On Friday, the day of contemplating the paramita of dana (generosity), an American man tells me how he always tips here, even though it’s not part of Cambodian culture. He says people appear “very subservient afterward,” which he takes as a sign of their appreciation. For him, the $1.50 that rounds his bill up to $5 is nothing. To them, the 42% tip is the price tag of another full meal. I wonder if his attempts at generosity actually undermine their sense of healthy pride and dignity. He points to his driver who is sitting across the table from him and says “I mean, in a week, I’ll be home. And he will still be here, struggling.” I wince and look at the young man. He smiles and asks why I’m eating alone.
On Monday, the day of contemplating the paramita of virya (exertion), I refuse to get up in the morning. I sleep until 6 and drink coffee and read memoir for 4 hours. I bike to Angkor at sunset instead. I give myself a hard time until I remember that rest is the fourth support for developing exertion.
On Tuesday, the day of contemplating the paramita of dhyana (meditation), I contemplate my refuge name. I think about what it is to be self-sustaining. I skip my morning session of combing through Naropa readings to prime my mind for this job so that I can bike the 40 km large circuit. A school boy asks me for money and I say no. I start to cry while meditating at the reclining Buddha in Baksei Chamkrong. “Miss, are you okay?” I thought I was alone at the top of these steep stairs but he has climbed them, too. With my back still to him I say yes, I just feel sad sometimes. When I step out onto the landing an hour later, he is biking away on the ground below and blows me a kiss.
On the last day, the day of contemplating prajna, I throw the whole thing out and take a motorcycle to a waterfall and the Lady Temple. Before I go, I treat myself to a $4 breakfast of coffee, mango juice, french toast, fried noodles, and dragonfruit. In the late afternoon, I walk to Pub Street and a tuk tuk driver laughs when he overhears me say “crazy white people everywhere” to myself. This town is so flooded with tourists that, as one of them, genuine connection feels hard to form with people who live here. Everything is about money. My stomach hurts as I observe my mind starting to automatically use what little data it has collected this week to form a gestalt of Cambodians as opportunistic. Without prajna, the other five paramitas are incomplete. Until the actions are infused with and informed by the intelligence of prajna— the sword that cuts through confusion — the five preceding virtuous actions cannot be transcendental.
I buy a few pouches of tea to bring to Bhutan as gifts. I buy two colors of the same silk blouse and two colors of the same silk pants. I have my uniform. The woman who sells me the tea says that people from China are the worst about bargaining and haggling.
A friend recommends a bar in town and I meet La La, the bartender who he asks me to say hello to for him. There are beds hanging from ropes and she makes me a delicious Coco Russian. Until her boss tells her to get back to work, we chat about the importance of having a sense of humor and not taking ourselves too seriously. I have an hour to kill before she gets off work and we will go out to dance. We will have a few beers and eat some street food and talk about how we always want men who are bad for us. She will drop me home at 4 am and I will catch a bus 3 hours later.
From my swing bed, I watch a group of 20 rowdy Australians sitting at the table in front of me learning how to make Khmer cocktails from La La’s sister. At one point they sing “aww skeet skeet mother fucker” in unison. What is it with that song?
Nelly from France sits down next to me while she waits for the bathroom. “Yoo have your own pkhrrrivate show here,” she says playfully and I tell her that is just what I’ve been thinking. She asks what I’m up to and we end up talking about surrender and path. I say something about letting go, trusting that the universe would catch me. The bathroom is free now and she says, “Sank yoo for ze message. It is ze perfect one for me at zis moment.”
On the 28th, picking up my visa at the embassy in Phnom Penh takes ten minutes too long and I miss my bus. I find a minivan leaving soon and buy a ticket. After a few minutes, the woman tells me that the van is full and gives my money back. Seeing my distress, the man makes a call on his cell phone and says, “You take taxi, come,” and puts me in a tuk tuk. The decisions are being made without me now and I hold on tight. The streets become more and more Cambodian, white people and English letters disappearing from the landscape. Suddenly a swarm of men engulfs the tuk tuk and the driver hands my bag to the one who fought his way to the front. He puts it in his trunk, which is quadruple-parked in a tetris-like gridlock. Fifteen dollars, he says, and I give it to him. Fifteen minutes, he says, and disappears. These words will comprise just about half of his entire English vocabulary.
I sit on a plastic chair on the sidewalk and twenty five minutes go by. A man chuckles at the simple sight of me and offers me a cigarette and even though I hate the way they smell and taste, I smoke one because I’m feeling nervous. Looking at the two stuffed animals in the back window of the parked “taxi” (it’s an unmarked Corolla) relaxes me a little. The cigarette just gives me a headache.
About an hour into the drive, the man in the passenger seat gets out and the driver invites me to sit up front. I pull out pistachios and brown pods with sweet fruit inside and we share them. He teaches me Khmer and we shake on being friends. Mut sam lhaing. Chjah. The beach is 4 hours away from the city — and it takes another hour for us to find the dark bungalow at 11 pm — and his blinkers stay on the whole time.
The place I booked online is far away from the beach so the next morning I walk until I find one that is built right on the sand. I meet Nozzi and tell her I’d like to stay for boon yoop (three nights). She tells me to drink a coconut because my skin is too warm to her touch. The walls are made of straw and the door is made of 2x6s. I lie down on the bed and all my muscles let go.
There’s a perfect breeze and I laugh aloud about how many times along the journey here I was wishing I could change something — a decision I made, a turn I took, money I spent, or the timing of something. I’m laughing now because I wouldn’t change a single thing that has come before this moment in my life. I feel the breeze that moves through my own body and I flash on basic goodness but it’s not a thought this time like it usually is — it’s a feeling. I breathe in this feeling of basic goodness and then I remember how sending and taking should ride the breath. Above me there are pink lotus flowers printed on the mosquito netting that is hung taught from the four upper corners of the room. I breathe in ego — claustrophobic, constricted, hot. I breathe out the simple and clear cool breeze of “basically good.”
