Exploring Thailand and Cambodia

A university professor once visited a Zen teacher in search of more information about Buddhism. The teacher offered him a cup of tea, which the professor willingly accepted. Then the teacher started pouring tea in the cup, continuing to pour even after the tea started overflowing. “Why don’t you stop when the tea is overflowing?” The professor asked, worried. The teacher answered: “Your mind is just like this cup – overflowing with your expectations and opinions. I can’t give you new information until you come with an empty cup”
~ Unknown
Cambodia (Seeking Siam Sept. 2019)
I admit we had reservations about visiting Cambodia; a country with a tragic past.
The Khmer Rouge 1975-1979 wasn’t that long ago and I felt sorrow with the realization that while I was in high school fretting over my inconsequential adolescent youth, the Cambodian people were being massacred and an entire culture destroyed.
Our local tour guide Soh did not or could not dwell on the topic. Soh had lost family like many of the Cambodian people and expressed hope that maybe someday he would be reunited with his loved ones. He then changed the subject by expressing that the Cambodian people don’t dwell on the past but live in the present and look towards the future.
~ Marla