Dharma & Renewal
Newsletter of the Khmer-Buddhist Educational Assistance Project (KEAP), January 2008
A note from the executive director:
Last year was an eventful one for KEAP. First and foremost, Most Venerable Maha Ghosananda, the spiritual leader of Cambodian Buddhism and KEAP’s founding patron, passed away. His spiritual presence and engagement for peace will be missed by all, Cambodians and foreigners alike, who ever encountered him. He will be remembered historically for having led Dhammayietras (literally, pilgrimages for truth), or annual walks for peace and reconciliation throughout Cambodia since 1992. News of his passing came as his followers were leading the 17th Dhammayietra in Cambodia. A tribute to him that I wrote appeared in the Inquiring Mind, the magazine of the insight meditation practitioners, and is reprinted with permission below.
We experienced other changes, including the unexpected closing of the Wat Thmey School for Vulnerable Children. For this and other program news, including the opening of a pilot program to assist a nun's center in northwestern Cambodia, please read on.
The following article and picture were published in the Fall, 2007 issue of the Inquiring Mind (Berkeley) and is reproduced here with permission:
Cambodia’s Gandhi: Tribute to a Peacemaker
by Peter Gyallay-Pap
The Venerable Maha Ghosananda, spiritual leader of Buddhism in Cambodia, and indirectly my teacher, recently passed away. He was more than the peace activist monk that defined his public persona abroad. The Khmer people regarded him as a savior. For us expatriates, each encounter with Maha was a transforming experience, less through his words, which were sparing, than by his radiant spiritual presence and the infectious joy that he exuded. He was an arahant (bodhisattva) for whom rational discourse as we know it seemed superfluous. Journalists interviewing him would often scratch their heads in seeking rational answers to their questions. For example, when once asked for his views on the future of Cambodia, he replied softly, in his epigrammatic way, “We take care of the present moment. The future will take care of itself.” When Father Dave at the Carmelite monastery here in Crestone (Colorado) asked him about his thoughts on Buddhist-Christian dialogue, Maha, without hesitating, stood up, faced Father Dave – who involuntarily also rose to his feet – and embraced him.
I mentioned he was my teacher indirectly because he had no students in the formal sense and eschewed the guru role. Maha was an independent monk with no institutional structure, no home, to support him. He grew up as a temple kid in southwestern Cambodia, ordaining as a novice monk at 14 in his native wat. After finishing secondary monk education in Cambodia, he continued higher Pali studies at Nalanda University in Bihar, India. While there, he was deeply influenced by the Japanese Nichiren monk, Nichidatsu Fuji, devotee of non-violence who had lived with Mahatma Gandhi at his ashram. After some ten years, Maha was awarded both a doctorate degree and the apt title Maha Ghosananda, “great proclaimer of joy.” He went on to study contemplative social engagement with Buddhadhasa Bhikkhu in Thailand before repairing for the next decade to meditate (and acquire fluency in more than 10 languages) at a forest monastery in southern Thailand.
A turning point in his life occurred in 1978, when he left his forest retreat and trekked ― on foot, according to one account ― to the Thai-Cambodian border. He heard that tens of thousands of famished refugees had amassed there to escape the Cambodian holocaust. When for the first time in years these refugees saw a saffron-clad Buddhist monk, their listless silence transmuted into wails of suffering and hope. Maha later learned that thirteen members of his immediate family had been killed. Over the next years he ministered to the physical and spiritual needs of the refugees, founding simple hut-temples in all the border camps as well as home-based wats in Cambodian resettlement communities in North America, Europe, and Australia. At this time until the signing of the UN-sponsored Paris Peace treaty in late 1991, Maha led small contingents of monks to all of the peace negotiations between the warring Cambodian factions, leading the monks in silent vigils.
In 1992, as the camps were preparing to close with the planned repatriation of some 350,000 displaced Cambodians, Maha led a 450 kilometer Dharma walk (Dhammayatra, literally "pilgrimage of truth") from the border camps to Phnom Penh. These walks for peace and reconciliation continued to crisscross the Cambodian countryside from year to year, providing the people not only much needed cathartic relief, but also the impetus to renew and rebuild their faith. The third walk in 1994, which ventured to bring the message into Khmer Rouge held areas in the northwest, met with tragedy when several walkers were killed in a crossfire with government troops. For his unceasing efforts for peace, Maha was nominated four times in the 1990s for the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1992, he received the Norwegian Rafto Prize for Human Rights and in 1993, the King of Cambodia conferred him with the honorary title of patriarch of religion and peace. In 1998, Japan awarded him the Niwano Peace Prize, whose citation read, "In both spirit and deed, he has shown the way to a fundamental resolution of regional and ethnic strife around the world." After more than twenty years of engagement, traveling throughout the world, never remaining in one place for long, his age and some say the onset of Alzheimers, began to slow Maha down. He looked haggard when I saw him last in 2003; he had come to talk to a Buddhist philosophy class of student trainees at Phnom Penh's Buddhist Institute but perked up as he answered, in his peculiar way, students' questions and drilled them on the Dharma.
