Trees and Temples: The Great Non-Duality

Terence Stone

Siem Reap, Cambodia

Tree Roots Over Entrance To Ta Prom

 

After reading the story of Nhiem Chun, a labourer, who in 1941 worked on the restoration of temples in Siem Reap, I was looking forward to visiting Ta Prohm, a temple still un-reclaimed from nature that he undertook to care for in loving custody from 1942 onward. He was interviewed by the BBC in 2006 for the Television series, Imagine: Who Cares About Art. After visiting most of the sites in the area, my interest grew deeper into Nhiem's “lives” (for he believed he may have been a builder of Ta Prohm in a previous incarnation) and those of these ancient buildings, like the roots and branches of aged trees slowly insinuating themselves into their histories—their nooks, crannies, and foundation fissures, through doorways and windows. What are the limits and responsibilities of preservation; and can it be carried too far with the technologies at hand and ill-considered motives that may blindly drive this project in Siem Reap?

Over a period of sixty-five years Nhiem Chun regularly turned up at Ta Prom to undertake the unpaid work of sweeping away the leaves that fell and blew around the temple as nature’s cycles dictated. I have no doubt the Buddhist principle of impermanence was never far from the mind of this holy man. How could it have been when, between 1975 and 1979, he was removed from his home and beloved temple by the Khmer Rouge into forced labour under their brutal regime? How could it have been when his two beloved sons were separated from him, only for him to discover after "liberation" that they were victims of extermination, their throats slit with sharpened sugar-palm fronds? How could impermanence have been far from Nhiem’s consciousness as he returned to the perpetual mundane task of sweeping the leaves and loving Ta Prohm as he had done for the previous thirty-three years through seasons unceasing?

Tree Roots Over Rear Entrance To Ta Prom

 

Sweeping…sweeping…sweeping the leaves with his grass broom and never once—although I’m sure it was within Nhiem’s power—attempting to cut out the roots or branches of invading trees from their natural proclivity to find places of sunlight, moisture, and food in and through the beautiful, ancient temple stonework of Ta Prohm. With what wisdom did he anoint his task to tidying the incredible beauty of the new life and slow decay he witnessed through the decades? The splitting of a wall; sticky buds of spring leaves bursting into rioting green; a fallen pillar; the fragrant, spiraling blooms of temple flowers opening in their own brief puja to the divinity of change; vines to grace and loosen lintels.



Someone with a keen eye for the art of nature also found Ta Prom and so it featured in the movie Tomb Raiders (2001); and with it the anonymity of Nhiem was broken. But the BBC discovered a story more important to be told than could ever be scripted in Hollywood; it was the dedication and humility of a pious aging man who I believe made no distinction between nature and manufactured art—it was all of a piece; no dualities. By the time of his interview he was tired and bent, but still about his daily sweeping. The following year he put aside his broom with the full knowledge of his own impermanence and the beauty of his own place in the cycle of time and died in 2009, aged 87, in the village of Rohal, near Siem Reap, watched over by his family.



A life like Nhiem’s has a way of encroaching on the lives of others lived distantly because all who have the will to reflect on the way he lived knows that what he took on as a life-purpose wasn’t pointless—it was filled with simple prayer and hope that eased aside the brutal project of the Khmer Rouge as surely as nature eased aside the gigantic accomplishments of Ta Prohm’s twelfth-Century masons. The loss of his own two sons, the land-mining of the temple sites by the Khmer Rouge, the brutality and destruction that reigned across Cambodia for a moment in history depresses; but Nhiem Chun’s life uplifts in its dedicated simplicity. It has the power to transform if one permits it to. I couldn’t visit Ta Prohm and other sites without seeing through a new pair of glasses what he may have seen; I was left with a deeper appreciation of things left undisturbed by the hubris apparent in the extent of restorations in progress to satisfy tourism-as-commodity.



Ta Prom is much as it was in 2007 when Nhiem was too frail to continue sweeping. Perhaps others understood his purpose, or are faced with the intuitive discomfort I felt in contemplating the “restoration” of this temple, which becomes more sacred with each new root that finds a home here. I know that Nhiem’s work is not forgotten; when we arrived for our visit we came upon the parody of about fifteen young people with the same grass brooms that Nhiem used; each of them standing around looking more bewildered than busy—fifteen young sweepers without the sense of purpose or the mentorship of Nhiem, that venerable old custodian. But if one of them could just listen carefully to the floors and walls of Ta Prom when the tourists depart for the day and the only sound is the whisper of fallen leaves, I’m sure his spirit will always be there to guide.



Certain edifices that naturally escaped nature’s powerful intrusions are evident and invite renovations at the level of manicure to that of moderate rebuilding—much of it to restore architectural features pillaged on behalf of people wealthy enough to buy history; perhaps the propping and securing of a leaning wall, or buttressing of a collapsing arch. But one hardly needs to spend much time to appreciate where nature has entered into an inseparable partnership with the beauty of a building. At Preah Khan it was nothing less than shocking to see an ancient tree at one with the stonework on which it had grown, and into which it had sent deeply its roots, felled ten feet up its trunk—left pale and dead like a corpse draped on a wall.

Tree Corpse At Preah Khan 

Other sites in which trees had become a part of the artisans' work were several. Near PhimeanakasTemple we saw stonework magnificently held in an embrace by a great tree. At the bridge of Spean Thma the stonework was beautifully draped and overgrown with tree roots. At Banteay Kder Temple, a gigantic tree foregrounds and dwarfs the structure. Ta Som Temple entrance is delicately arched and draped with sinuous roots. One hopes that as the work of reclamation and restoration continues, great consideration can be given to the legacy of Nhiem Chun and the artistic status of nature itself.

Nancy, My Partner, Holding Hands and Talking With A Tree Person (See It?)