Treasure Love for your family, love for your spouse, love for your friends. Treat yourself well. Cherish others.”

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyx4QYLzg4WZMU0CG94gl3PO_udUFcvYEe6p4t0P0ERNlbKhNjogPWrkXs31jjJ5WJkV-2SpSxf_0D9z7Oj0n8UOr99XTGbhz-jGc7yFz7let-YU7D6nfjSwMYMIxoHdpLbuROxIdBzKat/s1600/13331095_1046856708694638_6973210760161856787_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyx4QYLzg4WZMU0CG94gl3PO_udUFcvYEe6p4t0P0ERNlbKhNjogPWrkXs31jjJ5WJkV-2SpSxf_0D9z7Oj0n8UOr99XTGbhz-jGc7yFz7let-YU7D6nfjSwMYMIxoHdpLbuROxIdBzKat/s640/13331095_1046856708694638_6973210760161856787_n.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> </div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “I reached the pinnacle of success in the business world. In others’ eyes, my life is an epitome of success.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> However, aside from work, I have little joy. In the end, wealth is only a fact of life that I am accustomed to.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> At this moment, lying on the sick bed and recalling my whole life, I realize that all the recognition and wealth that I took so much pride in, have paled and become meaningless in the face of impending death. </div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> In the darkness, I look at the green lights from the life supporting machines and hear the humming mechanical sounds, I can feel the breath of god of death drawing closer…</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Now I know, when we have accumulated sufficient wealth to last our lifetime, we should pursue other matters that are unrelated to wealth…</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Should be something that is more important:</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Perhaps relationships, perhaps art, perhaps a dream from younger days</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Non-stop pursuing of wealth will only turn a person into a twisted being, just like me.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> God gave us the senses to let us feel the love in everyone’s heart, not the illusions brought about by wealth.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The wealth I have won in my life I cannot bring with me. What I can bring is only the memories precipitated by love.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> That’s the true riches which will follow you, accompany you, giving you strength and light to go on.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Love can travel a thousand miles. Life has no limit. Go where you want to go. Reach the height you want to reach. It is all in your heart and in your hands.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> What is the most expensive bed in the world?</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Sick bed…</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> You can employ someone to drive the car for you, make money for you but you cannot have someone to bear the sickness for you.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Material things lost can be found. But there is one thing that can never be found when it is lost – Life.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> When a person goes into the operating room, he will realize that there is one book that he has yet to finish reading – Book of Healthy Life.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Whichever stage in life we are at right now, with time, we will face the day when the curtain comes down.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Treasure Love for your family, love for your spouse, love for your friends.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Treat yourself well. Cherish others.”</div>

Treasure Love for your family, love for your spouse, love for your friends. Treat yourself well. Cherish others.”

“I reached the pinnacle of success in the business world. In others’ eyes, my life is an epitome of success. However, aside from wo...

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Buddhism in Laos

<div style="text-align: justify;"> "Laos is a landlocked nation squeezed between Thailand to the west and Vietnam to the east, and sharing shorter borders with Burma in the northwest and Cambodia in the south. As its position on the map of southeast Asia might suggest, Laos is the product of early contacts between the Khmers of Cambodia and the Thais who eventually established Thailand. As Thai tribes migrated into the southwest Asian peninsula during the latter half of the first millennium, they came first down the Mekong river until they encountered the rear guard of the Khmer tribes who had followed that route before them. Some settled along the upper reaches of the Mekong, while others resorted to the relatively uninhabited Chao Phraya, which flows through the heart of present day Thailand, reaching the sea at Bangkok. The Thai-related people who settled in the upper Mekong region became the ancestors of the modern day Laos. Landlocked and surrounded by more powerful cultures, Laos remains the poorest country in southeast Asia in every way except for the renowned Lao sense of humour and fun.</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqYse10w_h-CR5uHLVuDJsf3cHBk8ffW4aDWICXDy_vOYGdqzn_0EHQRDwW3BuexjQ7brFAdEJUAYEMgzwIj5dK6OiYl69mZyj1sMvrO4pt1hDCd8YNyknJi7oCgg8A6ovfI2Fdr4orQFs/s1600/Buddhist_monks_collecting_alms%252C_Laos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqYse10w_h-CR5uHLVuDJsf3cHBk8ffW4aDWICXDy_vOYGdqzn_0EHQRDwW3BuexjQ7brFAdEJUAYEMgzwIj5dK6OiYl69mZyj1sMvrO4pt1hDCd8YNyknJi7oCgg8A6ovfI2Fdr4orQFs/s640/Buddhist_monks_collecting_alms%252C_Laos.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Lao history in fact begins in the 14th century with a risqué event, the seduction of one of the king's wives by his son Phi Fa, heir apparent to the throne. For his indiscretion, Phi Fa was banished. He and his son Fa Ngum journeyed south and took up residence in the Khmer royal court at Angkor. There, Fa Ngum studied under a Theravadin monk,gained favour of the Khmer king, and eventually married one of his daughters. In about 1350, the king of Angkor provided Fa Ngum with an army so that he could reassert control over his father's lost inheritance.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> By this time, Angkor was in a state of decline, and the political centre of gravity in Thailand had shifted southward from Sukkhothai to Ayutthaya. Angkor's weakness and this shift in power in Thailand left the way open for Fa Ngum to establish an independent kingdom, with ties to Angkor, along the upper reaches of the Mekong river. Fa Ngum's coronation at Luang Phrabang in 1353 marked the beginning of the historical Laos state. It also established the farthest northern extent of Khmer civilization, since Fa Ngum's kingdom was modeled on Angkoran precedents even though the Laos are racially related to the Thais. Furthermore, Fa Ngum invited his Buddhist teacher at the Khmer court to act as his advisor and chief priest. Under his influence the new kingdom of Laos became firmly Theravadin, as it has remained to the present day. This Buddhist master brought with him from Angkor a Buddha image known as the "Phra Bang". This image accounts for the capital's name and like the tooth relic of the Buddha in Sri Lanka, became the palladium of the kingdom.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> From the very beginning, Laos seems to have been just barely strong enough to maintain a separate identity in the midst of its more powerful neighbours. This it was able to do only by means of a series of alliances, concessions and submissions to the Thais, Burmese and finally the Vietnamese. As the Khmers too were finding out about this time, it was a question of being dominated by the related, Indianized cultures of Burma and Thailand or by the Vietnamese, who were especially hated because of their sacking of the Lao capital in 1479. Subservient alliances with Burma and Thailand were undesirable for Laos, but they had the effect of reinforcing Theravada Buddhism, which became the country's primary symbol of continuity and identity in the face of its shifting political fortunes.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Because of the relatively weak central government of Laos, Theravada Buddhism became the primary cement holding together the numerous ethnic groups and inaccessible villages scattered through the mountainous countryside. According to the Lao model of kingship , the king sat upon the throne not so much because of divine right as because of his obviously good karma in his previous lives. He was expected to continue that good karma in this life by supporting the Sangha and promoting Buddhism through royal construction projects. Pursuing this role, King Visun (r. 1501-20) is remembered as the prime mover behind the splendour of Luang Phrabang, the first capital of Laos. Actually, Visun brought to fruition an ambitious Buddhist construction program which had been begun by his two older brothers in order to repair damage done by the Vietnamese in the previous century. Since they were made of wood, few examples of these early architectural works survive, but Luang Phrabang remains the site of some of the most attractive Buddhist monuments and ruins in southeast Asia.</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPmSB_SRkPNDjavvHwdsE5RxV6Bw0bl2Se4D1KN3-jEcbPmhQtRaDe2dlV6e7L89TI4v6M5O9gn6IOwtDnjn_DuSivLAAAZBMgzH6vHpZ1m2C6dQiehqpt2sRgvXoNuL6wm8sdhjKxI83R/s1600/Making_merit_Buddhist_holy_day_in_Vientiane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="416" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPmSB_SRkPNDjavvHwdsE5RxV6Bw0bl2Se4D1KN3-jEcbPmhQtRaDe2dlV6e7L89TI4v6M5O9gn6IOwtDnjn_DuSivLAAAZBMgzH6vHpZ1m2C6dQiehqpt2sRgvXoNuL6wm8sdhjKxI83R/s640/Making_merit_Buddhist_holy_day_in_Vientiane.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> A BuddhapadaVisun's grandson Setthathirat (r. 1548-71) occupied the throne in 1548. Soon, Burmese expansionism forced Setthathriat to form an alliance with the Thais in 1560. The resulting treaty entailed shifting the capital from Luang Phrabang to Vien Chan, a site closer to the Thai capital at Ayutthaya and more conducive to trade with and supervision by the Thais. Setthathriat did for Vien Chan what King Visun had done for Luang Phrabang, carrying out a large-scale Buddhist construction program.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Remnants of Sutthathriat's works still stand, the most notable being the hundred-yard square That Luang or "Great Shrine", a temple mountain built in the Khmer style. Setthathriat also built a second grand temple to house a precious jade Buddha known as the Phra Keo. This image was the second palladium of Laos until it was removed to Bangkok by a Thai invading force in 1778. It has remained in Bangkok ever since in the Wat Phra Keo as Thailand's most sacred image. This same image is also the primary symbol of Lao resentment against Thailand.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> In 1778, Thailand conquered the southern kingdom of Vien Chan, asserted control over the northern kingdom of Luang Phrabang, and removed both the Phra Bang and Phra Keo Buddha images to Thailand. In 1782, the Thais restored the Vietnamese dynasty as a puppet regime in Vien Chan and returned the Phra Bang Buddha image. Despite continuing Thai domination of the entirety of Laos, the country remained divided into a northern and southern kingdom until 1893, when the French blockaded Bangkok and forced Thailand to cede to France the upper reaches of the Mekong river. The French protectorate thus established over Laos had little to do with the distribution of the Lao people, many of whom still resided in Thai territory. The Thais, on the other hand, resented having been deprived of the most valuable portion of their Laotian holdings. Again, no one was happy with European map-making when Laos eventually became independent.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Briefly during World War II, Laos was nominally independent under Japanese control. After World War II, in 1946, reassertion of French control in southeast Asia led directly to the formation of a communist independence movement under Ho Chi Minh. The French collapse in southeast Asia in 1954 led to a coalition government in which both Lao royalists and Lao communists were represented. This coalition quickly collapsed, and Laos, like Vietnam, entered the 1960's in the throes of a full-scale civil war between communist and pro-western factions, which were now aided primarily by the United States. After the defeat of American forces in Vietnam in 1975, the communists quickly gained control in Laos, at about the same time as Pol Pot's Khumer Rouge gained control in Cambodia. In Laos, however, the transition to communism was not the nightmare that the Cambodians faced.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> In the course of this much more benign transition to communism in Laos, there is little evidence of significant suppression of Buddhism. Even during the revolution, one of the main propaganda tactics of the Pathet Lao was to promulgate the compatibility of Buddhism and communism and to enlist the support of monks for their revolution. While many monks worked against the communists, it is clear also that many worked actively for them. When the communists came to power, they forbade the giving of alms to monks, but announced provision of a state-controlled ration of rice for monks. This ration was to be supplemented by food produced or earned by the monks themselves. Since then, monks have been required to perform productive roles in the community, primarily their traditional roles as teachers and healers.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> What they teach and the medicine they practice, however, are controlled by a Department of Religious Affairs, administered by the Ministry of Education. The Department of Religious Affairs has overseen a program designed to expunge "counter-revoulutionary" and "exploitative" material from the traditional Buddhism of Laos. Under this program, in addition to teaching Buddhism, monks have a significant responsibility for teaching literacy and a patriotic, communist version of Lao history. Monks were traditionally consulted for the relief of illness, but prior to the communist takeover they administered primarily blessings and magical amulets. Now they administer traditional herbal medicine and where possible, western medicine.</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFRPSR7wXGRZU7zWoX_pUy6nkjOqQQ1Q6IWTSP9QJIP2dR4BvNGZbfoOZzl82H26pw3vpZK7P8yuhtgnCFdeob5Qwusc8LQQZE3kBRDQLPnnJOqxf93jC7fgKnC3LYVHjx4NPKSDw5IRBt/s1600/Battle_with_Mara.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="420" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFRPSR7wXGRZU7zWoX_pUy6nkjOqQQ1Q6IWTSP9QJIP2dR4BvNGZbfoOZzl82H26pw3vpZK7P8yuhtgnCFdeob5Qwusc8LQQZE3kBRDQLPnnJOqxf93jC7fgKnC3LYVHjx4NPKSDw5IRBt/s640/Battle_with_Mara.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Laotian TempleThe communist reformation of Buddhism, implemented by a panel of respected Lao monks, has been criticized as repressive by some Thai and expatriate Lao Buddhists. Alternatively, it has been praised by Lao and Thai reformists as representing a return to a purer Buddhism unencumbered by superstitious accretions. There can be little doubt, from the standpoint of Theravada doctrine, that traditional herbal and western medicine are an improvement over the previous practices of performing exorcisms and selling blessings and magical amulets. It is also evident that the previous catering to traditional Lao spirit cults and ancestor worship had nothing to do with scriptural Buddhism.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> It is not yet clear how extensive revisions of the Buddhist texts themselves may be, or how such revisions will effect Buddhism in Laos. On the surface, there does not appear to be much material in the Theravada texts that conflicts with the moderate communism of the Lao regime. Some of the restrictions upon monks set forth in the Vinaya Pitaka have been abandoned - most notably the prohibition upon working the soil - but Vinaya rules are not strictly observed by all monks in any Buddhist country in the world. On the whole, most reports from Laos indicate that Buddhism there thrives in harmony with the communist regime. Clearly, there is much scope for a revival of the crippled Buddhism of Cambodia with recourse to the closely related and still healthy Buddhism of Laos. Laos and Cambodia have diplomatic relations going back to the 14th century, both espouse Theravada Buddhism, and both have lived under communist regimes."</div>

