My Khmer past meets my inner skeptic (and clubs her straight on the face)

I keep having dreams of Khmer Rouge, running through forests in eastern Cambodia, and Vietnamese guerillas. The sun is hot, the forest is hot, everyone's sweaty. At least I'm sweaty. And scared, like hell. We all carry guns. I don't know the name of my gun; probably I didn't know it then either. I wonder what I knew. Not much, as I wasn't very old. Maybe ten, maybe twelve. A boy, I was.

Dreams come from different plains, and it's often impossible to trace their origin. These dreams, however, the Khmer dreams, were awoken by reading Tiziano Terzani's book A Fortune-teller Told Me. It's an awesome book. The writer is a correspondent for Der Spiegel in Asia, having lived there for decades. Some time at 70's he meets a fortune-teller and is told not to fly on year 1993. He has almost twenty years to ponder if he should take it seriously or not, and on the last moment decides not to fly on that year. He even manages to deal with his employers that he will only write earthbound stories on that year. As an experiment, he goes to a fortune-teller in every city he visits, to hear his fortune told and to ask about the prophecy. It's absolutely intriguing to read how his scepticism slowly vanishes and how, by meeting monks, shamans, fortune-tellers, he finds new perspectives on existence.

Having studied and practiced Buddhist teachings for years, I have myself dwelled in a Zen temple in Japan and in a forest monastery in the south of Thailand, visited numerous temples wherever I've travelled, and practiced Vipassana meditation daily for years. On the path further from the western skepticism, my thoughts have often followed the same ways as Terzani's. And on my way I've encountered all kind of views to Buddhist teachings.

One of them, and in a way a really interesting one, is the attitude one regularly encounters among westerners who practice meditation. (I should say western men, as I've never met a woman who would say such things without hesitation.) It's the so called scientific approach to Buddhism.

The goal of Buddhist practice is to see things as they really are and through this knowledge be liberated of all suffering. Because no faith in any supernatural phenomena is called for, it suits perfectly for a person of "scientific" upbringing who realizes there's something wrong with the world but either doesn't want or isn't able to see through what he's learned to believe. (I use scientific in quotation marks, because often this worldview is quite far of those of the ever-experimenting scientists.) In a way there's nothing wrong with this: after all it's just one approach and not more right or wrong than any other. Problems arise, however, if one is not ready to let his inherited worldview go. And this does happen a lot.

The idea of Buddhism is that you do not have to, or should, believe anything that you do not experience by yourself to be true. In Pali canon three different kinds of wisdom are listed: one learned (sutamayā paññā), one reflected (cintāmayā paññā) and one experienced (bhāvanāmayā paññā). That is, you may hear something that sounds wise; you may ponder upon it and come to a conclusion it is wise; but you should not believe it unless you have in your own body-mind experienced that it is wise and true. Which is exactly what is often missing in Western thought. And not even just missing—totally underrated and looked down upon. (I could give a bunch of examples of this, but just think how little value your own account of your pains and sensations has when visiting a doctor.)

As a consequence, experiences not fitting to the "scientific" idea of what is true are ignored. The idea that our experiences mean nothing if they are not scientifically proved, is so deeply rooted to our understanding of ourselves and the world that we don't believe what we see or feel, if it anyhow strays from what we have been taught. And this inner skeptic with his/her nasty voice keeps telling us that our own, sensation-based experiences of reality simply do not count.

I often try to to hit this inner skeptic on a face with a club. That would serve her right. But at times she still manages to raise her head, informing me that nothing I experience is true unless a scientist proves it. And then I don't believe what is clear and in front of my eyes. And even more often, she tells me not to believe what someone else has experienced. Like I was the only one who can have a direct experience to things as they are!

It also happens that I keep quiet of things I know to be true, because they do not fit to this "scientific" idea of our world and it's frustrating to encounter other people's inner skeptics. And yet, not telling about it doesn't change it that I do remember my life before.

As you may already guess, it was in Cambodia. I was a child and I lost my mother in a bombing. I remember some places—shacks with metal roofs, the color of the ground, leaves on the ground. I remember how my mother was gone and I had to get by all alone; I remember the fear and how I looked for edible rubbish and tried to find a place to stay for a night.

Memories have come in bits. Two and half years ago, my parents sold the house where I grew up, with very little consulting or interest towards my feelings. After the usual sadness and anger, this woke up a terrible fear. I was so terrified I couldn't get anything done and had to take a sick-leave for two whole months. I was trembling. 'A fear of what, this strong?' I would ask myself. And one day, walking home from a nurse I was regularly seeing, I decided to follow the fear—just to feel it, instead of fearing the fear.

And there I was, in the middle of this bombed village, my mother gone, pieces of rooftops everywhere. Later, on a meditation course, I remembered much more.

But I also remember how, in this life, in 2007, I arrived in Phnom Penh airport. I remember the first ride on a motocycle through shacks and shelters homeless people had built for them on suburbs, and how I felt: I had come home. Yet I don't remember anyone else having this feeling on arrival: they were simply paralyzed of what they saw. (They all said the same thing, 'These people are, just, so, rootless.')

And now these dreams have come. While they are very vivid and I can sense and smell the jungle, see the sweat on the necks of guerillas, hear the sound of the faint wind on leaves of the trees, and the sun is bright, bright, bright—I still can't tell the plot of what is happening. I wake up in a hot jungle, slowly realizing that it is another life in a suburb of Helsinki and the room gradually takes shape around me. I get up and sit on a chair, waiting for the dream to disappear as they tend to do. But when I go back to sleep, it continues from where it was left.

I can even point the part of my body where these memories are stored. My Khmer past. I almost wish my inner skeptic would wake up and rationalize these dreams away. And she does try. But she can only give me weak arguments I know not to be true.

This leaves one question I'm not ready to answer yet. When I died—I was still a child then—I was born again in a wealthy country into a loving family with all the possibilities to do good. And not only that. I was lucky enough to be led back to the meditation technique that helps me to see things clearer. At times the true happiness beyond all the fear shows me signs of how happy one could be. Truly happy.

I am this lucky.

So, the question is: what can I do for those who stayed? Who didn't die fearing, but who had to continue living in fear. What?