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Ven. Maha Ghosananda on a recruiting mission
for the first Dhammayietra at a Khmer Rouge-
controlled refugee camp along the Thai-
Cambodian border.
Maha's reported age in the obituaries ranged from 78 to 94. The mystery of his age reflects his almost waiflike inscrutability in life -- at least in the nearly two decades that I knew him through my work with the Khmer-Buddhist Educational Assistance Project, of which he was the founding patron. A moving obituary of Maha that appeared in the Economist ends with an appropriate quote from the Metta Sutta:
For the pure-hearted one
Having clarity of vision
Being freed from all sense desires
Is not born again into this world.
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Peter Gyallay-Pap is founder and executive director of the Khmer-Buddhist Educational Assistance Project (KEAP). Dana in memory of Maha Ghosananda to continue his work for Buddhist renewal in Cambodia may be made to KEAP through keap-net.org/donate or P.O. Box 657, Crestone, Co 81131/USA
The Wat Thmey School for Vulnerable Children closes,
new child support program opens
For the past four years, KEAP has through your donations and volunteer work provided support for some thirty needy children at a wat (temple) in Siemreap, northwestern Cambodia. Buddhist wats have traditionally been the social safety nets for the neediest and most destitute members of society, and this project sought to help revive this tradition in post-conflict Cambodia. The children, aged five to 12, came from poor families unable to afford the costs of attending the local public school. Most children came from families where one or both parents were living, or in some cases died, of HIV/AIDS. KEAP raised funds to build the one-room school building back in 2001-02 and the school started up in 2003. Our local implementing partner was Amnoy Tean (Dana Offering), an informal community-based group. The objective was to provide the children with remedial education with the view of mainstreaming them into the local public school. Unlike in the public schools, this special school also taught Buddhist morality and chanting in a country that is more than 90 per cent Buddhist. Buddhism is a way of life in Cambodia, it's part of the country's social and cultural fabric, less a "religion" in the western sense. Given this, one of KEAP’s main goals is to help strengthen the Khmer and Buddhist identities of the people following the holocaust and at a time when they are being subjected to massive foreign influences, not all for the good.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, the school was unable to reopen for its fifth year last September. Instead, Amnoy Tean, which has been run by a retired couple who on their own worked with street children in the 1990s, will be providing direct support for vulnerable children to attend the local school, located in the Wat Kok Chauk commune. The new activity will be conducted under the auspices of Wat Kok Chauk. Support includes providing the children with a set of clothes, learning supplies, a lunch, and the 200 to 300 riels (5 to 8 cents) that all schoolchildren are unofficially required to bring to their teachers each day -- in order to supplement the teachers’ inadequate ($20-30 monthly) incomes. One dollar a day will provide the physical and moral nourishment for a child to be able to attend school. In addition, Amnoy Tean, which is located adjacent to the school compound, will provide the children with tutoring assistance on a daily basis.
At a dollar a day, sponsoring a child costs $24 per month, or $240 for one school year (September through June, Monday through Saturday). Working with Amnoy Tean, KEAP’s field coordinator will send you the name, age, and a picture of the child you sponsor for an entire year. Sponsor, or co-sponsor, a needy child by clicking here!
A record number of scholarships for Khmer monk students
Monks and the wats where they reside, whether in the countryside, towns, or the capital city, Phnom Penh, have always been the symbolic and physical centers of Cambodian life. Your don't have to walk or ride far to see the ornate temple-monasteries that rise loftily from the city- and land-scapes. In a society that remains 80 to 85 percent village-based, the Khmer people continue to seek moral, spiritual, social, and cultural guidance from Buddhist monks as well as nuns and elders. Following the time of troubles in the 1970s ― when Buddhism was officially abolished, most monks perished, and wats and statuary desacralized, damaged, and destroyed ―, rebuilding the Sangha (community of monks, or more broadly defined as including nuns and laypeople) has been an arduous task. One of the greatest challenges facing post-conflict Cambodia is the quality training and education of a new generation of monks capable of fulfilling the roles expected of them by the people.
Class of 2007-08 KEAP scholarship students in front of the Buddhist
Association of Cambodia offices with KEAP's acting country rep
(kneeling, right) and representatives of BAC and the Buddhist Univ.
In collaboration with the Zen Community of Oregon (USA), KEAP piloted a scholarship program in 2002 for two 3rd year monks studying at the Preah Sihanouk Raj Buddhist University in Phnom Penh. We provide modest monthly stipends to monks selected both for academic achievement and financial need. Gratefully, the number of scholarships has grown from year to year with support from both individuals and institutions. Among the latter, along with the Zen Community of Oregon, we have received ongoing support from the Dragon Mountain Zen Center in Crestone, Colorado, and, with this academic year just ending, the Banda Utama Buddhist Society, a Theravada Buddhist group of dedicated laypersons in Malaysia. For the 2007-08 academic year (which runs from May through February), we have been supporting eleven monk students, including for the first time two 2nd year students. Scholarships are renewed each year until graduation as long as the monk students maintain high levels of achievement. Nearly all monk students come from the provinces. We have found that the scholarships, which help cover living and learning expenses, are making a differerence both in terms of the recognition (and expectations) they confer and in allowing the students to focus more intently on their studies.