Buddhism in Laos

"Laos is a landlocked nation squeezed between Thailand to the west and Vietnam to the east, and sharing shorter borders with Burma in ...

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THAI BUDDHISM AND PATRIARCHY

<div style="text-align: justify;"> THAI BUDDHISM AND PATRIARCHY</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> by Ouyporn Khuankaew</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> In my eyes, Buddhism in Thailand has been very patriarchal, institutionalized, and corrupted. The control by the state, the failure of rural development, modernization and consumerism have all contributed to the current state of Thai Buddhism. But one thing that has never been mentioned, even by progressive monks, Buddhist male scholars or activists, is patriarchy within Buddhism itself.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> We do not have ordination for women in Thailand. Since Thai nuns have not been recognized legally or socially as ordained women, their status is the lowest of all women, because they do not belong to any category of women, either within the lay or monastic community.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The patriarchy of Thai Buddhism also contributes to prostitution, a problem that makes Thailand popular in the international news headlines; a point which will be discussed later.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> In Thai culture, it is a tradition for all Thai men to be ordained, usually before they get married, in order to pay gratitude to their parents (especially their mother since she herself cannot be ordained). By having a son ordained, it is believed that the parents can cling to the yellow robe of their son and reach heaven after their death. This ordination is usually temporary, in which men are allowed to leave their jobs with pay for three months in order to fulfill their duty to be monks. It is also believed that monkhood for three months will purify their minds so that they will be good family leaders once they are married.</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg03f2bsJGtGdW0VgMZqwlz-7Aj_otW5M-Hoa9cIfPp5BbnNxUxBpvSR9KF_WmdJtWIk5qzz_azFLn-o9unLJMBweygx0puO1t4ogjXgAx1AyuIu7IJYPrQsGp1vZ_tkxhyAlWZXLU0Rtdo/s1600/wat-phra-keaw-bangkok.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="440" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg03f2bsJGtGdW0VgMZqwlz-7Aj_otW5M-Hoa9cIfPp5BbnNxUxBpvSR9KF_WmdJtWIk5qzz_azFLn-o9unLJMBweygx0puO1t4ogjXgAx1AyuIu7IJYPrQsGp1vZ_tkxhyAlWZXLU0Rtdo/s640/wat-phra-keaw-bangkok.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Whereas rural boys have access to education and resources through the monkhood, girls do not have the same opportunity because there is no ordination for women. To pay gratitude to parents, in particular, to provide economic security, they have very few choices - to become a maid, a factory worker or a prostitute. Because boys repay gratitude to their parents by being ordained in their youth, they fulfill their duty early in life. A girl's way to repay gratitude to her parents is usually to take care of them when they are old.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Because rural development programs in the past thirty years have failed to improve the lives of the farmers, and in fact have driven them into more debt and suffering, girls often have no way to access resources to help take care of the family. In rural areas such as my community, when the signs of rural development failure came to light, girls such as my sisters and her friends were the first group who left our village with the hope of earning money to help alleviate the suffering of the family. The first group of young women who left my village went to work as house maids, and a few of them ended up in brothels as a result of sexual abuse from the male members of the households in which they were employed.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The North has become famous for prostitution. In the past ten years, girls as young as eight have been sold by parents and the money used to pay debts, to send her brothers to school, to build a new modern house or to buy a pickup truck for her family. This epidemic has spread to the Northeast where the suffering hits the rural poor the hardest. Pattaya, a famous beach and resort town two hours southeast of Bangkok, is full of girls from the Northeast, many earning their living as sex workers. In the past ten years, young Thai women have also gone overseas to be prostitutes despite the risk of their own lives because the financial return is higher than at home.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The number of prostitutes in Thailand is almost equal to the number of monks. If young, rural girls could be given the same opportunity as the boys to enter a monastic life, they would have access to education and at the same time be able to repay spiritual gratitude to their parents. These opportunities could provide girls and women with proper monastic education and spiritual guidance so they can become important spiritual guides for the rural folks, particularly other women and girls. Due to male dominance within Thai Buddhism, however, girls and women have been deprived of such an opportunity. Consequently, they have been victims of different forms of violence against girls and women, such as domestic violence, rape and forced prostitution.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Most monks today do not enter monkhood based upon the faith of wanting to learn and practice the Buddha's teachings in order to get rid of their own suffering and help ease the suffering of other sentient beings (especially the desire to be a spiritual guide in return for all of the support that the people give them). It is very common in rural areas, particularly in the North, to see monks disrobe after years of comfortable living while accumulating material resources and knowledge at the expense of community and monastic resources, and to then go on to get married almost immediately. This is the main reason why Buddhism, for many years now, has failed to function in its traditional role as the source of spiritual guidance for the Thai population.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Nowadays in the North, the rural villagers tolerate monks who break their discipline (vinaya) by drinking or having illicit sex, because they need a monk to perform Buddhist ceremonies such as funerals and the temple's religious events. Those who are devoted to real Buddhism have to go visit the Northeastern forest monks who mostly live in caves or in an isolated temple situated near the forest. One of my sisters has been very supportive to some of these forest monks, after many years of merit making to several monks in our area. She told me that she found out only after many years of reading Buddhist books that the monks in our area are not really monks. After she found out how real monks should behave and practice, she tried to convince some monks and villagers in our area to invite the forest monks to live in the local temples. Her attempt failed because the local monks told her that those monks are not the same tradition as ours.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> When Buddhism today functions only ceremonially and the monks' role is mainly to perform such ceremonies, the rural folk turn to other spirits and superstitions for hope and refuge. These folk, such as many of my neighbors, have suffered economically, spiritually, and psychologically as a result of drastic social changes in the past 30 years. Now, the ways in which the local people turn to the spirits are not for the same reasons. In the past, it was for worship in the sense of showing gratitude and respect to the unknown higher power. Today, people go to fraudulent monks, shamans and shamanesses, trees and statues (including Buddha images) for luck to win the lottery, for curing difficult illnesses, and for protecting their children who have gone to sell their labor in big cities or foreign countries. Rural women suffer more because their sons and husbands turn to alcohol to cope with their suffering. Many women in my village have now become the major income earners of the household as a result of alcoholism that is widespread in most rural communities over the past ten years.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Buddhism and Domestic Violence</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Last month I received a letter from a member of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship asking my opinion about the role of Buddhism and monks in domestic violence, particularly in Southeast Asia such as Thailand. She asked questions such as "Does woman go to ask help from a monk when her husband beats her; do monks teach men not to beat their spouses; or do monks in general talk about violence against women." After I answered her questions, the issue still lingered in my mind.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> I grew up in a community that 25 years ago was sustained spiritually, economically and socially by Buddhist and local cultures. My father was a very devoted Buddhist. In the old days, the rural folk would separate their wealth into three portions: one for the future, one for their day to day living and one for the temple. After we sold our harvest, my father often gave half of our money to the temple. We were not happy because not having a land of our own we were one of the most destitute families in the village. In his free time if he was not hang around with other folks, he would go visit the temple's abbot.</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK9IpAsp3ffHhx5zHq8prrOE9Sxp1-OUzscWWgSBA_WVXcECj-Wl7SjZiyU-yNO2nw3Qd9OOWR4Xb2kYlujsHHX1E6qdV3ydv6SJppPuI-Hy21VlfcqEUzPkeE-PIAwKbuO-5BJTRq2cKw/s1600/Wat-Pho-5_re.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK9IpAsp3ffHhx5zHq8prrOE9Sxp1-OUzscWWgSBA_WVXcECj-Wl7SjZiyU-yNO2nw3Qd9OOWR4Xb2kYlujsHHX1E6qdV3ydv6SJppPuI-Hy21VlfcqEUzPkeE-PIAwKbuO-5BJTRq2cKw/s640/Wat-Pho-5_re.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> I never asked my father how he practiced Buddhism or if he took the five precepts of the lay person. He was one of the most generous people I have ever known in my life. He did not drink , but he had over thirty wives. My mother said sometimes he had three other women while living with my mother.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Although we were very poor, the most suffering thing for us, my mother and the six children, was the violence of my father. When we did not have rice to eat, my mother would walk with a wooden basket on her hip asking our neighbor to borrow rice for the next days. When my father beat us and threatened my mother, we did not know where and who to go for help. Because of such violence, my oldest sister ran away from home when she was 13, before I was born, and she did not return until 15 years later. This has been the reason why I have always believed that violence against women is the worst form of violence because it can happen everyday, at any moment in your own home, and most of the time by the one you love.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> For people who grew up with control and violence from our fathers, brothers or our partners, it is common that when we could make sense of the experience, we knew it was not the proper thing and we want to change the situation. When I was young the only thing I could figure out to help the situation was telling my mother not to take care of my father when he was sick so that he would die and then we all would have peace. When I was about 14, I managed to stand up for my sister who was abused by her husband who lived in our house.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> I have wondered for the past years if the reason I was not attracted to Buddhism during my adolescence and early adult years results from the patriarchy within the Buddhist tradition. I wonder why I was unable to receive any refuge and support from the traditional Buddhist culture - peace, non-violence and harmony - when I experienced domestic violence within my own family.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Working with Buddhist Groups</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> I began to go back to my feminist work after I returning from a visit to Ladakh in mid 1995. My visit coincided with the fifth International Buddhist Women's Conference (Sakyadhita). There I learned for the first time about the unbelievable suffering of Buddhist nuns. I realized how much Buddhism has ignored the role of women in its institutions. When I came back home I started looking for Thai nuns and did a leadership training for them. After the nuns, I wanted to move on to work with the monks, knowing that they are part of the oppressive system toward women because of their roles in the system. In order to work on gender issues with a monk's group as a woman who is not a Buddhist scholar, I had to look for an alliance which was impossible among the Thai monks. Finally I found an American monk who said he was a feminist in America before he came to Thailand. By then he was already involved in a network of monks who work on different social issues. Because of his power, support and interest, I could stand for the first time in front of the monks and nuns to do a gender workshop in mid 1996.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The activity I did was to have a monk and a nun sit in pairs and to have the both of them respond to each other about the same three questions. The nuns spoke first with the monks just listening, and then they changed roles. The three questions were: "As a woman what are my obstacles?"; "As a nun what are my obstacles?"; and "If we would work together, what kind of support would I need from you?". After that we asked everyone's feelings. One monk said he felt like a dam had opened and a strong flow of water of emotions had come pouring out. Another monk said he felt uncomfortable and intimidated having a nun sitting and talking to him face to face. Most monks said it was the first they had a chance to learn about the suffering of the nuns, although some of them watch the nuns working around their temple. The nuns said they felt released. One of the nuns said she felt like talking to her brother. Most nuns said the experience helped them to be able to talk to the monks without fear.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> A year later I did another process with monks and nuns during a workshop on teaching Dhamma through experiential learning. One young monk who attended the workshop in 1996 came to me and said, "During that gender workshop last year, I was so angry to see you standing in front of the room above the monks and teaching us. Who were you to teach us? I was even more angry when you forced me to sit and to just listen to the nun talking. Today I want to apologize for thinking toward you in that way. The gender workshop did help me learn how to relate to women. Now I can talk to women without having fear." (The Thai Theravada tradition is the most strict about relations between monks and women. Monks cannot touch women and cannot talk to a woman alone in a private area. Many monks misinterpret that women are enemies to their spiritual liberation, so they feel they have to stay away from them).</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> One of the nuns who participated in the same workshop said to me during a social action trainers workshop that I co-facilitated a year and a half later, "Although we come from the same town, I did not talk to you during the whole the workshop because I thought that as a lay woman you had no right to teach us monks and nuns. When my eyes were opened later on I realized how ignorant I was to not see that you were trying to help us understand our own problems."</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Since 1996 in every workshop I facilitate or co-facilitate on conflict resolution, non violence, community and team building, leadership, training for social action trainers or project management, gender is the one topic that I incorporate into the workshop content. If I am asked to do a workshop outside my circle, I will not take the job if the organization is not interested in letting me include gender in their workshop. In general, I will spend about half a day on the issue itself. Since our training style is based on an emergent design, however, whenever the gender issue comes up, we will deal with it even though it is not during the time that we have planned to work on the issue. For example, during an activity that monks and nuns had to work together to cross a toxic river, it was obvious that monks liked to make the decisions and to lead the activity. Therefore, during the reflection we asked the group how they felt about the gender issue expressed in the activity.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> For a women's group, such as nuns, we will do a leadership training with them first before we put them in the same workshop with the monks. When doing a workshop with monks and nuns, we try to involve lay men and women in the same event. Since monks and nuns' lives are usually quite isolated from the secular world, in this way they can be exposed to the social problems in lay society, especially gender issues. This is the approach I have been using in Thailand, Cambodia and India.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> More Challenges</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The greatest challenge to my spiritual practice is almost every time that I encounter a situation to work with high status monks or highly educated or experienced men who have suffered from patriarchal systems. Particularly for monks, to do an experiential activity makes them feel uncomfortable, especially when they have to do it with women. Expressing feelings or hearing women talk about their feelings makes them uncomfortable. For them, showing feelings makes it seem that they are not good monks because they are still effected by worldly defilement. As an ordained person, they are supposed to maintain equanimity to whatever happens around them. One time during a workshop in Cambodia, a few monks got up and left the session when one of the women started crying while talking about her suffering during the Pol Pot regime. One monk scolded her to stop crying.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Another challenge of working with monks and male Buddhist scholars is that they think they are the authorities to speak about Buddhism because they know more that everybody else. One time a well educated monk who is known for his preaching refused to join in a half an hour gender workshop. But after the activity was done, he wanted to preach to the group about Buddhism saying that in Nirvana, the state of enlightenment, there is no gender so we do not need to talk about gender issues.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> In a situation like the above, it is the patience, understanding and compassion cultivated through Buddhist practice can help me continue with the process. When I was able to just listen to that monk expressing his ideas, his fear, and his uncomfortableness without getting angry, without trying to defend my experience and opinion, without trying to argue back to convince him to see the same thing I saw, and without feeling fear or loosing face for not being a good facilitator, I can experience the transformation inside myself which I never felt before when I was involved in feminist work in the early 1990s. I used to think that I would teach them something but at the end I myself have learned so much. This learning takes place only when I can prevent my ignorance from blocking me to listen and see things as they are. Without spiritual practice, I will not have compassion, patience, peace of my own mind and especially hope to change the situation.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> For my own work, whether I call it feminism or gender, it has to have spiritual practice as a foundation because otherwise I will fall into a trap that I want the men to get out. I do feminist work through Buddhist practice and I practice Buddhism through feminist work.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> In conclusion, I see that the issue of social transformation, such as feminism and Buddhism, relates directly with personal transformation. It made sense to my life to see the two things go hand in hand. Through socialization I realized how many layers of ignorance I had accumulated. Filling my head with information, such as theories, concepts and methodologies, and then having intellectual discussions is not enough to help transform my own suffering into peace, harmony and hope. If I cannot find ways to transform myself into what I advocate to others and society at large, it is impossible for me to experience the real awakening.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Ouyporn Khuankaew serves on the INEB Executive Committee and is the coordinator for the INEB's Women's Project</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div>

THAI BUDDHISM AND PATRIARCHY

THAI BUDDHISM AND PATRIARCHY by Ouyporn Khuankaew In my eyes, Buddhism in Thailand has been very patriarchal, institutionalized, ...

