Maha Ghosananda – The ‘Gandhi’ of Cambodia

Fifteen years ago today, far from his homeland of Cambodia, Maha Ghosananda passed away at the age of 78 in Northampton, Massachusetts.

In his long life, Maha Ghosananda was responsible for replanting Buddhism in Cambodia, after 95% of his fellow Buddhist monks were killed or forced to give up their faith during the Khmer Rouge era. He served as the Patriarch (Sangharaja) of Cambodian Buddhism and instituted an annual peace march, called Dhammayietra — pilgrimage of truth — which attracted thousands of Cambodians and helped heal his country of their decades-long civil war.

A *Dhammayietra*, or peace walk, from 2010.

Buddhism has a long history in Cambodia, dating back to the fifth century. Beginning in the thirteenth century, Theravāda Buddhism served as the official state religion.

In the 1960s, the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, rose to power. They solidified their hold on the country after the Cambodian Civil War ended in 1975. One of the worst genocides of the twentieth century took place during the next four years.

Famine, death from treatable diseases, xenophobic targeting of minority populations, and other genocidal practices resulted in between 1.5 and 3 million Cambodians killed, up to twenty-five percent of the countries’ population.

Pol Pot was an atheist and all religions were banned under his rule. As many as 75,000 Buddhist monks lived in Cambodia in 1965. By the end of the Khmer Rouge rule, only an estimated 3000 remained. Monasteries were destroyed, texts burned, and monks were forced to disrobe or be killed.

The Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, undertook a brutal episode of ethnic cleansing in Cambodia.

During the Khmer Rouge reign, Maha Ghosananda studied at the Nalanda University in Bihar, India. He pursued a doctorate in Pali, one of at least ten languages he was fluent in. He learned of the disintegration of his homeland, learned of the U.S. bombing of Cambodia in its ongoing entanglement with Vietnam, and learned of the Civil War that engulfed the country.

The suffering reached Maha Ghosananda directly — his entire family, including sixteen siblings — were killed. Maha Ghosananda heard this news of his family during part of a five-year retreat which was the culmination of his studies. He heard this news and wanted to return home, but soon realized that the past had gone, and he needed to find peace himself if he was to help his country.

The rivers of Cambodia are full of blood,” he told his fellow monk. His meditation teacher advised him to stop crying. “You can’t stop the fighting. Instead fight your impulse toward sorrow and anger,” he advised.
Finally, Ghosananda listened to his teacher. “The weeping stopped. ‘There is no sorrow in the present moment,’ he explained. ‘How can there be? Sorrow and anger are about the past. Or they arise in fear of the future. But they are not in the present moment. They are not now.’

Study in India, returning home in peace

During this time, he continued to study in India, first with Nichidatsu Fujii, who had studied with Mahatma Gandhi, and later with Thai teacher Bhikkhu Buddhadasa. These teachers trained him not only in the teachings of Buddhism and meditation, but the application of Buddhist teachings in the world.

In a similar way, Thich Nhat Hanh developed his technique of “Engaged Buddhism” through his direct experience of the suffering caused by the Vietnam War.

After over a decade away from home, Maha Ghosananda once again saw his countrymen. Thousands of refugees had formed camps in the neighboring country of Thailand. In 1978, Ghosananda began to visit these camps, setting up simple and humble “temples” — often nothing more than a shack.

For many Cambodians, Maha Ghosananda was the first time they had seen a robed monk in many years.

Jack Kornfield, an American Buddhist master, lived in southeast Asia during the 1960s and 70s, studying Buddhism in Thailand, Laos, and India, among other places. He tells the story of Maha Ghosananda sitting before thousands of refugees during one of his first visits.

And he decided to open a temple, in the middle of one of the biggest refugee camps — 50 or 100 thousand people in these tiny, little bamboo huts. [He] got permission from the UN […] and built a platform with a little roof over it, and put an alter with the traditional, Cambodian Buddha.
It was a camp with the Khmer Rouge underground, lots of them, and so they put the word out that if anyone went to be with this monk, when they got out of the camp back to Cambodia they would all be shot.
So we wondered who if anyone would come? […] And 25,000 people poured into the central square around this temple. And Maha Ghosananda sat there and he was a scholar, he spoke 15 languages, he was an extremely kind hearted human being who suffered enormously and transformed it into the kind of compassion that we think of the Dalai Lama…
There he was […] sitting, looking out at 25,000 people who had suffered immense traumas, and you could see there was a grandmother and the only two surviving children that she had, or an uncle and niece, and their faces were the faces of trauma, and of survivors.
And I thought, what is he going to say to them?
And he sat very quietly for a long time, just in their presence. And then he put his hands together, in this kind of modest way, and began to chant […] in Cambodian and in Sanskrit, or Pali, the Buddhist language, one of the first verses from the Buddhist texts that goes:
Hatred never ceases by hatred
But by love alone is healed
This is the ancient and eternal law
And he chanted it over and over in Cambodian, and in Sanskrit/Pali, and pretty soon the chant was picked up and in a little while 25,000 people were chanting this verse with him. And I looked out and they were weeping, many of them because they hadn’t heard their sacred chant for years. But also because he was offering them a truth that was even bigger than their sorrows….
And they were sitting in the middle of the healing energy of the dharma of the teachings of the heart that can liberate us.

Pilgrim of Truth

When Maha Ghosananda visited the refugee camps in Thailand, he began a process of replanting Buddhism in his native Cambodia. He understood that Buddhism was bigger than monks and monasteries, it existed in the culture, language and people of Cambodia.

Ghosananda continued to advocate for Cambodian peace throughout the 1980s, including working with the United Nations. His most important work took place in the early 90s, when he returned to Cambodia with his Dhammayietra, or “Pilgrimages of Truth” — annual peace walks, which took place under Ghosananda’s guidance from 1992 and 1997. These walks earned Maha Gohsananda the moniker: Buddha of the Battlefields.

The Dhammayietra’s were dangerous events — walking through landmine-ridden fields. Even UN peacekeepers avoided many of the trails walked by Ghosananda and his fellow peace pilgrims.

Each Dhammayietra focused on some reality of Cambodian life: returning home from exile, overcoming political fear to vote in national elections, advocating the banning of landmines (there were an estimated ten million landmines in Cambodia at the time), the ongoing deforestation of Cambodia and the ecological consequences of war. Finally, during the last Dhammayietra that Maha Ghosananda participated in, the focus was on forgiveness and reconciliation with the Khmer Rouge.

The Dhammayietra’s were inspired by the courageous and the compassionate. Ghosananda wished to go directly into where his countrymen and women suffered.

We must find the courage to leave our temples and enter the temples of human experience, temples that are filled with suffering,” he would often say. “If we listen to the Buddha, Christ, or Gandhi, we can do nothing else. The refugee camps, the prisons, the ghettoes, and the battlefields will then become our temples.

Throughout these walks and the many other initiatives, Maha Ghosananda stayed close to the teachers of the Buddha. He avoided blaming the Khmer Rouge, and wished only for peace to return to his beloved homeland, and be shared with the world.

The suffering of Cambodia has been deep.
From this suffering comes Great Compassion.
Great Compassion makes a peaceful Heart.
A Peaceful Heart makes a Peaceful Person.
A Peaceful Person makes a Peaceful Family.
A Peaceful Family makes a Peaceful Community.
A Peaceful Community makes a Peaceful Nation.
And a Peaceful Nation makes a Peaceful World.
May all beings live in Happiness and Peace.