The scholarship program has been well administered by the Buddhist Association of Cambodia (BAC), KEAP’s local implementing partner located next to the university. The cost of an annual scholarship is $220, consisting of monthly stipends of $20 over ten months, and an administrative and facilitation fee of ten percent ($20) divided equally between BAC and KEAP. Scholarship recipients are selected throgh open recruitment at the beginning of each term by a committee comprised of representatives from the BAC, the University, and KEAP. There were 34 applications in 2007, of which seven 2nd and 3rd year new candidates were selected along with four renewing scholarships. Scholarship recipients are required to acknowledge and introduce themselves to their sponsors as well as write an end-of-year letter reporting on their accomplishments.
Sponsor a monk student for the 2008-09 term!
Post-graduate fellowships for monk graduates
There are no possibilities for graduates of the Buddhist University to go beyond the the B.A. level in Buddhist studies in Cambodia. With generous support from the San Francisco-based Khyentse Foundation, KEAP began provding post-graduate fellowships to qualified monk graduates to study of an M.A. in the Buddhadhamma at monastic and Studdies studies institutions in the region. In December 2006, two monk students were selected for higher studies at Kelaniya Buddhist University in Sri Lanka. Last year monk graduates were selected for studies at Mahachulalongkorn Buddhist University in Bangkok, Kingdom of Thailand.
A new program to assist a nun’s center
Most Cambodian nuns enter the nunhood as retired householders or widows for a life of renunciation in order to follow the Middle Way and make merit as preparation for leaving this world. At the same time, an estimated (in 2002) one in five nuns, known locally as doun jīs, are under the age of 50 and have considerable vitality and years ahead of them. As a general rule in Cambodia, nuns are more devout, mature, and committed to the Dhamma than many monks in Cambodia, the vast majority of whom are young and intent on short ordination periods (average is 2-3 years) before re-entering lay life. Monk ordination is like a social rite of passage for younger males in Khmer society and there is no stigmatism to disrobing in Theravada countries.
Apart from the issue of reviving the bhikkhuni ordination for women in Theravada Southeast Asia, the potential is there for younger Khmer nuns not only to develop spiritually and educationally but to engage in Dhamma-informed and -inspired social activities. Unlike monks, for example, they can enter homes to deal with domestic problems -- women and children suffering from trauma and abuse. The social commitment of Cambodian nuns is seen, for example, in their spirited engagement since 1992 in the late Ven. Maha Ghosananda’s Dhammayietra walks for peace and reconciliation in the country. Yet nuns continue to be more or less undervalued and ignored as resources for Buddhist healing and spiritual growth in a Khmer society that still best beset by issues of trauma, domestic abuse, and, in more recent years, of the disintegrative effects of (western) mass consumer culture.
Monks visiting nun's center in northwestern Cambodia
In response, KEAP’s board of directors has approved a program to assist a nun’s center in northwestern Cambodia as a pilot project to strengthen the social, educational, and community outreach capacities of Cambodian nuns. Following periodic visits and an informal needs assessment conducted by KEAP there last November, it is our hope to be able assist the center’s goal of serving as a Dhamma resource to themselves and the community. This may in particular include working with young people (teaching meditation, the Dhamma) along victims of trauma and domestic violence.
Stay tuned, or let us know if you are interested in becoming involved.
Dhammayietra 18 to walk in the memory of Maha Ghosananda
This year, the 18th annual walk for peace and reconciliation is scheduled to take place in Ven. Maha Ghosananda’s home Takeo province. Beginning at Maha Ghosananda’s native Wat Baray on March 13th, monks, nuns, laypeople, a contingent of foreigners, will walk 222 kilometers in eight districts of Takeo through the 1st of April in commemoration of the first anniversary of the monk leader’s passing. Along the way, they will plants trees, teach the Five Precepts, and discuss topics ranging from Buddhist self-help principles to protecting the environment and health at 50 wats and 86 schools. As with each Dhammayietra, thousands of local people young and old will be affected, including by giving them an opportunity to greet and offer food and drink to the monks, nuns, and laypeople walkers.
Ven. Maha Ghosananda leads the first Dhammayietra into Phnom Penh
in 1992 after a 450-kilometer walk from the boarder camps along the
Thai-Cambodian frontier.
If you wish to support Dhammyietra 18 by helping defray its logistical expenses, please click here.
Written, edited, and published by the Khmer-Budhist Educational Assistance Project (KEAP)
P.O. Box 657, Crestone, CO 81131/USA
phone/fax 719 256-4306 · keap@fairpoint.net · www.keap-net.org