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KHMER ROUGE The convulsions of the 1970s in Cambodia are incomprehensible,

<div style="text-align: justify;"> KHMER ROUGE</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The convulsions of the 1970s in Cambodia are incomprehensible, inexplicable, defying description.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The actual physical destruction of the Sangha began during the 1970-75 and was conducted not by the Khmer Rough, but by the American saturation bombing, and the monks were increasingly caught in the cross fire between factions in the growing civil war within Cambodia. These factions were not deliberately targeting Buddhism, but the effect was the same: the killing of monks, destruction of temples, libraries, Buddhist heritage. By 1975 when the Khmer Rough came to power, the number of wats had been reduced to 2,800 and while many monks’ lives were lost, many men and boys joined the monkhood in an effort to take refuge and protection from the intensifying and expanding war.</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Zrqdb5CgxTYIQp44qzXHTQ67OQafeow4B6Rq3ovuFI5mUt9OyElP6FmpTgALKhljVE9PoIDtYrWbV8oXrzj3G8KNrlMMaC3L41SinxIs_tseSVfCUAnXAm_Orp5emrYzn6Q_4Zxy2VWU/s1600/1431672378793.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_Zrqdb5CgxTYIQp44qzXHTQ67OQafeow4B6Rq3ovuFI5mUt9OyElP6FmpTgALKhljVE9PoIDtYrWbV8oXrzj3G8KNrlMMaC3L41SinxIs_tseSVfCUAnXAm_Orp5emrYzn6Q_4Zxy2VWU/s640/1431672378793.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The Khmer Rough had been gathering strength throughout the 1960s and early 70s. When they seized control of Cambodia in 1975, they purged “feudalists” which included aristocracy, mandarins, landlords and Buddhist monks. The Khmer Rough utterly devastated and annihilated Buddhism from the land of Cambodia, for a five year period of genocidal orgy. “Much of the Buddhist clergy had expected to be part of the revolution, not its victims. Encouraged by Prince Sihanouk and his appeals from Beijing, many of the Buddhists of the countryside joined the Khmer Rough. In a repeat of what had happened during the First Indochina War, the Khmer Rough actively recruited monks during the first years of the war and treated them with respect. Monks were named to ceremonial positions in the United Front government and allowed to continue administering to the faithful in many areas under Khmer Rough rule. Even when religions was suspended in the late war period, the Khmer Rough promised it was a temporary emergency measure to allow full mobilization of the people.”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “With victory, the Khmer Rough immediately attacked the Buddhist clergy, Buddhist pagodas, statuary, relics, libraries, and schools. The destruction was nearly complete, with more devastating consequences for Cambodia than the Chinese attack on Buddhism had been for Tibet.”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “The Khmer Rough murdered the top clergy immediately, enticing the monks to hand themselves over to their executioners with ruses similar to those used to kill off the former military officers of the Lon Nol regime.”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “Those who were not executed were ordered to forfeit their robes and join the people to work in the cooperatives as common filed hands, an order that violate their religious tenets. Those who refused were killed. Many monks were ordered to marry, which prevented them from returning to the clergy. In some areas the Khmer Rough cadre allowed older monks to keep their saffron robes only to be countermanded by the Center.” “Without monks the people could no longer practice their faith, but the Khmer Rough was intent on erasing the faith form the country’s memory. The pagodas, too, became targets of the regime. The nearly 3,000 pagodas in the country were desecrated or destroyed. They were used as stables, granaries, prisons, and execution sites. Statuary were defaced. The sacred literature was burned or shredded.” [When the War was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rough Revolution, Elizabeth Becker, p254.] Older more venerated and educated monks were executed, while younger monks and novices were forced to disrobe and work in the fields.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The Buddhist Patriarch, Samdech Huot Tat, was killed by the Khmer Rough. A statue of the patriarch which was smashed and thrown into the Mekong River by the KR, was reassembled and is today on display at Wat Ounalom.The highest and most recent estimate (1990) indicated that about 60,000 monks were killed and about 5,000 survived by escaping into Vietnam or Thailand, and becoming refugees.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The Khmer Rough are thought to have completely leveled at least 1,900 wats, mostly in the countryside. Town temples survived because they were used for other purposes.Hang Ngor, author of A Cambodian Odyssey, on which the movie The Killing Fields was based, wrote of his work assignment to destroy the temple of Phum Phnom. The monks were denounced as “parasites” he reported:</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “Buddhism was the old religion we were supposed to discard, and Angka was the new ‘religion’ we were supposed to accept. As the rainy season began – normally the time when the youth from the surrounding villages would shave their heads and join the monkhood – soldiers entered the empty wat [at Tonle Bati] and began removing the Buddha statues [in 1975]. Rolling the larger statues end over end, they threw them over the side, dumped them on the ground with heads and hands severed form the bodies, or threw them into the reflecting pools. But they could destroy only the outward signs of our religion, not the beliefs within. And even the, as I noticed with bitter satisfaction, there was one statue they did not destroy. It was the bronze Buddha, still gleaming inside the small Angkorean outbuilding….”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> In addition killing monks and destroying the temples and monasteries, part of the Khmer Buddhist literary patrimony was permanently destroyed. Libraries were burned. Irreplaceable Buddhist sutras were used as cigarette paper. The entire library of the Buddhist Institute was destroyed by burning it, and throwing it into the nearby Mekong River. Among the valuable holdings stored in the library was ethnographic and literary research of the Commission des Moeurset Coutumes, documenting classic Khmer cultural customs, manners, traditions and customs. All across Cambodia, palm-leaf texts which had been preserved in village temples, were destroyed.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “Through oversight or error, some collections were not damaged or destroyed. In the national library, 343 palm and mulberry leaf manuscripts remained undamaged as well as 185 palm leaf manuscripts stored in the royal palace together with a complete set of the tipitaka. More than 100 palm leaf manuscripts were left undamaged in the museum library along with some 700 volumes of the Tipitaka.” [When the War was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rough Revolution, Elizabeth Becker.]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> BUDDHIST RESTORATION</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> In 1979, after the overthrow of the Khmer Rough, Buddhism was reintroduced into Cambodia by a delegation of Buddhist monks from Kampuchea Krom in South Vietnam. The Sangha grew in numbers and strength quickly. By 1981 there were 3,000 monks in Cambodia; in 1987, 6,700 monks and by 1990, 10,000 monks.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> After 1979 there were still some restrictions on the freedom of Buddhism in Cambodia. For example, only men over age 50 could be ordained. Only four monks were allowed to live in a wat. Since 1988 Buddhism was fully restored. In July 1988, Radio Phnom Penh began broadcasting Buddhist prayers and ceremonies after an absence of 13 years.Then in 1989, Prime Minister Hun Sen officially apologized for his governments past “mistakes” during a ceremony in Kampot Province, where he prostrated before the head monk and asked forgiveness. In April 1990, the National Assembly officially amended the constitution to reestablish Theravada Buddhism as the state religion and the government decreed that “devout Buddhist followers can be ordained as Buddhist monks as they wish.”</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqCimgvBsPj17wGJA2wnlO4VfpBKLqlBPL2cQIO26tTgSuCBiNgt9w4bkuMbAe7dop_4X6hLc_97AtyTV2krvnFEBB5jfsuHhMj17uVW-QLROFw_1ScTWp_PLssFyDzrxDp0cXNOqyVKIl/s1600/3d1fc65406117c38e562a24e703630da.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="414" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqCimgvBsPj17wGJA2wnlO4VfpBKLqlBPL2cQIO26tTgSuCBiNgt9w4bkuMbAe7dop_4X6hLc_97AtyTV2krvnFEBB5jfsuHhMj17uVW-QLROFw_1ScTWp_PLssFyDzrxDp0cXNOqyVKIl/s640/3d1fc65406117c38e562a24e703630da.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Appendix I</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Traditional Khmer Buddhism was embodied in a didactic poem called Trai Phum or “Three Worlds”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> These outlined cbabor “laws, of relationships, similar to Confucianism, these proverbs were memorized by every Cambodian child. The proverbs delineated proper relations and conduct between people. Everyone has a “place” in society, with accompanying rights and responsibilities.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The most important relations are parents and teachers.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> This relationship insures a “transmission” process over generations, and does not recognize “progress.”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> This cerate a static, stable, sustainable type of society emphasizing the high priority and value placed on continuity.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Appendix II</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> MOUNTAIN GODS</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The earliest religious ideas of the proto-Khmer people were centered on worship of a “mountain god” who was venerated as the ancestor, and the king or patriarchal figure was identified with the “god of the mountain” or “king of the mountain.”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> This mountain has phallic symbolism and was associated with virility, potency and fertility.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> When the proto-Khmer people came into contact with Indianized Hindu culture through sea-trade which gave rise to the Funan culture of the Mekong Delta, they assimilated the Hindu mountain-cosmology with their own religious cosmology and began to increasingly accept Hindu, particularly Shiva, interpretations, and began to identify their “king of the mountain” with the God-king, Shiva.