Learning Dhamma from Bill Gates

Remarks of Bill Gates
Harvard Commencement
(Text as prepared for delivery)
President Bok, former President Rudenstine, incoming President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, parents, and especially, the graduates:

I've been waiting more than 30 years to say this: "Dad, I always told you I'd come back and get my degree." I want to thank Harvard for this timely honor. I'll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume. I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I'm just happy that the Crimson has called me "Harvard's most successful dropout." I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class … I did the best of everyone who failed. But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I'm a bad influence. That's why I was invited to speak at your graduation. If I had spoken at your orientation, fewer of you might be here today.

Harvard was just a phenomenal experience for me. Academic life was fascinating. I used to sit in on lots of classes I hadn't even signed up for. And dorm life was terrific. I lived up at Radcliffe, in Currier House. There were always lots of people in my dorm room late at night discussing things, because everyone knew I didn't worry about getting up in the morning. That's how I came to be the leader of the anti-social group. We clung to each other as a way of validating our rejection of all those social people.

Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn't guarantee success. One of my biggest memories of Harvard came in January 1975, when I made a call from Currier House to a company in Albuquerque that had begun making the world's first personal computers. I offered to sell them software. I worried that they would realize I was just a student in a dorm and hang up on me. Instead they said: "We're not quite ready, come see us in a month," which was a good thing, because we hadn't written the software yet.

From that moment, I worked day and night on this little extra credit project that marked the end of my college education and the beginning of a remarkable journey with Microsoft. What I remember above all about Harvard was being in the midst of so much energy and intelligence. It could be exhilarating, intimidating, sometimes even discouraging, but always challenging. It was an amazing privilege – and though I left early, I was transformed by my years at Harvard, the friendships I made, and the ideas I worked on. But taking a serious look back … I do have one big regret. I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world – the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.

I learned a lot here at Harvard about new ideas in economics and politics. I got great exposure to the advances being made in the sciences. But humanity's greatest advances are not in its discoveries – but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity – reducing inequity is the highest human achievement. I left campus knowing little about the millions of young people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.

It took me decades to find out. You graduates came to Harvard at a different time. You know more about the world's inequities than the classes that came before. In your years here, I hope you've had a chance to think about how – in this age of accelerating technology – we can finally take on these inequities, and we can solve them. Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had a few hours a week and a few dollars a month to donate to a cause – and you wanted to spend that time and money where it would have the greatest impact in saving and improving lives. Where would you spend it? For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have.

During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I read an article about the millions of children who were dying every year in poor countries from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country. Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. One disease I had never even heard of, rotavirus, was killing half a million kids each year – none of them in the United States. We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions of children were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under a dollar, there were interventions that could save lives that just weren't being delivered. If you believe that every life has equal value, it's revolting to learn that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: "This can't be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving."
So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked: "How could the world let these children die?"

The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.

But you and I have both. We can make market forces work better for the poor if we can develop a more creative capitalism – if we can stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or at least make a living, serving people who are suffering from the worst inequities.

We also can press governments around the world to spend taxpayer money in ways that better reflect the values of the people who pay the taxes. If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians, we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world.

This task is open-ended. It can never be finished. But a conscious effort to answer this challenge will change the world. I am optimistic that we can do this, but I talk to skeptics who claim there is no hope. They say: "Inequity has been with us since the beginning, and will be with us till the end – because people just … don't … care." I completely disagree. I believe we have more caring than we know what to do with.

All of us here in this Yard, at one time or another, have seen human tragedies that broke our hearts, and yet we did nothing – not because we didn't care, but because we didn't know what to do. If we had known how to help, we would have acted. The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity. To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps. Even with the advent of the Internet and 24-hour news, it is still a complex enterprise to get people to truly see the problems.

When an airplane crashes, officials immediately call a press conference. They promise to investigate, determine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future. But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: "Of all the people in the world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent of them were on this plane. We're determined to do everything possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half of one percent." The bigger problem is not the plane crash, but the millions of preventable deaths. We don't read much about these deaths.

