The more I think of it, the stranger it is. It's as if our emotional mind is a fish, only remembering the last 8 seconds. Or maybe it’s the other way round, maybe fish are so relaxed because their emotional remembrance span is actually much longer than the human one. Which reminds me of a line out of "Groundhog day", this film with Bill Murray waking up every day in the same day. And one day says: maybe God isn't all knowing. Maybe it's just that he been here so long that he knows everything and anything.

Maybe that actually is what happens when you reach enlightment. That you remember. That it’s all suddenly apparent. Imagine that. Wuuuussshhh and all the memories are there, all the connections and relations are visible. And maybe meditation is just the training to make the mind able to take this move.

But now, where did these thoughts come from? I just wanted to write some little everyday lines about this shift of feelings from sadness to happiness. Maybe it was the documentation in TV on ancient ruins in Asia that woke my own memories of the temples of Angkor Wat, those temples that had been asleep in the jungle for centuries, hidden behind a blanket of leaves, to be rediscovered at the beginning of this century, twelve or fifteen temples, every one of them a sight itself: Angkor with its wall carvings, Bayon with its countless decorated pillars, the Elephant Terrace with its various levels, Neak Pean with its temple lake, or Baphuon, the Tower of Bronze.

"Angkor" Photograph by Dorothee Lang

And then, of course, Preah Khan—this temple complex that still is part of the jungle. The caretakers of the temple park decided to cut away only the trees that blocked the entrances. The other trees are still here, their leafy crowns rise high in the air like pillars, while their roots follow the roofs and walls of the temple. Thus, walking through the temple feels like walking through a fantasy world. And adding to this atmosphere is the fact that the temple is so huge that you walk through it for hours and still don't get the feeling that you've seen it all.

I still remember the afternoon I spent there, wandering through the endless concentric galleries that frame the central courtyard, resting in the shade of the carved walls, breathing in the temple air, trying to imagine how life was like when this place was still alive, eight hundred years ago. So difficult to imagine, such a huge span of time.

Another concept I tried to grasp there, in the shades of those old temples that once been Hindu temples, then later have been turned to Buddhist temples by replacing the statues: the idea of incarnation. Which is part of both religions, Hinduism and Buddhism. Thus, most of the people in Cambodia believe in rebirth - it is a part of their religion. And not only a dusty minor matter, but a very vivid and important one, as real as micro processors or macro economy. For them, there also is no such thing as coincidence. Everything that happens is related to karma, to the idea that every action causes a reaction, that every cause has an effect. That all is related. Everything.

An idea that is so huge, that it maybe takes some distance to the everyday moves to be able to relate to it. Some shadowed place in between ancient ruins. Some walks beneath silent symbols carved into stone. Beneath the eyes of Shiva, and the arms of Buddha. Beneath trees that have seen centuries come and go while they stood there, grounded in the earth, reaching for the sky, for the light.