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> In Hindu cosmology, Mt Meru is the center of the universe. The earthly temple-mountain is the symbolic center of the empire, from which the king reigns. The temple-mountain, in which his Shiva lingam phallic-symbol is housed and ritually worshiped, is the center and source of the kings’ potency and fertility, which blesses the empire with fortune and well-being. The potency-virility of the king fertilizes the earth, earth-goddess, the people, who bring forth rice, i.e. life, abundance, happiness, security, stability, well-being.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> This is a continuous religious concept of Khmer tradition, extending from the earliest prehistory of Cambodia, and enduring into the present day.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Each year the king officially opens the rice-planting season with a formal ceremony in which he personally plows furrows in the earth, accompanied by musicians, and followed by young maidens who walk behind and scatter rice seeds into the furrows.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Mt Meru is the center between heaven and hell, between heaven and earth. Six circle chains of mountains surround Mt Meru, separated by six oceans. The Ocean of Infinity encloses the entire mass.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “In Buddhism, a continent shaped like an island lies beyond the ocean in each of the four cardinal regions of space. Layers of heaven soar above Mt Meru. The four rulers of the cardinal directions live in the summit of the mountain. Fantastic animals live in the forest at the base of the mountain, which serves as a refuge for ascetics to meditate.” (1)</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The temple-mountain reached its perfect expression in Angkor Wat.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> These temples were designed according to mathematical calculations and astrology, to represent harmony between heaven and earth, and to establish harmony in the universe.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The east represents the sun-creation; the west represents death and destruction.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> DEVARAJA – GOD KING</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> In the Hindu world view, the king was the embodiment of the god, usually Shiva (the destroyers) or sometimes Vishnu (the sustainer).</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The Shiva lingam was stored in the temple of the devaraja – the god-king. The king was the “creator” and sustainer of the nation.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “The temples represented the mystical Hindu golden Mount Meru, home of the gods and center of the world. Organizing the empire in the image of the universe and the center of the capital in the image of Mount Meru ensured harmony – and reassured Khmers that they were at the magical center of the world. The capital, and within the capital, the king’s palace and the mausoleum-temple in which his remains would be preserved had great cosmological significance, beyond being the administrative and cultural center of the country….” [Angkor Life, Stephen Murray, 1996]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> In the minds of the Khmer kings, Hinduism and Buddhism were not distinct. The Mahayana Buddhists thought of Buddha as an avatar (manifestation) of God. The Shivite God-king (devaraja) idea blended with the bodhisattva ideal in their minds.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “The conflation of the Buddhist bodhisattva, Lokeshvara, and the Mahashvar may also date back to the fifth century. Beginning in the fourth century, Champa kings were attaching the suffix -varman (“protector”) to their names. The sixth century Buddhism king of Funan, Rudravarman, was apparently Buddhist. Nonetheless, he was careful to have his lingam worshiped (at Ba Phnom, east of the Mekong).” [Angkor Life, Stephen O. Murray.]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Worshiped Avalokitashvara who is portrayed in Angkor art. Avalokitashvara is the Bodhisattva of Compassion, known in Khmer as Lokeshvara- “Lord of the World.”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Avalokiteshvara means literally “the lord who looks down from above.”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The bodhisattvas appear in the stone sculptures of the period, as a four-armed deity who carries a flask, book, lotus and rosary and has a Buddha or lotus on his head.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Cambodian traditions tended to blend, synthesize religious ideas. The god Harihara, for example, is a uniquely Cambodian god who is composite of Shiva and Vishnu.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The word “varman” – “protector” – from “armor” was used among the Pallavas and other southern and central Indian kings in the 3rd century, suggesting a transmission and exchange of cultural influences between Funan and Buddhist India.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Appendix III</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Fundamental Beliefs of Khmer Buddhist Cosmology</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Human life is affected by variety of factors. These factors are influential in human life, but are not ultimately fateful, determining human destiny and depriving the individual of free will. These energy factors are limited. Human destiny is generated by one’s personal free, volitional action or “karma”.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Traditional Beliefs</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> A) In Spirits and gods (spirits below and gods above)</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> B) Vital essences</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> C) Fate: in the stars; astrology</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> D) Modern science – such as germ theory</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The Spirits:</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The spirits cause illness, accidents, plant and land fertility, fertility of women.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> There are also group spirits, protectors, ancestors.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> These spirits must be respected and honored, and they will protect and nurture the human being. If they are dishonored, ignored or angered, they can be dangerous.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Vital Essence:</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Winds or “vital essence” - All living things have “vital essence” – air, breath, wind, called “pralu’n” in Khmer. This vital essence exists in plural forms in the 19 parts of the body in Khmer world view (32 parts of the body in Thai). The winds act as a unity in reality. They may survive death.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Male and female energies are vital essences. The “vital essence” is nourished by the female energy – the woman’s body, the mother’s milk, the “rice” of the earth. The earth and rice are feminine, goddess. Every grain of rice is part of the body of Mother Rice (Maeae Posop) and contains a bit of her vital essence.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The essence of male energy is “potency” – the power to fertilize the earth and fertilize woman; power to govern. Potency is a sense of glory, a religious essence, which men have, because men can achieve nibanna.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Fate:</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Fate refers to the cosmic elements; heavenly bodies; topography of land; elements of the body; osculation of day and night; directions – orientation to the cosmic elements.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Disturbance can be corrected through ritual reaction that restores, balance, reorientation of the individual to the cosmic elements.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Modern Science:</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> In modern times, the Khmer people have come to accept western scientific notations of causality such as germ theory, chemistry, physics, etc, as influential forces affecting the course of human life.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Karma:</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Karma: all these above influences are limited and experienced because we’re born in the human realm. They “influence” our lives, but do not determine our destiny/fate.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Our fate is caused by Karma.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> We have a great degree of freedom in determining our future experience.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Our place in this world can change in the course of a lifetime when karma “burns out.”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Khmer Buddhists take “precepts” or vows in their bodies.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> They must avoid demerit and perform acts of merit.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Demerit is breaking precepts, such as expressing greed, hatred and delusion.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Merit is accumulated through dana (giving gifts) especially to monks, keeping precepts, ordination, listening to Dhamma, performing acts of veneration to the three-jewels, pilgrimage, meditation (bhavana).</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Meditation by older people especially in preparation for death is powerful merit.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Merit is also increased through “transfer of merit” in giving it to the goddess of the earth to spread it to all livening beings.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Chanting Buddhist sutras or “Paritti” (Protection) and religious ceremonies are great sources of merit, creating good karma and dissolving bad karma, by changing the mind.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “We are what we think. All that we are arises from the mind. With the mind we create the world.”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Chanting the Buddhist sutras tends the mind toward enlightenment and away from delusion with its accompanying suffering.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> 1. Through the power of truth. The Suttas are expressions of enlightened mind, recited by the Buddha. Recitation of the Suttas inclines the mind toward enlightened truth.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> 2. Through the power of love. The Suttas are teachings of the compassionate Buddha, and incline the mind toward compassion and love.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> 3. Through the power of virtue. The suttas are expressions of a noble being and incline the mind toward virtue, accompanied by wellbeing and happiness.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> 4. Through the power of sound. The power of sound sets off various levels of vibrations that are powerfully healing on many levels, both physically and mentally.</div>

