Influences

Now for a little geography lesson. To get some perspective on where I am and what I am about to do, I checked the map. Here is Asia with the Indochinese Peninsula highlighted.

Zoom in a bit and we can see how close India is...

...to the Indochinese Peninsula...

You can see that Bankgok and Angkor are not far apart, perhaps 300 kilometers or so in a straight line. I'm in Chiang Mai, in the North, close to the border with Burma. The goal is Angkor Wat. 

The story of my fascination with Angkor Wat really goes back in time to the 60s. The Vietnam War was just heating up. But I knew about Angkor through my first real teacher.

My first spiritual preceptor was an old Chinese man, born in Indonesia. He had been a Buddhist monk before converting to Catholicism. I met him when I was just a kid, in California.

Just a kid, thinking about life...

I liked to think about things, and as I was growing up back in the sixties, I had a lot of questions. After our family moved to California, we lived in the Mohave Desert in a little town called Pearblossom. Close by was a Benedictine Monastery, St. Andrews Priory,  where I met this man.

Father Thaddeus Yang at Valyermo   http://www.saintandrewsabbey.com/category_s/79.htm

By this time, I was around 11 or 12 years old. In those days, the Benedictine monks were supposed to do some work or service apart from saying prayers and offering Mass. Father Yang used to make sculptures in driftwood. He would find an interesting tree branch fallen in the desert and sculpt it with a blow torch, finishing it with sandpaper and finally polish the work with the sweat of his fine oriental fingers. 

I would take long walks in the Mohave Desert, looking for cactus for my cactus collection, or rocks for my rock collection. At the end of the day, I would find Father Yang, standing over an enormous driftwood horse, his black monk's habit moving in the wind. In one hand he slowly waved his blow-torch over the wood. In the other was the ever-present cigarette. "Camels" was his preferred brand. He would weave the magic of fire and Chinese wisdom over the blasted wood as it gradually took shape. 

Driftwood horse

Then he would quench the flame of the blow-torch, drag on his Camel, and say "Yes, my son. How can I help you?" 

Somehow tea would appear and we would sit and sip the smokey Lapsang Souchong tea and discuss the secrets of the universe. I asked him, "How come Adam and Eve only have two children, Cain and Abel. And Cain kills Abel, so where do all the people come from?" He would smile wearily, puff on his cigarette, and say, "Ahh yes. But it never says there is only one Adam or one Eve. There may have been many Adams and many Eves. It's a metaphor, my child."

Father Yang always had me thinking. One day I asked him where he was from. He was Chinese, after all, but he had been born in Siem Reap, Cambodia. I had a lot of questions, so I pressed him to tell me more stories. He told the story of an ancient city where thousands of people came together with a spiritual purpose. He told me the story of Angkor.

Giant Head at Angkor.

It all seemed like science fiction at the time, but later we moved to the Pacific Palisades. My brothers and I would go to the beach,swim all day and hunt seaweed, underwater treasure,  and bottles we could return for the nickle deposit. If we returned 5 or 6 bottles we had enough for candy and a soda pop we could split. It was paradise.

We could walk to the beach from our house. We spent long hours playing on the beach and stayed in the water until we turned blue. But when I was interested in deeper things, I turned to another man who was a great mentor in my life. My Grandfather, Clinton Stoner.

Clinton Stoner

My grandfather was a mysterious man with a long career in Hollywood. He designed costumes and wardrobe for MGM and Warner Brothers back in the glory days of Hollywood. But one of the things that amazed me about my Grandfather was his library. He had thousands of books: UFOs, Dolphins, Telepathy, Telekineses, Lobsang Rampa, the Third Eye, Bhagavad-Gita, Edgar Cayce, the sleeping prophet, hundreds of old magazines called Fate Magazine, and a book by James Churchward on the Sunken Continent of Lemuria and the links between the Mexican Pyramids, Lost Lemuria, and the ancient city of Angkor Wat. I couldn't believe my eyes. Here were actual photos of the lost city spoken of by my eminent preceptor, Father Yang.

I was stunned. I began reading all the books I could on ancient civilizations: India, Greece, and Egypt. When the Tutankhamen exhibit came to the Los Angeles Museum of Art, I went again and again to visit. I saw the golden mask of the Egyptian boy-king. I wanted to know more about the original civilizations of this earth: how they saw the world, how they lived.
More later. Thanks for reading.