The media covers what's new – and millions of people dying is nothing new. So it stays in the background, where it's easier to ignore. But even when we do see it or read about it, it's difficult to keep our eyes on the problem. It's hard to look at suffering if the situation is so complex that we don't know how to help. And so we look away. If we can really see a problem, which is the first step, we come to the second step: cutting through the complexity to find a solution.

Finding solutions is essential if we want to make the most of our caring. If we have clear and proven answers anytime an organization or individual asks "How can I help?," then we can get action – and we can make sure that none of the caring in the world is wasted. But complexity makes it hard to mark a path of action for everyone who cares — and that makes it hard for their caring to matter.

Cutting through complexity to find a solution runs through four predictable stages: determine a goal, find the highest-leverage approach, discover the ideal technology for that approach, and in the meantime, make the smartest application of the technology that you already have — whether it's something sophisticated, like a drug, or something simpler, like a bednet.

The AIDS epidemic offers an example. The broad goal, of course, is to end the disease. The highest-leverage approach is prevention. The ideal technology would be a vaccine that gives lifetime immunity with a single dose. So governments, drug companies, and foundations fund vaccine research. But their work is likely to take more than a decade, so in the meantime, we have to work with what we have in hand – and the best prevention approach we have now is getting people to avoid risky behavior. Pursuing that goal starts the four-step cycle again. This is the pattern. The crucial thing is to never stop thinking and working – and never do what we did with malaria and tuberculosis in the 20th century – which is to surrender to complexity and quit.

The final step – after seeing the problem and finding an approach – is to measure the impact of your work and share your successes and failures so that others learn from your efforts. You have to have the statistics, of course. You have to be able to show that a program is vaccinating millions more children. You have to be able to show a decline in the number of children dying from these diseases. This is essential not just to improve the program, but also to help draw more investment from business and government. But if you want to inspire people to participate, you have to show more than numbers; you have to convey the human impact of the work – so people can feel what saving a life means to the families affected.

I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting on a global health panel that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. Millions! Think of the thrill of saving just one person's life – then multiply that by millions. … Yet this was the most boring panel I've ever been on – ever. So boring even I couldn't bear it. What made that experience especially striking was that I had just come from an event where we were introducing version 13 of some piece of software, and we had people jumping and shouting with excitement. I love getting people excited about software – but why can't we generate even more excitement for saving lives? You can't get people excited unless you can help them see and feel the impact. And how you do that – is a complex question.

Still, I'm optimistic. Yes, inequity has been with us forever, but the new tools we have to cut through complexity have not been with us forever. They are new – they can help us make the most of our caring – and that's why the future can be different from the past.

The defining and ongoing innovations of this age – biotechnology, the computer, the Internet – give us a chance we've never had before to end extreme poverty and end death from preventable disease. Sixty years ago, George Marshall came to this commencement and announced a plan to assist the nations of post-war Europe. He said: "I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. It is virtually impossible at this distance to grasp at all the real significance of the situation."

Thirty years after Marshall made his address, as my class graduated without me, technology was emerging that would make the world smaller, more open, more visible, less distant. The emergence of low-cost personal computers gave rise to a powerful network that has transformed opportunities for learning and communicating. The magical thing about this network is not just that it collapses distance and makes everyone your neighbor. It also dramatically increases the number of brilliant minds we can have working together on the same problem – and that scales up the rate of innovation to a staggering degree. At the same time, for every person in the world who has access to this technology, five people don't. That means many creative minds are left out of this discussion -- smart people with practical intelligence and relevant experience who don't have the technology to hone their talents or contribute their ideas to the world.

We need as many people as possible to have access to this technology, because these advances are triggering a revolution in what human beings can do for one another. They are making it possible not just for national governments, but for universities, corporations, smaller organizations, and even individuals to see problems, see approaches, and measure the impact of their efforts to address the hunger, poverty, and desperation George Marshall spoke of 60 years ago. Members of the Harvard Family: Here in the Yard is one of the great collections of intellectual talent in the world.