KHMER ROUGE The convulsions of the 1970s in Cambodia are incomprehensible,

KHMER ROUGE The convulsions of the 1970s in Cambodia are incomprehensible, inexplicable, defying description. The actual physical destr...

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SAMDECH SANGH CHUON NATH : Samdech Sangh Chon Nath (1883-1969), the Sangharaja or Patriarch of Cambodian Buddhism,

<div style="text-align: justify;"> SAMDECH SANGH CHUON NATH</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Samdech Sangh Chon Nath (1883-1969), the Sangharaja or Patriarch of Cambodian Buddhism, was a leading figure throughout the years of intensifying nationalism, independence, and Khmer pride. He was apparently a Khmer Krom. He assisted the nationalist Khmer movement centered in the Buddhist Institute. He is most famous for writing the Khmer dictionary, printed under the auspices of the Buddhist Institute. The dictionary is considered one of the cornerstones of Khmer culture.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> In 1940 he was instrumental in establishing the first Vietnamese Theravada Temple, Bau Quang Temple (Ratana Ramsyarama) in Saigon. The Abbot Venerable Ho Tong (Vansarakkhita) was ordained in Cambodia by Chuon Nath. Samdech Sangh Chuon Nath was a traditionalist. He was Khmer Krom, involved in anti-colonial activities in the 1950s, and against the Vietnamese communists who already occupied Kampuchea Krom. He concealed his Khmer Krom origins, and claimed to be from Preah Trapeang. In 1956 he attended the 6th Sangha Council of Buddhism in Kaba Aya Pagoda in Rangoon as the leader of the Cambodian delegation. MahaGosananda accompanied him. (I believe he was Venerable Gosananda’s upachaya). One testimony says: “Samdech Sangh Chuon Nath always taught us that we have to think from the following basis: Suppose the Cambodian central power was destroyed by our enemies, they did not exist anymore. Hence you had to rebuild to reconstitute our nation from scratch. Take initiative was their motto. Take initiative to solve the village problems through consensus. Take initiative to develop the economy, education and health care. That was the tradition rooted in the collective memory of Preah Trapaing, the sweet home of Khmer freedom fighters.”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “Sanmdech Chon Nath always reminded us to take care by ourselves our village, in every ways of life, especially build and develop our civil society, by organizing ourselves the security, defense, education, economy, public works, health, distribution of land. Act like you are the parallel government. It will be obliged to agree with you if you are well organized. That was the philosophy that Ven Chuon Nath taught.”</div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsIfMkuLgVHoJfMlPpsQSl9rg3VIgEJENXFNWuTUPjXNDE6rOzMJpYMJJPQ48OF1B9123rLcI2z9Thyfy64UMttAXpiZsZAR7WZRBqMbW71iWOds2W12XCotJZX78ViSumqxVr4am6wISX/s1600/chuonnath1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsIfMkuLgVHoJfMlPpsQSl9rg3VIgEJENXFNWuTUPjXNDE6rOzMJpYMJJPQ48OF1B9123rLcI2z9Thyfy64UMttAXpiZsZAR7WZRBqMbW71iWOds2W12XCotJZX78ViSumqxVr4am6wISX/s640/chuonnath1.jpg" width="486" /></a></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> His remains are enshrined at Wat Uunalom.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Although suppressed, and underground, the Buddhist-led independence movement continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s, as the French returned and attempted to seize control of power in the wake of WWII. Many of the Buddhists of the Nagara Vatta and Monks Demonstration fled to the provinces s and many eventually cooperated with the Vietnamese communists, becoming party members and fighting from bases in South Vietnam. Other Buddhists fled to the northwest of Cambodia and fought the French with support form the Thais. The Khmer Rough would eventually emerge out of these movements. As the Vietnam War heated up in the 1950s, the French eventually realized the colonial era was over, and withdrew from Southeast Asia. The Americans, fearing the ascendancy of Communisms stepped in and tried to control the region.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The Pentagon conducted a 471 page study of Cambodian in 1959, entitled Psychological Operations: Cambodia, which noted with dismay or disgust that the Cambodians were not susceptible to being panicked or stampeded into mass movement, their horizons being limited to their village, Buddhist temple, and forest.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The Pentagon noted “the prototype of the successful American might be objectionable because of the connotation of disproportionate wealth. The economic gap is so great that Cambodians have no understanding of the typical American version of “play’.”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “The Cambodians are polite and gentle, and regard angers as ‘madness’.” The military report complained.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “The Buddhist Monks were another target. They could not, unfortunately, be aroused to violence – ‘this would be asking the clergy to be non-Buddhist’ – but ‘psy-warriors’ could play on the fact that ‘the monks are also human’ and try to persuade them that they were hated by the intelligentsia.” [Houk, John [et.al] Psychological Operations: Cambodia: Project PROSYMS (Operating under contract with Department of Army) Washington D.C. USA: Special Operations Research Office, American University (AD-310.384) 1959; ix+471p. maps, biblog, indexs, 26x36cm.]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div>

SAMDECH SANGH CHUON NATH : Samdech Sangh Chon Nath (1883-1969), the Sangharaja or Patriarch of Cambodian Buddhism,

SAMDECH SANGH CHUON NATH Samdech Sangh Chon Nath (1883-1969), the Sangharaja or Patriarch of Cambodian Buddhism, was a leading figure thr...

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NINETEENTH CENTURY : What was Buddhism like in Cambodia in the 19th century?

