CEOCambodiaNews wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 11:28 pm

Samana Johann wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 8:59 pm Societies don't act. Individuals act.

Monks on the march...
newsworthy/monks-eco-pilgrimage-save-ca ... 50013.html

They would do much lesser harm if going after their duties and practice the taught. You know, it's not a romantically thing this leaving society and non of them would be willing to take on hardships or even die in holding on precepts.
Please, it's of no use to promot naivity.
One who hasn't overcome sensual desire, yet not even has sufficient trust in Vinaya, is incapable to help anybody. Greedy, fearful, full of desires in the world, it's total improper to go into the forests.

Malaria-treads in the world origin from here, Covid has it's origin here, disastrous floods have their origin here, from the heart and host of the Gods and Devas, incl. the Naga mountain Kings.

five years ago, the center of the heart:



three month ago



90% isn't used other than to be claimed by individuals, cleared with money from further deforestration, two times a year and annually set in flames. Once the 'poor' have cut off the mountains as well, big companies will buy it off and if lucky the might work for low salery. Common people are not capable to live with nature, today not even able to do farming for their own living independently, not willing to give at first place.

Invaded and destroyed one gets invaded and cast away. Suffering increases, heat increases, depencency and bond increases. What ever land engaged in aggressive agricultural is most engaged and victim of war. It's not the culture of the Khema (peaceful, Khmer) but just a collective eating away of scared heritage for a painful and fast decay.

The thing is if one loses respect, if one does not abstain from evil any more, all follow. It's the law of plunder that arises when fear of authoritys and Sublime decays.

One is able to abstain himself, able to encourage others to abstain and disapprove harmful, and respect authorities and Sublime, reduce ones desires for Sensuality, seeing the backward and short pleasure in it.

It's really not about 100, 200 ha. 10.000's of ha are destroyed right next, once plunder is given place and respect fades... actually the very last Kings land, the tiny rest of a unique culture.

Samana Johann wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 8:59 pm Societies don't act. Individuals act, good householder.

I guess collective bargaining, mass hysteria and mob justice never existed, then?

Anchor Moy wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 1:44 am

orichá wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 8:00 pm Cambodia is a rich-bully society. The poor keep quiet... The forests are already dead meat...

Choose your battles.
As far as I can work out, the only way to save what is left of Cambodian nature/trees/wildlife has to be done by working with the system, since anything that is, or that appears to be, in competition with the system gets shot down.
For sure it's a fine line, but things like this support from the government gives some hope for environmentalists: post546266.html#p546266

Spoiler:

Implies that the Cambodian government do care about their environmental image outside of Cambodia - at least a little bit.

Working with the system does not work, at all. So, I have to disagree and point out some contradictory facts of the matter...

First, your link shows the example of a foreign environmental activist, Mr. Ben Davis, being rewarded by the government, which is window dressing if compared to government reactions to other much more well-known local activist groups, particularly the Mother Earth activists, four of whom were jailed not long ago; their incarceration has nothing to do with their involvement with a certain Spanish gentleman, but actually because they had become a potent and popular group among the broad mass of ordinary Cambodian society. Their messaging was heard by thousands. On the other hand, few if any Cambodian locals know anything at all about the work of Ben Davis. But thousands and thousands of ordinary Cambodian people were watching Mother Earth's videos exposés, which covered topics from sewage dumping in Sihanoukville to deforestation and sand dredging.

The Mother Earth activists were suppressed exactly because the government strategy is basically to silence any expansion of consciousness among the general population about the contradictions between ostensible policy and actual practices. That's all. It's not a complicated hypocrisy, but it is overt, threatening, vicious and intentional. The government aims to keep the people totally in the dark. Basically, they don't want ordinary folks to know anything about the specifics of the huge deals between government/family proxies and the tycoons, some foreign, who have leased/bought up vast tracts (Botum Sakor Park and Ream Park, for example) or the foreign state entities, which were awarded huge concessions for rice farming-export in exchange for bridge building, etc... The government does not want the people to know how a few top dogs have become grossly enriched from selling out the country... Cambodian corruption is simple.