What for? There is no question that the faculty, the alumni, the students, and the benefactors of Harvard have used their power to improve the lives of people here and around the world. But can we do more? Can Harvard dedicate its intellect to improving the lives of people who will never even hear its name? Let me make a request of the deans and the professors – the intellectual leaders here at Harvard: As you hire new faculty, award tenure, review curriculum, and determine degree requirements, please ask yourselves:

Should our best minds be dedicated to solving our biggest problems? Should Harvard encourage its faculty to take on the world's worst inequities? Should Harvard students learn about the depth of global poverty … the prevalence of world hunger … the scarcity of clean water …the girls kept out of school … the children who die from diseases we can cure? Should the world's most privileged people learn about the lives of the world's least privileged?

These are not rhetorical questions – you will answer with your policies. My mother, who was filled with pride the day I was admitted here – never stopped pressing me to do more for others. A few days before my wedding, she hosted a bridal event, at which she read aloud a letter about marriage that she had written to Melinda. My mother was very ill with cancer at the time, but she saw one more opportunity to deliver her message, and at the close of the letter she said: "From those to whom much is given, much is expected."

When you consider what those of us here in this Yard have been given – in talent, privilege, and opportunity – there is almost no limit to what the world has a right to expect from us. In line with the promise of this age, I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue – a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don't have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them. Don't let complexity stop you. Be activists. Take on the big inequities. It will be one of the great experiences of your lives.

You graduates are coming of age in an amazing time. As you leave Harvard, you have technology that members of my class never had. You have awareness of global inequity, which we did not have. And with that awareness, you likely also have an informed conscience that will torment you if you abandon these people whose lives you could change with very little effort. You have more than we had; you must start sooner, and carry on longer. Knowing what you know, how could you not?

And I hope you will come back here to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your talent and your energy. I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world's deepest inequities … on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity.
Good luck.

Correcting some misunderstandings about Angkor Wat, Khmer Kings and Indian Civilization

Seven “new wonders”: Angkor Wat too deserves your vote

Below article is essentially controversial to some of its proclaiming relating Cambodian King Jayavarman II and the new listing of seven world wonders operated through internet.

1. I would like to outline some protesting argument relative to King Jayavarman II. The author of this article intentionally claimed that King Jayavarman II is Indian (read the red highlight below). This proclamation is baseless, not accurate and historical evident. I accept that there are some sorts of influence from Hindu of India, especially the cult of Devaraja, but King Jayavarman II has his genuine blood as Khmer with his both father and mother. History told us that when his monarchy parents have been arrested (sometime can be sentenced to death) by Sailendra Kingdom in around 790 and kidnapped young prince Jayavarman II to Java. When the prince grown up and perceived his original background, he secretely fled to Chenla Kingdom and began his rallying for independence through Peace Marching around the kingdom, across important cities, capitals and ports. Finally, His Majesty settled strong base at Phnom Koulen (maha parapatta) and consecrated himself by the assisting of two respectful Brahamas (one is likely from India and one is the permanent teacher of his family clan) to be a King of Universe or Devaraja (God King). So we can notice that King Jayavarman II of Cambodia has applied some culture and influences from India, but not absolutely India and he wasn't Indian as well.

2. Voting Angkor Wat or other significant sites to be new seven wonders of the world through the internet and majority is not fair and accurate. It is just an activity of business or money making by the website owner or organizer. To be fair and just, the seven wonders should be considered and judged as following:

• The age of the site and monument
• The delicate ornament and decoration of the site and monument
• Striking beauty
• Complex ornamentation
• Historical significance
• Evolutionary styles of art
• Fine art of humanity

Bhikkhu Vodano Sophan

June 24, 2007
Seven “new wonders”: Angkor Wat too deserves your vote
By K.G. Suresh
Organizer (India)

The most important monument of the Khmer Empire and the world’s largest sacred temple complex, Angkor is famous for its complex ornamentation and striking beauty. The temples at Angkor are spread out over 64 kms around the village of Sien Reap, about 308 kms from the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.

