Research Work at the Temple

The first picture is from our school room in Phnom Penh at the Royal University
The second picture is of the Vihear at the temple I am doing research on. Everything at my temple had to be rebuilt after the Pol Pot regime because it was destroyed during the war. One of the main objectives of the Khmer Rouge (also known as the Democratic Kampuchea, DK) was to eliminate Buddhism. They de-robed all of the monks and killed most of them. They bombed and destroyed many temples, and almost every Buddhist temple today is still in the process of rebuilding. The vihear is only used a few times out of the year for special occasions. Its walls are covered in Jataka tales, and the ceiling has an interesting influence of Buddhism and Brahmanism. The last picture is taken from the back entrance into the temple complex. Every temple has a pond as a symbol on many levels. The most common being that of the 7 oceans of Mount Meru. The structures you see are stupas which house the ashes of the deceased. Each stupa is built not by the temple's funding but from families, similar to a family grave yard we have in America.