...The best illustration of how things on the ground play out with regard to small-scale timber theft, as opposed to the wholesale razing in Botum Sakor, is the role played by the regional military police and the local forestry park officers. The MPs are responsible for preventing the export of illegally harvested timber products and the forestry officers are responsible for catching poachers of all kinds. But it is well-known that many MPs and some forestry officers have colluded with exporters of timber for ages. On occasion, the MPs detain a truck full of illicit wood, and they confiscate it and then hold it in their gov't yard; after they've accumulated enough, they turn around and auction all the timber off... Now, sometimes, a few brazen MPs, or those not well-connected enough, are busted for corruption. Meanwhile, the years pass, and little by a lot, the forests get plundered and sold across the borders to Vietnamese and Chinese merchants. Finally, a lot of land is cleared by individual farmers/settlers, which often goes unregulated.

Once, I met a group of forestry park officers on the way up the back trail into Kirirom National Park. We were lost and they showed us the right way, even helping lug my motorcycle off the bottom of a muddy creek bed after I accidentally tumbled two and a half metres from a little plank bridge. I asked them about their job. They told me simply that their job was to patrol the forests and intercept poachers who were trying to steal animals, trees -- everything. Two of the forestry officers were armed with old AK rifles. They were helpful and friendly, seeing as we were only dumb campers, not thieves. They were honest and honorable, and seemed to be really devoted to their duty. I wish it were that way with everyone in Cambodia... But power in Asia always comes from one or two steps above the ordinary guy, doesn't it?

Isn't it not the case that most of you have actually no idea of live as it 'really' is? One might be confused once finding out that ones pleasures are others pains, yet would one give them up, lead a vituose and renouncing life?

As long as part-taking ones voice is simply hypocratical and most hypocratical those activists with No-smoking sickers on their bikes and cars and maintaining all kind of pleasures...

There are no peaceful people found outside the Noble Eightfold path and the rest makes just choices for this or that fight, gain.

If there wouldn't be a unique chance of a unique culture, it wouldn't have been told, but as there is, it has been. And no, modern activism without any wisdom und understanding, helps nobody but increases just foolish conceit and conflicts.

So what are you willing to give up? That's what it means help your self first (to give) and not demand with full mouth other bites...

vivathedivas wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 9:20 am

Samana Johann wrote: ↑Thu Jun 09, 2022 8:59 pm Societies don't act. Individuals act, good householder.

I guess collective bargaining, mass hysteria and mob justice never existed, then?

Good householder would know for himself if having fallen into illusion or not. Nobody could do him do anything, either wise or foolish. As for wise and those with basic faith, such can not arise. Somehow that illusion goes that far that people think isn't possible that there is mass wisdom, mass goodness and much skilful choices... Even if 'hammer' good thinking into all screens, most will just wait for Maras suggestions anyway.

Whom would he go after? Slave of eyes, ears, nose, mouth, body and ideas, or already under control?

I don't see how this is surprising, as Cambodia has never cared about preserving forests. I've resigned myself to the fact that it's already too late as there's almost nothing left.

Bitte_Kein_Lexus wrote: ↑Fri Jun 10, 2022 1:04 pm I don't see how this is surprising, as Cambodia has never cared about preserving forests. I've resigned myself to the fact that it's already too late as there's almost nothing left.

Did good householder till now? Wouldn't he able to start right now? See, villagers had been very amazed seeing people jumping from one dirt hole to another, and search for similar fun... resigned dirt-biking or resigned sensual pleasures to help (by not getting involved in harmful).
And if Khmer wouldn't have cared (better abstain) it wouldn't be that it had last such a long.

But there are many, outward-founded, who tell them: you can (when buying my chain saw, grain, tractor...), told them to run hopless mono-cultur family plantation and make a living on animal treading... all of which is total not traditional and requires land occupation, yet with no gain as not capable to manage and to independently work.

One may correct my person, but good householder Ben was regional chief of an Australien missionary NGO, main employer, who would cancle the job of a whole family if one of them was seen to hunt of cut in his forest. It was by use of outwardly power that he could keep people in check for a while. If he fails to give further, it will be eaten off as well. It's not so that people have learned the pleasures of modesty and virtue at all and as soon as no more feed ordinary people usually eat their 'parents' off as well.

Samana Johann I was waiting a long time for an hopeful reply from you on another thread, the reply hopefully to my question! Was, simply, "is a western monk accepted by the society of Cambodia?"
Getting back to this thread, you can't seem to answer any questions, I think basically you will follow where your next bowl of rice is coming from. That is even if it may seems to be in the wrong vain. Apart from God creating this world and environment, or even nature if you are a none believer.
The land is being raped of what was once good, and too everyone's advantage, keeping the land in tact is beneficial to today's society and that of tomorrow.
Plus you seem to overlook the monies governments and charities put into the country too preserve the forest and it's wildlife.