Angkor Wat

“Mountains are cosmological symbols of the divine—human meeting, as well as the point of creation—creation of community as well as cosmos. Depending upon the era, culture, and text, the cosmological emphasis on the mountain might be one or more of the following: the assembly place of the gods, the connection between heaven and earth, the center/navel of the earth (and thus the locus of creation), the locus of revelation.” — Donaldson, Terence L., Jesus on the Mountain. A Study in Matthean Theology.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
— Chinese proverb.

From Borobudur, my research lead me to consider other locations dedicated to conveying religion through architecture and the pedestrian experience. Spaces that are associated with mountains, that are mystical, that have the power to draw crowds, and which were made for spiritual purposes and for the benefit of the pilgrim and to help in enlightenment.

“The mountains ... are a passive mystery, the oldest of all. Theirs is the one simple mystery of creation from nothing, of matter itself, anything at all, the given. Mountains are giant, restful, absorbent. You can heave your spirit into a mountain and the mountain will keep it, folded, and not throw it back as some creeks will. The creeks are the world with all its stimulus and beauty; I live there. But the mountains are home.” — Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Angkor Wat was next. Obviously the mountain is embedded deeply in the architectural iconography. Mount Meru is conjured up as is the procession of a mandala, from the profane into the sacred. The fusion in south east Asia of animism, Hinduism, and Buddhism, into these shrines, temples, mandalas, and processions weaves history and culture and creativity together into living rites of passage that keep alive older pilgrimages and history and refer back in time to other spaces and countries. knowledge is stored in these paths, but reading is also untangling and sifting. the threads are so intertwined and complex.


Following on the footpath of research from Thailand’s Wat Tham Sua (Tiger Cave Temple) and the work into the Nalanda trail— the spread of Buddhism into south east Asia— while focusing on the walking experience as physical communication, and while continuing the mountain research from Sisyphus to Borobudur and the mythical Mount Meru, I spent a week in February 2008 GPS mapping and absorbing Angkor Wat.

Angkor Wat, located at 13Δ˚24’45”N, 103˚52’0”E is a unique combination of the temple mountain, the standard design for the empire’s state temples, the later plan of concentric galleries, and influences from Orissa and the Chola of Tamil Nadu, India. The temple is a representation of Mount Meru, the home of the gods: the central quincunx of towers symbolises the five peaks of the mountain, and the walls and moat the surrounding mountain ranges and ocean.

The spaces however do not end as metaphors that are simply physical duplicates of a physical or mythical mountains, they also become representations of centers of the universe:


omphalos:
in Greek and Roman religion, navel-shaped stone used in the rites of many cults. The most famous omphalos was at Delphi; it was supposed to mark the center of the earth.” — The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2001-07.

“Along the southeast Asian peninsula, mountains were regarded as sacred territories as early as three thousand years ago. As sources of water, and therefore of agricultural fertility, mountains were the subject of reverence and ritual celebration. But as burial sites, these same mountains inspired ore profound questions of death, impermanence and the fragile balance between humankind and the forces which could destroy fields, crops, families, and on occasions, entire generations living in villages which were swept away by floods and landslides falling from neighboring slopes. Given this reverence in which mountains were perceived, ancient peninsula civilizations such as the Cambodian Funan people of the second century AD, enthroned their sovereigns and emperors on these mountain summits. Indeed, the word Funan can be translated as either Sacred Mountain, or King of the Mountains. Following the downfall of the Funan, the Khmer dynasty began to spread it’s civilization from Cambodia in the ninth century to govern most of southeast Asia over the next six hundred years.” — Adrian Cooper, Sacred Mountains, Ancient Wisdom and Modern Meaning.
The Khmer people continued to draw inspiration form local mountains, in fact building their cities and temples either with respect to the views, in alignment with, or in reference to local and mythological mountains. They too, called themselves kings of the mountain. By becoming the mountain, these rulers direct the gaze of their people. They are the center. Their capital and magnet. The man-made peaks beckon the faithful and center the pilgrims both to look inward — at their rulers and their monuments and their direct descent from mountains, and outward from a common home from where they go and return on longer pilgrimages. These metaphorical mountains, the palaces and temples of the mountain rulers of Angkor Wat, Burma, Java, and Bali give their visitors religion, history, culture, and guides towards spiritual attainment towards a larger pilgrimage of the life well lived as a Hindu or Buddhist. So the monuments are mountains of knowledge as well as physical metaphors for the mountains they represent. This is a universal metaphor:

“It was common in the ancient Near East to construct temples and altars with mountain symbolism.The religious center is thus accorded cosmic significance. That is, the mountain-temple or temple-mount—especially in the political capital—manifests a divine sanction, a sacral quality, and thus a relationship to the cosmos which other places do not possess. — Clements, R. E., God and Temple.

“Besides natural mountains, the ziggurats of Mesopotamia and the Canaanite temples were constructed as sacred meeting places between humans and the gods, as gateways to the heavens, as divine thrones, and likely also as altars: that is, locations for the enactment of ritual at or upon the axis mundi.Egyptian pyramids also bore this cosmological significance. In the inscriptions found in the pyramids of Mer-ne-Re and Nefer-ka-Re (both Sixth Dynasty, 24th century BCE), an analogy is made between the primeval hill that emerged from the watery chaos at creation and the building of the pyramid. — Wilson, John A., 1969 “Egyptian Myths, Tales, and Mortuary Texts.”

So in the manmade mountains we receive a sense of identity as far as group. we belong to a larger unit. and yet beyond the immediate connections to our community we also are guided through visual narratives along the designed pedestrian experience that allude to grander pilgrimages, meta journeys of life. Angkor Wat alludes to the Ramayana and Mount Meru and Mt Kailash. Borobodur to Mt Sumeru and the the way towards the life of a Buddha. These created axis mundi, mountain centers are centers and also guides. The pilgrim can then absorb the lessons and head north.

“And often, guarding and overlooking the man-made omphalos, generally to the north of it in the direction from which disruptive forces are traditionally supposed to emanate, is found a lone, conical mountain. It’s mythological prototype is the mountain at the centre of the world. The chief god of the pantheon resides there, presiding awesomely over the rituals in his sanctuary below. The traditional sacred landscape,
— John Mitchell, At the Center of the World, Polar Symbolism Discovered in Celtic, Norse and other Ritualized Landscapes

So when we seek a mountain, or enlightenment, as the Chinese like equate the two, we seek our own center. The pilgrim goes physically on a quest to a location that represents the center of a universe, the universe as a whole, but also the center of the pilgrim. By moving outward we somehow move inward. By seeking we see ourselves from a new perspective, and in many of the instances that have been examined, that persepctive is one of centering the pilgrim at the heart of the mandala. The axis mundi within.

There’s no Discouragement,
Shall make him once relent,
His first avow’d intent,
To be a Pilgrim.
— John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress.