted. To be arrived at in the future, creating a kind of ‘futurity.’
To William Blake, Futurity wasn't just a distant time, it was a state of transcendent liberation, a coming spiritual era where humanity overcomes restrictive reason, rigid institutions (like church or state), and divisive binaries (good vs evil, male vs female, etc.) through Imagination and Divine Vision; a unified, creative, and eternally forgiving existence lived in a ‘New Jerusalem.’
Significantly, this paradise would be ushered in through his and other’s art who shared the same view and vision; like Giotto, who achieved a fourth dimension in his paintings by not using three dimensional perspective, and also fellow visionaries, like Henry Fuseli who painted ‘The Nightmare,’ which features a starkly white figured femme fatal draped over a bed, a half-seen horse in the background, and an ape-like incubus crouching on her chest.
The New Jerusalem, a hypnogogic, glittering golden radiance—literally a utopian city descending from the heavens—is the ultimate desert prophet’s offering to the Absolute. A cosmic icon also symbolic as a kind of mission statement and guiding inspiration—his art feeding his spiritual progress—with Blake believing his engravings and illustrations ‘laboured upwards to Futurity’ in a greater future understanding for all; perhaps holding some kinship with the Bodhisattva ideal and what the stages of the path are to Mahayanist practitioners. Futurity as an accumulation of merit through artistic means providing a compassionate resource for all beings.
Always forgetting, or separating out, the flying imagery—its conveyance of Futurity—up until now I tended to think of that bellicose dream imagery as relating to some war out of the past. But as I’ve just returned to Cambodia, after spending a majority of 2025 in India and Nepal, I realize this particularly rich dream series was always a prophecy. The current and ongoing incursion by Thailand confirms this.
1/1/2026
About this incursion cum invasion, it should be known contemporary Thai people come from the Sukhothai, who were rebellious descendants from Southern China, and are once again expressing hegemonic compulsions toward Khmer indigenous culture and its amazing shrinking territory in the modern era. Recycling its tired and desperate revisionist history—as its tourist attractions literally go under water—new distortions concerning July 27th and more recents aggressions flood the zone, spewing out of the Anutin ghost government and its supporters. The competitive Democratic Party is also pushing grievances, saying the Thai deserve more of just about everything, playing into hopeful gains of Khmer wealth, not only cultural and territorial, but of rare earths and oil. While a second peace agreement has been signed post-Christmas 2025, playing well to a concerned international community, the current foreign minister telegraphed a couple of worrisome signs, like avoiding looking directly into the eyes of the adversary during the signing, and also pushing for a clause where any shooting starting in the proceeding 72 hours nullifies the agreement. This last demand smacks of easy Israeli false flag operations against the Palestinians.
There’s several mitigating factors to peace and so these questions need to be answered: Are there mineral or energy deposits, or even ‘rare earths’ near Theravāda-protected ruins/Prasats? Or at the Land border of the Preah Vihear / Dangrek temple belt? Answer: Strongest evidence is for iron ore and long-term ironworking nearby, but not rare earths at or around the temples. Evidently, it’s a claim much harder to substantiate with ‘high-quality sources’. Or leakers amongst informants. Phnom Dek (‘Iron Mountain’) in Preah Vihear province is repeatedly cited as a significant iron-ore area, and archaeometallurgical work ties the broader region to historic iron production networks.
The Temple of Preah Vihear is a UNESCO property with a large buffer zone (UNESCO lists property area and buffer-zone size), which matters because resource projects near a World Heritage site raises governance and regulatory-friction questions even when development happens outside the legally defined core monument footprint.
On the Thai side, the temple escarpment abuts protected terrain with Khmer ruins in places like Khao Phra Wihan National Park, which creates a second legal-protection layer across the border—an agency with different laws.
Bottom line concerning land is that it’s plausible mineral prospectivity (especially iron) is one economic ‘undertow’ around the temple belt—but it mixes with tourism access, nationalism, and unresolved boundary demarcation. Both Cambodian and Thai property/oversight authorities are sufficiently legally separated, on paper. Both states have heritage-protection laws and designated authorities that (in principle) constrain construction, excavation, or alteration in protected zones. Cambodia: has a dedicated Law on the Protection of Cultural Heritage (1996) in the legal record. Thailand: has the Act on Ancient Monuments, Antiques, Objects of Art and National Museums (1961), with permitting powers vested in heritage authorities (Fine Arts Department framework is widely documented). And remember that UNESCO-listed Preah Vihear has defined property and buffer parameters and ongoing management-plan expectations.