Indian television channels and websites have of late launched a campaign asking people to vote for the inclusion of the Taj Mahal as one of the seven “new wonders” of the world. With barely three weeks left for the nominations to close, hectic efforts including celebrity endorsements are on to get the most perfect jewel of Muslim art in India into the elite club through sms, internet and phone voting. Music wizard A R Rahman has even composed a theme song for the Taj to canvass support for the historic monument in Agra built by Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his beloved wife Persian born princess Arjuman Bano Begum popularly known as Mumtaz Mahal. Notwithstanding the controversies surrounding the Taj, including claims by some Hindu groups that it was built over a temple dedicated to Goddess Yamuna and the alleged atrocities perpetrated on the workmen (whose hands were reportedly cut-off by the Emperor who did not want them to build any such grand mausoleum), the Mughal tomb remains an integral part of our composite heritage and attracts tourists from the world over, providing employment to lakhs of our countrymen and millions of dollars in foreign exchange.

And as Indians, we should also undoubtedly join this campaign to enable this enduring symbol of our country to make it to the top seven. But equally significant, both for all Indians and Hindus across the globe is the presence of the world’s largest Hindu temple, Angkor, among the 21 finalist candidates in the campaign to choose the New Seven Wonders of the World.

The most important monument of the Khmer Empire and the world’s largest sacred temple complex, Angkor is famous for its complex ornamentation and striking beauty. The temples at Angkor are spread out over 64 kms around the village of Sien Reap, about 308 kms from the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh.

Like many other aspects of their culture, the Cambodians adapted Indian architectural methods and styles. The Hindu religion played an important part in the Khmer temples. In fact, the Hindu monarch Jayavarman II introduced the cult of ‘Devaraja’ into Cambodia, which saw the King as a representative of Lord Shiva. From then on, the temples were built to honour both the Lord and the King. However, the Angkor Wat temple was originally dedicated to Lord Vishnu though later it was converted to a Buddhist temple.

Angkor is a vernacular form of the word nokor which comes from the Sanskrit word nagara (city), while wat is the Khmer word for temple.The most famous temple in Angkor is Angkor Wat, a huge pyramid temple built by King Suryavarman II between 1113 and 1150, generally seen as the masterpiece of Khmer architecture. It is surrounded by a 570 feet wide and about 6.4 km long moat. With its water moats, concentric walls and great temple mountain in the center, Angkor Wat symbolizes the Hindu cosmos, with its oceans at the periphery and the Meru mountain at the centre of the universe.

Other impressive temples include Ta Prohm in the midst of still dense jungles and the Bayon built by King Jayavarman VII in the later part of 12th century that features among other things 3,936 feet of beautiful bas-relief carving.

There are other temples located in the area and Khmer temples can also be found in many other parts of Cambodia, as well as China, Thailand, Laos and Vietnam.

For the Cambodians, the Angkor Wat has become a matter of national pride with the temple appearing even on its national flag, the only building to appear on any national flag. In fact, riots erupted in the capital city after a Thai artist claimed that the temple belonged to Thailand.

For us Indians too, Angkor not only reminds us of our ancient glory but also symbolizes the deep impact Indian culture had across the globe, particularly South-East Asia. After the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the fundamentalist Taliban in Afghanistan, Angkor remains the most potent symbol of the glory of Hindu culture outside of India.

The shortlist was chosen by a panel of world remowned architects and ex-UNESCO Chief Federico Mayor in January 2006, out of 77 public nominations.

In fact, only one of the seven ancient wonders of the world, the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, survives to this date.

The internet contest for the new seven wonders is aimed at raising global awareness about the world’s shared cultural heritage and was conceived by Swiss film maker, curator and traveler Bernard Weber, following the destruction of the giant Buddha statues at Bamyan in 2001.

Though Indian television channels are running a campaign for the inclusion of the Taj in the list appealing to the nationalist sentiments, much of the internet and phone text message voting so far has avoided national preferences.

A visit to the site ‘http://www.new7wonders.com/’ would reveal that any visitor can vote for any seven monuments of his or her choice. So, if Taj deserves your vote, click the mouse for Angkor Wat too. It is as much ours as is the Taj.

