Despite Communist purges, Indochina's ancient faith lives on
During the lazy decades before the war in Viet Nam spread to Cambodia, now called Kampuchea, mornings in Phnom-Penh began when Buddhist bonzes filed slowly out from their wats (monasteries) in search of food. They proceeded along tree-lined boulevards, past colonial mansions and temples glistening with gold leaf, begging until their silver bowls were filled with rice and fresh mangoes. That usually did not take very long.
The march of the mendicants still begins at dawn as the hollow clap of the temple bell calls Phnom-Penh's faithful to alms. But the city through which the saffron-robed monks walk is now littered with rubble. There is far less food. The silver bowls have been replaced by plastic ones, bought on the black market. Yet the ritual is more important than ever. "People have asked to revive this dawn rite so they can share the little they have in order to make merit," explains Tep Vong, the senior Buddhist monk in Kampuchea. "We are rebuilding the entire structure of our social and religious life."
Buddhism was one of the first institutions affected when pro-Western governments in Cambodia, Laos and South Viet Nam were replaced five years ago by Communist regimes. In Viet Nam, bonzes managed to keep the pagodas open by strategically placing busts of Ho Chi Minh opposite altars crowded with Buddha images. In the mountainous kingdom of Laos, the new Communist rulers were less tolerant. Monks in Luang Prabang were lucky to escape with re-education in "seminar camps." Many others who had become wealthy by selling protective amulets to hill-tribe animists had their magic severely tested by Pathet Lao firing squads.
Least tolerant of all were the new leaders of Kampuchea. Under the direction of Prime Minister Pol Pot and a shadowy group of doctrinaire fanatics called Angka Loeu (the Organization on High), the Khmer Rouge began methodical destruction of every vestige of religion. Christian ministers were slaughtered and Muslim mosques destroyed. The greatest indignities, however, were reserved for Buddhists, who constituted 90% of Kampuchea's population. Insurgents fresh from the jungle looted the country's 2,800 temples. "Buddhas were thrown into rivers or used as firewood," recalls Oum Soum, 62, deputy director of Phnom-Penh's Buddhist Institute. "Wats not destroyed became fertilizer warehouses." Bonzes were denounced as "parasites." The lucky ones were merely driven from their temples and into the fields. Of 80,000 Cambodian monks, 50,000 were murdered—often beaten to death—during the three years of Pol Pot's savage rule.
Buddhism, however, is a passive survivor's religion. The essence of Buddhist teaching is summarized in the Four Holy Truths: 1) existence is suffering; 2) suffering springs from desire; 3) this desire can be extinguished by 4) following the Buddha's path of truthful and chaste behavior. The introspective Theravada school of Buddhism is predominant on the plains of Thailand and western Kampuchea, where the faith was once centered in the fabulous Angkor Wat. In Viet Nam, whose Mayahana school permits social concern alongside withdrawal of the self, Buddhists have sometimes supported nationalist movements, but rarely actively.