In practice however, especially in disputed border zones, separation is often not ‘sufficient.’ Even with separate laws, three structural problems weaken clean separation:
1. Sovereignty and line-of-control ambiguity where the border remains contested or politically disputed, as the problem becomes which agency has final authority. Which then becomes contestable, even as ICJ rulings address core points. Because enforceability is uneven, you get hegemonic flare up as disputes about adjacent areas persist in public politics. 2. Multi-agency overlap of Heritage, mining/energy, environment (EIA), security, and provincial administration all touch the same terrain. Thailand’s EIA system and mining-impact frameworks show how “non-heritage” ministries can drive projects that still affect heritage landscapes. 3. Cross-border externalities, as even if each country’s laws are ‘separate,’ impacts are not: access roads, tourism flows, security closures, and any extraction-related pollution or labor movement cross the social boundary easily.
In Southeast Asia (especially Cambodia and Thailand), this wording is very standard in heritage-law, ADB / World Bank safeguard documents, and UNESCO monitoring reports. It points to a very specific legal–ritual–sovereignty tension:
• Core Monument Zone (protected by national heritage law)
• Buffer Zone (protected by UNESCO inscription conditions)
• Extended Cultural Landscape (not always legally protected, but culturally and ritually integral)
2/1/2026
At Angkor, Preah Vihear, Sambor Prei Kuk, and similar sites, the ‘monument’ was never conceived as an isolated building. It was designed as the visible center of an intentionally ordered ritual, cosmological, and territorial field—a mandalic landscape that historically organized religious practice, water systems, settlement patterns, and royal sovereignty across a much larger area.
Even when construction occurs outside a monument’s formally demarcated footprint, it may still require international review, because the World Heritage inscription recognizes not only the stone structures themselves but the wider sacred and cultural landscape that gives them meaning.
This broader field is therefore part of what is being protected, even if modern cadastral law — which treats land as divisible parcels rather than as integrated cultural systems — does not fully capture that reality.
The persistent diplomatic, legal, and sovereignty disputes surrounding these sites arise precisely from this mismatch: modern property law recognizes only bounded plots of land, while heritage law recognizes an extended cultural and sacred landscape whose integrity depends on the coherence of the whole field, not merely on the preservation of individual stones.
For the past ten years, I’ve blithely chosen to live in a Buddhist country that’s now at war with its sister sasana. Nothing is sadder. Especially as the two countries share the same Theravada roots. As fellow Theravada fight each other at holy hostels (like preah vihear), what first of all would the Buddha say? And what has he actually said about feuding, causing harm, and splits amongst the Sangha? Most profoundly this:
“Victory breeds hatred.
The defeated live in pain.
Giving up victory and defeat, the peaceful live happily.” **
And that when there is conflict between sangha—which is precisely what Thai and K’mai people are to each other, then:
“You are burning your own refuge.”
Furthermore, fighting in holy places, harming fellow Buddhists, dividing the Saṅgha —
is not merely “unfortunate.” It is defined in the Canon as a direct road to spiritual ruin.
Vinaya principle dictate that ‘Schism is stopped by truth-finding, confession, and communal consensus’—not by power, threats, or retaliation. In an ideal world—or a realistic Buddhist one—The Six-Step Vinaya Resolution would be followed:
1. Face-to-Face Reconciliation (sammukhā-vinaya)
Bring the parties together; clarify the issue in the presence of both sides.
2. Investigation of Facts (sati-vinaya)
Establish what was actually said/done, with witnesses if needed.
3. Recognition of Error (amūḷha-vinaya)
Confirm that any mistaken action was done without malicious intent.
4. Voluntary Admission (paṭiññāta-karaṇa)
The party at fault openly acknowledges the error.
5. Communal Admonition (yebhuyyasikā-kamma)
If denial persists, the Saṅgha issues a formal admonition by majority decision.
6. Restorative Act & Re-acceptance
Appropriate confession/rehabilitation is completed; harmony is formally restored.
Or, at the very least, The Six Roots of Harmony (Cha Sārāṇīyā Dhammān or ‘The Buddha’s Formula for Living Together in Peace’ As: “These six create harmony, unity, and concord within the Saṅgha.”
1. Loving bodily conduct — non-violence, respectful behavior
2. Loving speech — no insults, no slander
3. Loving mental attitude — goodwill even in disagreement
4. Shared ethical discipline — one Vinaya, practiced together
5. Shared noble view — right view as common ground
6. Sharing of rightful gains — fair distribution, no exploitation **
Notes:
* “Etymologically, Thangka is made up of two words: (ཐང་) thang – meaning “”’open space,’ and ka (ཀ/བཀའ) – meaning “object,” “doctrine,” or ‘teaching of the Buddha.’ In other words, it refers to the recorded message or documentation of the Buddha’s teachings.”(‘Tibetan for Everyone’ sourced.)
** Dhp 201
*** Source: MN 48; AN 6.11; Vinaya
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