Source of this Article

Religious extremists in 3 faiths share views: report

By Claudia Parsons
Wed Jun 13, 5:49 PM ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Violent Muslim, Christian and Jewish extremists invoke the same rhetoric of "good" and "evil" and the best way to fight them is to tackle the problems that drive people to extremism, according to a report obtained by Reuters.

It said extremists from each of the three faiths often have tangible grievances -- social, economic or political -- but they invoke religion to recruit followers and to justify breaking the law, including killing civilians and members of their own faith.

The report was commissioned by security think tank EastWest Institute ahead of a conference on Thursday in New York titled "Towards a Common Response: New Thinking Against Violent Extremism and Radicalization." The report will be updated and published after the conference.
The authors compared ideologies, recruitment tactics and responses to violent religious extremists in three places -- Muslims in Britain, Jews in Israel and Christians in the United States.

"What is striking ... is the similarity of the worldview and the rationale for violence," the report said.

It said that while Muslims were often perceived by the West as "the principal perpetrators of terrorist activity," there are violent extremists of other faiths. Always focusing on Muslim extremists alienates mainstream Muslims, it said.

The report said it was important to examine the root causes of violence by those of different faiths, without prejudice.

"It is, in each situation, a case of 'us' versus 'them,"' it said. "That God did not intend for civilization to take its current shape; and that the state had failed the righteous and genuine members of that nation, and therefore God's law supersedes man's law."

COMMON WORLDVIEW
This worldview was common to ultranationalist Jews, like Yigal Amir, who killed Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, to U.S. groups like Christian Identity, which is linked to white supremacist groups, and to other Christian groups that attacked abortion providers, it said.

"Extremists should never be dismissed simply as evil," said the report. "Trying to engage in a competition with religious extremists over who can offer a simpler answer to complex problems will be a losing proposition every time."

Harvard University lecturer Jessica Stern, the conference's keynote speaker, spent five years interviewing extremists for her 2003 book "Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill."

She said it was dangerous for U.S. President George W. Bush to use terms such as "crusade" or "ridding the world of evil."

"It really is falling into the same trap that these terrorists fall into, black and white thinking," Stern told Reuters on Wednesday. "It's very exciting to extremists to hear an American president talking that way."

Stern said to compare violent extremists from the three faiths was not to suggest that the threat was the same.

"These are not equivalent," she said. "The problems arising from Christian or Jewish extremism are not threatening to the world in the same way as Muslim extremism is."

Conference organizers say their aim is to develop a nonpartisan strategy to combat religious extremism.

The guest list includes representatives of the State Department, Homeland Security, the New York Police Department and the U.N. missions of Israel, Iraq Britain and the Organization of the Islamic Conference.

Source of this news

UN to determine status of Preah Vihear

(Picture Source)

2007-06-12
UN to determine status for Cambodia's centuries-old monument

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) - A U.N. committee is expected to rule on Cambodia's request for «World Heritage» status for a well-known 11th century temple during a meeting later this month, an official said Tuesday.

Cambodia began seeking the status five years ago for Preah Vihear temple from World Heritage, a committee of the U.N. cultural organization UNESCO.

Such status encourages conservation and usually helps attract funds for preservation, in addition to raising the tourism profile of the site.

The committee will decide on the Cambodian bid during its meeting in New Zealand that is scheduled to start June 23, said UNESCO director in Cambodia Teruo Jinnai.«It's now up to the committee. You have to wait,» he said.

The temple deserves to be given World Heritage status, he said, because of its unique historical and cultural value.

Preah Vihear temple is located on the top of a cliff in the Dangrek Mountains, about 245 kilometers (150 miles) north of the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh. It is more easily accessible from Thailand, however.

The two countries have been at loggerheads in the past over ownership of the temple, which was held by Thailand until the International Court of Justice awarded it to Cambodia in 1962.

The World Heritage list currently includes Cambodia's Angkor archaeological site, where the famed Angkor Wat temple, the country's main tourist attraction, is situated.