<div style="text-align: justify;"> NINETEENTH CENTURY</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> What was Buddhism like in Cambodia in the 19th century?</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> By the 19th century, Thailand exercised some type of authority over Cambodia, Issan, and Laos, Chang Mai and Chang Rai – though these outlaying kingdoms were relatively autonomous and paid tribute to the Thai court in Bangkok.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiYtXm2SVFU32C5kIIJIEhw0yEpY-OGS5KwOZhDNGnEdgO2t5FtczI1aqa1wND3hQ2ywahual9IijjrKq2taQCXVWOSlRXzX1HnEXvVe4ir_yIwRvFwSX704hZujSuyZxNT-KhyphenhyphenQAxXL-L/s1600/Pict_Buddha.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="476" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiYtXm2SVFU32C5kIIJIEhw0yEpY-OGS5KwOZhDNGnEdgO2t5FtczI1aqa1wND3hQ2ywahual9IijjrKq2taQCXVWOSlRXzX1HnEXvVe4ir_yIwRvFwSX704hZujSuyZxNT-KhyphenhyphenQAxXL-L/s640/Pict_Buddha.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Chandler says, “Little is known about he sangha in nineteenth century Cambodia, and it could be misleading to assert that conditions were the same as those in Siam or Burma. There is no evidence, for example, that the sangha played a political role vis-à-vis the royal family, although monks and ex-monks were active in the anti-Vietnamese rebellion of 1821. By and large monks were widely respected and were repositories of merit, as sources of spiritual patronage, and as curators of Cambodia’s literary culture. They occupied a unique and therefore mysterious place in Cambodian life because they had abandoned – temporarily at least – agriculture, politics, and marriage.” [A History of Cambodia, Chandler, p106]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The 1821 uprising Chandler mentions occurred at approximately the same time in Cambodia, while in the Kingdom of Vientiane rose up (1825) against the authority of Siam. Siam ruthlessly crushed the rebellion and completely destroyed the kingdom of Vientiane, except for a few Buddhist temples which remained standing. The Thai took the Vientiane king back to Bangkok as a slave. The Vietnamese, who were also attempting to control Cambodia at this time, had encouraged the Vientiane uprising, evoking the fear, loathing and suspicion of the Thai, perhaps explaining the ruthless overreaction to the insubordination of the Vientiane kingdom.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> KHMER INDEPENDENCE - NATIONALISM</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The French inadvertently helped create Khmer independence and nationalist movement. How id it happen?</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> First, the French dispelled the political power of the old enemies of the Khmer, the Thai and the Vietnamese.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Second, the French helped recover Khmer identity through restoration, study and anthropology of Angkor Empire, generating national-ethnic identity.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Third, the French established a Buddhist Institute that generated a Khmer-language renaissance, and fostered nationalist and ethnic self awareness and pride.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The Thai and the Vietnamese had repeatedly invaded Cambodia to compete for power and control over the country. The Thai invaded, Cambodians appealed to Vietnam for help. Then the Vietnamese sought to subdue the Cambodians and they would turn to the Thai for help. Again and again this process continued for centuries. The Vietnamese finally got the upper hand in the early 1800s century. The Cambodian king was compelled twice a month to visit the Vietnamese temple in Phnom Penh and prostrate to the name of the Vietnamese emperor, while wearing Vietnamese ceremonial robes. The Vietnamese tried to suppress Theravada Buddhism, and impose Confucianism and Mahayana Buddhism on the Cambodians in an effort to “civilize” them. In 1820-21 the Cambodians rose up in a rebellion against the Vietnamese. The insurrection was led by a former monk named Kai, who was recognized as a “holy man” with supernatural powers. He organized his revolt from Ba Panom, a holy mountain in southeast Cambodia, the old capital of Funan and the place where the Buddhist King Jayavarman II landed when he returned from Java to establish the Angkor Empire. These monks and former monks embolden the peasants and Khmer populace in a general uprising my using charms and Buddhist incantations which would make them invulnerable to the enemy’s weapons. According to Khmer chronicles of these events, however, when the Khmer killed their enemies, the Vietnamese invaders, the nonviolent enchantment of the Buddhist charms was broken – and they were slaughtered in a terrible defeat.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> During these insurrections, the Cambodian king was a vassal of the Vietnamese emperor, and was therefore duty bound to put down the uprising; yet he could not bring himself to fight against the insurrection led by Kai, whom he probably knew as a monk in Phnom Penh, and whom he would have revered as a holy man with great supernatural powers. The Vietnamese historians refer to the king as “extremely superstitious.”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> This incident gives an insight to the popular Buddhism of the time. These “holy men” were greatly revered Buddhist leaders in Khmer society.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The Vietnamese regarded the Khmer as “uncivilized” barbarians and tried to “civilize” the Khmer – i.e. force them to adopt Vietnamese civilization, worldview, and religion. Part of their project involved suppression of Theravada Buddhism and the attempt to impose Vietnamese-style Confucianism and Mahayana Buddhism on the people – out of good intentions that nevertheless had terrible consequences for the Khmer people who were loyal to their own traditions.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The Khmer rebelled again in 1837-1839; and in yet another major uprising in September-October 1840. The Vietnamese were shocked by the repeated rebellions of these “barbarians” whom they regarded as ignorant beasts incapable of coordinated action. The Vietnamese called them “rats and mice” and said, “The Cambodians are so stupid, we must frighten them. Ordinary moral suasion has no effect.” The Thai, ensconced with 35,000 soldiers in Batambang, used the insurrection of 1840 as an opportunity to intervene, and establish suzerainty over Udong, the Khmer court. According to Thai histories, they viewed this intervention as a defense of Theravada Buddhism. In 1847, the Thai helped reestablish a Theravada king, Duang, in Phnom Penh, and reestablish Theravada Buddhism as the state religion. One record states that King Duang: “leveled the [Vietnamese] fortifications at Phnom Penh and hauled away the bricks to build and restore… [seven] Buddhist monasteries near Udong. Broken Buddha images were recast, and new ones carved. Monks were encouraged to live in monasteries again, and people were encouraged to respect them.” [A History of Cambodia, Chandler, quoting an original source]. The return of the king with regalia and the reestablishment of Theravada Buddhism provided legitimacy to the king.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> DHAMMAYUTTIKA</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, Theravada Buddhism in a weakened Kampuchea and Laos received sustenance from the Thai court and Sangha. Thailand was attempting to socialize and assimilate Kampuchea and Laos into their sphere of influence, and to undermine Vietnamese or the new European influence.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> In 1855, King Duang invited the Dhammayuttika sect into Cambodia, in order to help spread the reformed, standardized, centralized Thai version of Buddhism throughout Kampuchea. The Dhammayuttika were founded by King Mongkut (Rama IV) in order to strengthen and raise the standard of education of Theravada monks, to withstand the effects western influence at Christian missionary activities. “The coronation of Ang Duang in 1847 also marked the beginning of a rebirth and change for Khmer Buddhism that was only arrested by the impact of western-type modernization after WWII. Paradoxically, the French colonial rule and its secular industrial development goals served as a foil through which the sangha and the symbolic aspects of the Khmer court were revitalized from below. The monks led the people’s passive resistance to Frances ‘civilizing mission’ and succeeded in retaining control over their temple-based school system. Although the process of creating a new governing elite began with the French based secondary school system in the early 20th century, many well intentioned French reformers to ‘modernize’ the country were quickly ignored by the people, monks, and pre-World War II indigenous elites. It was not until after WWII that Cambodian elites in Phnom Penh became westernized and transformed the country form a Buddhist polity into a secular, western-type nation state.” [“Notes on Rebirth of Khmer Buddhism,” Radical Conservativism]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> King Duong next turned at this time to the French as a counterpoint to Thai influence, in an effort to secure autonomy and independence from the Thai and Vietnamese powers. King Duong was open to the French influence, because of his friendship with a French Catholic missionary, Monseigneur Jean Claude Miche, whose mission headquarters was located in Udon and who encouraged the king to resist the Thai and establish connections with the French. King Duong thought that by making overtures to the French he might be able to regain control of the Mekong Delta and other land that the French were controlling in Vietnam.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> It was at this time that King Duong sought help from the French to keep the Thai and Vietnamese in check, leading to the French protectorate, and ultimately to the colonization of Cambodia by the French. The Khmer people were largely unaffected by the French protectorate in the early years. The common folk were happy as long as they could have the land, Buddhism, and the king. These were the elements that provided stability in their lives. The problem arose later with the French Protectorate, in their attempt to impose Roman Catholic faith through aggressive missionary activity, repeating the assault on Theravada Buddhism that the Vietnamese had imposed.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> MILLENARIAN REBELLIONS</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> With the growing imposition of French control, the Khmer people again rose up in insurrections and rebellions in the late 1800s. In 1867, an ex-monk, Pou Kombo, led a rebellion claiming that he had better right than King Norodom to be king.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Another huge nationwide rebellion, lasting about 18 months broke out in 1885.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “Some monks had opposed the French from the start. Before the uprising of 1885, two monks had preached against the French in the countryside, calling upon Cambodians to defy colonialism in favor of what the French said was a wrong memory of Cambodia’s ancient past. A contemporary French report said: “These two adventurers belong to this category of prophets who, adorned with supernatural influence, dreamed of restoring the Kingdom of Cambodia to its ancient splendor.” Other anti-French monks followed. At one point the monks fielded an army of 5,000 peasants, but they were defeated as much by the royal family as by the French. In 1867, the last Buddhist rebel leader was captured by the French, who cut his head off, mounted it on a slate, and brought it to Phnom Penh for public display.”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “The monks quieted down but they never gave their full support to the French….” [When the War was Over, Elizabeth Becker, p 42]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> KHMER LANGUAGE RENAISANCE</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Nevertheless, the French did contribute to the sense of Khmer nationalism in a variety of unintended ways. The French “discoveries” and exploration of Angkor helped to begin the reawakening of Khmer nationalism, and ethnic pride and identity. From 1906 onward for the next 50 years, the French began restoring, studying, and recovering Angkorean ruins and history. Under French power the Khmer province of Batamgang which Siam had seized earlier in the century, was resotred to Cambodia. Angkor Wat, in the Batambang Province, was restored to Cambodia in 1906. This was an important milestone in Cambodian Buddhist history, and in the ascendancy of Khmer nationalism. Angkor Wat was the cradle of Khmer civilization and identity. In 1907, great ceremonies of rejoicing were held all across Cambodia, marking restoration of the Batambong Province. The people “thanked the angels” (thevoda) for the return of the district, and local officials assigned to the region came to Phnom Penh to pay homage to the king.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “In 1909 a copy of the Cambodian translation of sacred Buddhist writing, the Tripitaka, was deposited in a monastery on the grounds of Angkor Wat; and for another sixty years Cambodian monarchs frequently visited the site and sponsored religious ceremonies there.” [A History of Cambodia, Chandler, p 150]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Modernization in Cambodia moved very slowly, because the monks, the royalty, and Khmer officials, the people held in most respect, resisted institutional change. In 1909 automobiles and typewriters were introduced into Cambodia, speeding up communication and transportation.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “While the Khmer Sangha in western eyes served as a conservative force, it was by no means a dormant or unimaginative institutional opposition to colonialism. The sangha also embarked on its own program of modernization in the first half of the 20th century that developed more rational ways of understanding the teaching of Buddhism. The Dhammayuttika reform movement spurred a renewed orthodoxy and higher academic standards and was in part responsible for a new emphasis on scripture and the study of Pali. The first schools of Pali were opened in Angkor in 1909 and at the Royal Palace Wat in Phnom Penh in 1915, both of which emerged into the Higher School of Pali in 1922. Its goal was to “favor and develop the study of Buddhist theology through a rational teaching of the ancient sacred languages Pali and Sanskrit, and the knowledge indispensable to the understanding and explication of the religious texts.” [Notes on Rebirth of Khmer Buddhism,” Radical Conservatism]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> These initiatives led to the opening, beginning in 1933, of Pali elementary schools through the kingdom. By the 1960s, nearly one half of the wat schools taught at least the first three levels of Pali. “These developments coincided with the reform of the wat elementary schools that began in 1924 with a monk teacher-training program in Kampot province. While the French succeeded in supplanting the indigenous Confucian-based school system with secular schools in Vietnam, they were able only to strike a partial compromise with the Buddhist school system in Kampuchea. The Khmer monks retained control over primary education and saw it in their interest to incorporate some western teaching methods and curricula into what became known as “renovated” temple schools. In conjunction with this, the Kampot teacher training program developed into several “Applied Schools for Monks,’” whose purpose was to ‘place at the disposal of the monkhood practical methods of pedagogy oriented to the reform (renovation) of its mode of teaching.” [“Notes on Rebirth of Khmer Buddhism,” Radical Conservatism]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The wat schools were not replaced by secular state schools until the 1950s and 1960s.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The Buddhist Institute also served as a vehicle for a budding Khmer nationalism in the 1930s.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “The development of Khmer Buddhism in the 20th century was also reflected in the increased number of wats and monks in Kampuchea. Although the increase in population was slightly larger, the number of wats increased from approximately 1,000 in 1870 to 2,600 in 1940 to 3,326 in 1969. Of the later figure, only 124 wats and less that 1500 monks belonged to the elite Dhammayuttika sect; which in spite of its small numbers enjoyed the advantage of the royal patronage. Before the 1970-75 civil war, there were slightly more than 65,000 monks and novices in a country of 7 million inhabitants. During the rainy season or period of Kathin, the number of monks in robes approached 100,000. While no statistics are available to us, the number of nuns, or female lay devotees (yay or mae chii) who take the eight precepts shave their heads and wear white robes, was also considerable.”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “The quantative growth and academic orientation of the Khmer Sangha in the 20th century accompanied, critics would say paid for, by a decline in the quality of Buddhist practices in the decades following WWII. Rituals, ceremonies and festivals became increasingly anachronistic and bereft of meaning in the context of westernized cultural and governing elite in the capital. Meditation (vipassana), which had never been a signature of Khmer Buddhism, was not promoted in the Khmer sangha with the same intensity as the Pali language and scripture, now transmitted through the relatively new medium of print. (The Khmer sangha did not begin to use movable type until after WWII). Finally, the Sangha was not entirely immune form the ideological rifts that plagued Khmer society in the 1960s, as some modernist monks took part in the political tumults that led to the society’s rupture in the 1970s.” [“Notes on Rebirth of Khmer Buddhism,” Radical Conservatism]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “In the areas of scripture, King Monivong (d 1941) launched the Tipitaka Commission in 1927 for the purpose of translating the entire Pali canon into Khmer. Supplementing its own manuscripts holding s with original texts form Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand and the Pali text society in London, the project commenced in 1929 and continued under the auspices of the Buddhist Institute, which was founded the following year in Wat Unnalom. Completed in 1969 under the guidance of Ven Chuon Nath, the translation comprised 110 volumes between 400 and 800 pages each in length. Some outside commentators claim it is the first complete translation of the Singhalese recession of the Tipitaka into another language.”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “Soon after its founding the Buddhist Institute became a pivotal institute in Cambodian cultural and intellectual life. In addition to the Tipitaka project, it published Venerable Chuon Nath’s two-volume Khmer dictionary in 1935 and used the print media to publish and widely disseminate thousands of Buddhist and cultural texts for the people. A sister institute was founded in the Kingdom of Laos.” [“Notes on Rebirth of Khmer Buddhism,” Radical Conservatism]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> SUZANNE KARPALES</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The Buddhist Institute was the brainchild of the Suzanne Karpeles (d 1969) who encouraged and fostered a quiet renaissance of Khmer, Theravada Buddhism that led and fed the Cambodian independence movement. Karpales was an extraordinary woman whose efforts to develop Buddhism spanned continents.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> She was a gifted scholar with three degrees from the University of Paris in Pali, Sanskrit, and Tibetan, when she went to Southeast Asia for further studies.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> In 1930, she persuaded the French government to establish the Buddhist Institute in Vientiane, Laos and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. For twenty years she acted as General Secretary for both institutes. She will always be remembered in Theravada countries for having initiated and supervised and brought to completion the printing of the Theravada Tripitika in both Pali and in Khmer translation. In France, Karpales was very active in the first French Buddhist Association Les Amis du Boddhisme (Friends of Buddhism) founded by G.C. Lounsberry (an American women) in 1929. This association had strong Theravada leanings, and in 1930s, she organized a series of lectures in Buddhism at Sarbonne University in Paris, as well as publishing books in French, including meditation books.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “She was attached to the Ecole Francaise d’ Extreme Orient in Hanoi, then the worlds finest center of Oreintalism. Karpales came to Phnom Penh to build the royal library into a repository of irreplaceable Buddhist texts and relics and she collected both for safekeeping and to instruct the Cambodian bonzes, or monks, in texts that had long been ignored.” “Her mandate was to reeducate the Buddhist monks in what the French considered their traditional faith and erase much of the ‘superstitious practices’ that had ‘corrupted’ Theravada Buddhism in Indochina. The library established the Buddhist Institute in 1930. The Institute was the only center based in Cambodia that brought in students form other Indochinese colonies, largely the Cambodian minority living in Cochin China [the Mekong Delta, or Kampuchea Krom].”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “These Cambodians form southern Vietnam, the Khmer Krom, became part of Karpele’s larger project to revitalize Cambodian culture, pride, and aspirations. She surveyed the Cambodian minority community in southern Vietnam and led a crusade encouraging Cambodians to remember that the entire Mekong Delta was once their homeland….These Kampuchea Krom immigrants became the most ardent of nationalists in subsequent years, the favorite recruits of both the American CIA and the Khmer Republic.”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “The Buddhist Institute quickly became the focus of a new intellectual life in this new crucial period between world wars. The French built only a minimal, elite system of secular schools in Cambodia. Otherwise, they merely altered the curriculum taught by the monks in the country’s native pagoda schools. The youth in Cambodia were largely taught by monks, who were responsible for the high literacy rate in the country, far higher than in Vietnam, and the Institute easily gained a position as the fullest expression of Buddhist education in Cambodia. It also discouraged Cambodians form traveling to Thailand for further Buddhist education; in Bangkok it was easy for Cambodians to pick up dangerous anti-French, independent ideas from Thai Buddhists.” [When the War was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rough Revolution, Elizabeth Becker]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The Buddhist Institute became the first home of anti-colonialism in Phnom Penh.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “The Buddhists were eminently qualified for their part in brining Cambodians into the modern political era. Under the tutelage of the French, like Karpales they had become some of the few Cambodians introduced to the ideas of the modern world. Importantly, this was said to be accomplished without sacrificing their identity as Khmers. Most of Cambodia’s small aristocracy was conversant in the ways of the French, but they were compromised by their acquiescence to colonial rule….”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “By the twentieth century the monks had extraordinary power, despite their modest appearance. At dawn, the monks appeared with their heads bowed and begged for food outside the village doorways; they helped broker marriages and otherwise dictated behavior in the profound and mundane affairs of village life. The bonzes taught the children, raised the orphans, and set the moral and social standards of the country. N return, the people built their pagodas and monasteries and followed their strictures. The bonzes, who pledged their lives to poverty, filled the pagoda coffers and became the most important source of charity in the country, dispensing food or funds to the poorest of peasants.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “Finally, the Buddhist monks were the only influential Cambodians in a position to question both the French and the King. The monks had attained an independent moral standing in the community not subject to the whims of royal beneficence. Unlike Vietnam and other countries of the Chinese tradition, Cambodia had no powerful mandarin class, only an aristocratic oligarchy that administered the government and whose fortunes were largely controlled by the king. The monks were recognized as a separate group protecting the country’s values and culture. When these holy men began questioning French rule, their doubts struck a deep chord in the country.” “Some monks had opposed the French form the start…” [When the War was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rough Revolution, Elizabeth Becker]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> [The monks] “felt French colonialism undermined rather than preserved the Cambodian state, as the French claimed. Buddhist agitators led protests against sending Cambodians to fight for the French in World War I, tearing down recruitment posters in Phnom Penh. When Suzaanne Karpales established her Buddhist Institute it was these dissidents to whom she gave a base of operation. The Institute became home of the first modern anti-colonial agitator in Phnom Penh.” [When the War was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rough Revolution, Elizabeth Becker]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Cambodian literature in Khmer-language consisted of Buddhist texts and 19th century epics. There were no histories, or newspapers as Cambodian emerged into the 20th century. Literacy in Cambodia was related to study of Buddhist texts in the temples. Cambodian literary tradition was identical to Theravada Khmer Buddhist studies.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “Before 1936, in fact, the only Khmer-language periodical, Kambuja Surya (Cambodian Sun) had been published on a monthly basis under the auspices of the French-funded Institute Bouddhique. With rare exceptions, the journal limited itself to printing folk-lore, Buddhist texts, and material concerned with the royal family. Even Cambodian chronicle histories in Khmer were not yet available in print.” [A History of Cambodia, Chandler, p160]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> [French anti-Thai support Khmer…]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> In Phnom Penh, a small French-educated intellectual elite emerged in the 1930s – 1950s, having been educated in Saigon.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The French were suspicious of Thai influence and therefore encouraged Khmer identity in an effort to inspire Khmer nationalism and inoculate them from the subversive anti-French elements of Siam. This enhanced and intensified Buddhist studies and Khmer Buddhist identity.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The Buddhist Institute was the center of this activity.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “The three key channels for Cambodian self-awareness in the 1930s, in fact, were the Lycee Sisowath, the Institute Boddhique, and the newspaper Nagara Vatta, founded in 1936 by Pac Chhoeun and Sim Vac; both men, in their 30s, were soon joined by a young Cambodian judge, born in Vietnam and educated in France, named Son Ngoc Thanh. The three, in turn, were closely associated with the Institute Boddhique, to which Son Ngoc Thanh was later assigned as librarian. This brought them into contact with the leaders of the Cambodian Sangha, with Cambodian intellectuals, and with a small group of French scholars and officials, led by the secretary of the Institute, Suzanne Karpales, who were eager to help with the Cambodian intellectual renaissance.” [A History of Cambodia, Chandler]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Son Ngoc Thanh was Khmer Krom, born and raised in the Mekong Delta. His earliest education was in a Khmer-language pagoda. “He transferred to the French system for his secondary education and went to France for his university studies, which included one year of reading law. As a citizen of a French colony, Cochin China, rather than the Cambodian protectorate, Thanh received and education rare for a Cambodian of that era. He returned to Cochin China and finally settled in Phnom Penh, where he joined the Buddhist Institute shortly after it was founded. Thanks to his education, Thanh became the Institute secretary.” [When the War was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rough Revolution, Elizabeth Becker]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The Nagara Vatta newspaper, established in 1936, published under the auspices of the Buddhist Institute, was the voice of the new Khmer intellectual renaissance. The word “nagara vatta” means “temple realm” in Sanskrit, and is a play on the word “Angkor Wat” which means the same tin Khmer.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The paper saw its mission as to “awaken” the Cambodian people. Son Ngoc Thanh, the Buddhist Institute secretary, was agitating for independence in the Khmer language through the newspaper, reclaiming the culture and preserving the national integrity. It was a “pro-Khmer” paper and promoted Khmer identity and ethnic pride.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> In 1937, the paper published 5,000 copies per issue and its readership was undoubtedly even higher. It was certainly read avidly by Buddhist monks throughout the kingdom.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “The newspaper called for seditious behavior but disguised it in religious language. Together Tanh and the Buddhists initiated the first serious discussion against colonialism in Phnom Penh. They were met with censorship and surveillance. Aware that in Burma political Buddhism had become a problem, the French moved quickly to curtail these activities of Phnom Penh’s budding Buddhist nationalists.” [When the War was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rough Revolution, Elizabeth Becker]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> MONKS DEMONSTATION</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> As it grew more anti-French and anti-colonial, the paper was suppressed in 1942, in circumstances leading to a huge monk-led uprising. More than 30 Cambodians were imprisoned for long sentences following the “Monks Demonstration.” How did it occur? The French had put down Khmer insurrections before. The French and Vietnamese exploited the Khmer, who paid the highest taxes in Indochina. In 1916, perhaps as many as 100,000 Khmer protested the high taxes and marched on Phnom Penh, stunning the French who had imagined that the Khmer were passive, lazy and ignorant, incapable of mass, coordinated action. Again in 1925 a spontaneous uprising in which Khmer villagers killed a French government agent. But the 1942 “Monks DemonstratIon” was unprecedented for the French protectorate.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The Japanese had entered Phnom Penh in 1941 and announced the end of the European hegemony in Asia. The Thai reacted quickly and attacked and seized Batambang province in 1941. Angkor Wat remained in French control. The Japanese became the new colonial power in Cambodian during this time, and left the French to administer the country.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “French military weakness and Japanese sympathy for certain anti-colonial movements – evident throughout southeast Asia by 1942 – had not passed unnoticed among the [Khmer} intellectuals – many of the members of the Sangha – who were associated with the Nagara Vatta and the Institute Boddhique. Between 1940-1942, the paper took on increasingly pro-Japanese and anti-colonial line. During these years, at least 32 issues of the paper were censored. In ten issues the lead editorial was suppressed….” [A History of Cambodia, Chandler]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> For the Cambodians, the Thai invasion and seizure of their sovereign land marked the end of their allegiance to the French; it was the breaking point of endurance with the supposed “protection” by the French, who had failed them.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “The French had failed in their basic responsibility to protect Cambodia from its neighbors – the raison d’etre for French colonial rule. The elite woke up from its delusions and saw the French in a severe light. They were receptive when Son Ngoc Thanh of the Buddhist Institute engineered a partnership, bridging the lower-class Buddhists with the elite. He was a rare figure, trusted by the Buddhists who otherwise had few connections with the French-speaking elite of Phnom Penh. The Buddhists were far too traditional. If they spoke a foreign language it was Thai. Their supporters and members were from the lower classes. The students they recruited form the capital for their drive against the French generally came from the polytechnic schools.”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “Thanh had an entrée into the upper strata through the Friendship Association of Sisowath School Alumni [Because of his elite French education]….”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> Than helped coax the Friendship Association of the Sisowath School Alumni toward Khmer nationalism.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> “The alumni groups began sponsoring the monks to travel around the countryside preaching against French colonialism. The alumni association gave the Buddhists badly needed funds as well as new legitimacy. Joined together, they represented a potent threat to the French, and indirectly, the monarchy, as long as the king supported France. The traditional Buddhists and the modern elite comfortable in European language and politics began to have immediate results. But the elite were very small in numbers, and it fell on the monks to become the visible emblem of revolt and their saffron robes the symbol against French colonialism.” [When the War was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rough Revolution, Elizabeth Becker]</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> This set the stage for the explosion of 1942, known as the “Monks Demonstration.”</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The climax of the confrontation between this movement of Buddhist monks and Khmer aristocracy of Phnom Penh against the French occurred in July 1942. The French closed the Nagara Vatta and arrested the leading monk, Hem Cheav. Venerable Hem Cheav (1898-1943) was an important monk, revered by the peasants and honored by the elite classes of Khmer society. He was a professor at the Ecole Superieure des Pali in Phnom Penh, and had audaciously appealed for Cambodian soldiers to desert from the French colonial army. “He preached nonviolence, but not exclusively, recognizing the formidable impediment of the French army and police in his fight for independence. One of the charges against him, and other monks, was translating seditious materials form Thai.” [When the War was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rough Revolution, Elizabeth Becker]. The French arrested him and another monk Nuon Duong. The French committed sacrilege and desecration by manhandling a monk, refusing to allow him to ceremonially disrobe before incarcerating him, a grotesque violation of Buddhist and Khmer sensibilities.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> When Venerable Cheav was arrested, he reportedly said, “Sirs, you can do everything you like here. You are the masters. You can take my life, but my spirit will continue.” On July 20, a crowd of nearly 2,000 people, more than half monks, marched from Phnom Penh’s principal boulevard from behind the royal palace to the French colonial office of the resident superieur, Jean deLeus, near Wat Phnom, and demanded the release of Venerable Hem Cheav. When the French police refused them admittance to the official, the crowd rebelled. The French police attacked the unarmed crowd when they became unruly. Police photographed the demonstrators, and later arrested 200 of them, including Pach Chhoeun, the editor of the recently suppressed Nagara Vatta newspaper, who had led the protest and presented the petition to the French official. Buddhist leader Son Ngoc Thanh went underground and hid in Phnom Penh for several days during the clampdown, the escaped to Batambang, then on to Thailand, eventually making his way to Tokyo. Meanwhile Cheav was defrocked and imprisoned in the infamous, prison island in Vietnam, Poulo Condore, where he died in 1943.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> <br /></div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The French continued to inflame the Cambodians Buddhists. In 1943 the French tried to replace the Khmer alphabet with the Roman one, as part of a “modernization” campaign. The Sangha and Khmer intellectuals saw this is an attack on traditional Buddhist and Khmer culture.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> On March 9, 1945, the Japanese displaced the French and four days later King Norodom Sihanouk dissolved the treaties of 1863 and 1884 signed by his grandfather King Norodom, and declared the end of the French protectorate. When in 1945 the French were weakened at the end of the war, the Khmer alphabet was restored. The Buddhist lunar calendar was also restored at this time, replacing the Gregorian calendar that had been imposed by the French. On July 20, 1945 King Shinok presided over a rally celebrating the Monks Demonstration, aligning himself with the nationalist and independence movement of the Buddhist Institute. He was joined by the Buddhist nationalist leaders Pach Chhoeun who was released from prison; and Son Ngoc Thanh who had returned to Cambodia form Japan in April, to serve the new government as Foreign Minister. The Monks Demonstration was established as a national holiday. Son Ngoc Thanh immediately fell into disfavor when he challenged King Norodom Shinaok, who therefore became suspicious of him. At the end of the war in August 1945, Son Ngoc Than became Prime Minister. When the French returned to control of Cambodia , Thanh was imprisoned as a traitor (at the request of King Norodom Sihanok). The national holiday of the Monks Demonstration was immediately abolished.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The Cambodians were determined to have a degree of autonomy and self government. The French agreed to national elections in the following year of 1946.</div> <div style="text-align: justify;"> The Sangha played a role in turning out votes for the Democrat party in the nation’s first election of 1946. The occupying forces in Cambodia were always caught off guard and surprised by the unexpected, sudden popular “eruptions” of mass movement s in Cambodia, failing to recognize the integral role of the Buddhist Sangha that provided cohesion and vitality to the Khmer people.</div>

NINETEENTH CENTURY : What was Buddhism like in Cambodia in the 19th century?

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