Capturing Angkor Before Tourism Works Its Changes

The eerie calm near the moment of a total solar eclipse at Angkor in 1995. (Photo: John McDermott)

Monks in a window in 2001. (Photo: John McDermott)

The photographer John McDermott at work in Angkor. (Photo: Courtesy of John McDermott)June 10, 2007By MATT GROSSNew York Times (USA)

THERE is a moment at Angkor, the vast complex of ancient temples in the Cambodian jungle, that every visitor hopes for. Perhaps it comes while passing under a 60-foot-high gate carved a thousand years ago, or at sunrise when the lotus-like spires are reflected in a placid pool of water. Or maybe it comes when you encounter a centuries-old tree, growing straight from a sandstone slab and slowly devouring a temple.

These are the moments that John McDermott specializes in. A 52-year-old photographer from Little Rock, Ark., Mr. McDermott may be the Ansel Adams of Angkor. In the last decade, his photographs have almost become the definitive images of the temples. His pictures — the silhouette of a stone lion at sunset, monks resting on a windowsill, apsara dancers primping before a performance — are not just beautiful but iconic.

Mr. McDermott didn’t deliberately set out to become the unofficial court photographer of Angkor. He first visited in 1995, when he was living in Bangkok. Back then, the only lodgings were tents and small guesthouses, and few if any tourists traipsed through. To capture the eerie calm, he had planned his trip to coincide with a total solar eclipse.

“The light does really funny things during an eclipse,” he said. “First of all, it’s devoid of color, becomes monochromatic, sort of platinum. And then it ripples and does unusual things, so the whole setting becomes quite surreal” — as if Angkor Wat, with its graciously decaying walls and bas-relief depictions of Buddhist hell, wasn’t surreal enough already.

Capturing that ambience, however, posed a problem; normal film couldn’t match what Mr. McDermott had experienced. Luckily, he had also tested infrared film, which he chose to reproduce a specific appearance. When he developed the infrared shots (which were taken after the eclipse had passed), he found what he had been hoping for: temples bathed in otherworldly light.

“It was a eureka moment, you know?” he said.

Another eureka moment came five years later, when he returned to Angkor for an exhibition of his photographs at the Grand Hotel d’Angkor in Siem Reap, the town that serves as a base for exploring the temples. The new luxury hotel was, to McDermott’s surprise, full of tourists. “I recognized two things,” he said. “One, that the tourism industry had just had the fuse lit for Angkor” and two, that the magical-looking temples were going to change from the tourist onslaught.

Sensing that time was of the essence, he returned on his own several months later to “get as comprehensive a portrait of Angkor as I could,” he said. “I wanted them to look as if they’d been taken 300 years ago, 500 years ago, or yesterday — or tomorrow.”

Over the next several years, Mr. McDermott trained his camera (and infrared film) on Angkor’s crumbling walls, gnarled roots and mystical light. The dreamlike photos, which look as though they were taken in an ancient, forgotten world, have been exhibited and published in magazines and newspapers around the world (including The New York Times) — becoming, in essence, defining images of Angkor.

In a way, his quest for the quintessential Angkor image puts him in a league with Ansel Adams, whose photographs of Yosemite shaped the public’s imagination of that vast and unknowable park. Mr. McDermott’s prints now grace the hallways of Cambodian hotels and are sold in stores as far away as Palm Beach, Fla. And this November, he plans to publish them in a book, “Angkor at the Turn of the Century.”

Meanwhile, change has come to Siem Reap, where Mr. McDermott and his wife, Narisara Murray, settled in 2003. Hundreds of hotels have gone up, a million foreign tourists visit annually, the temples are cluttered with wooden walkways, and Siem Reap is now an arts hub, thanks in part to the two galleries Mr. McDermott opened there.

But Mr. McDermott is no one-trick infrared pony. He has turned his camera to the temples and tribal areas of Myanmar. “Burma’s just a really fantastic destination,” he said, using Myanmar’s former name, “and I think it’s probably going to change pretty quickly.”

In other words: Come 2012 or so, expect Mr. McDermott’s vision of Myanmar to be yours as well.