Spring 2007 Featured Story Peace Wins: Maha Ghosananda, the "Gandhi of Cambodia" by Matthew Weiner During the past century, nearly every Asian country with majority a Buddhist population experienced civil war, foreign invasion, or systemic poverty and tyranny. Some Buddhist leaders responded with unique forms of social engagement. The Dalai Lama’s response to the crisis in Tibet and Thich Nhat Hanh’s response to the war in Vietnam are obvious examples. In the face of severe oppression, these leaders acted with tremendous force and creativity in a manner that epitomizes the nonviolent social action called “engaged Buddhism.” Less attention has been given to a Buddhist movement in Cambodia, one of the most devastated countries of modern times. Some two million Cambodians were killed during the Khmer Rouge period, and the religion itself was targeted for elimination. Monks were killed or forced back into lay life, and most temples were destroyed or desecrated. The most significant Buddhist response to the war came in the person of a quiet monk named Samdech Preah Maha Ghosananda, who emerged from a decade-long retreat to help survivors. Ghosananda’s activism rebuilt Cambodian Buddhism, teaching peace through example. Completely non-partisan, he offered his ministry even to members of the Khmer Rouge. His activism culminated in the famous Dhammayietras, peace walks through war-torn, landmine-infested regions. This bold undertaking brought Ghosananda international acclaim, and he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times. On March 12, 2007, Maha Ghosananda died in Providence, Rhode Island. His life offers a lens through which we can view the modern challenge of seeking peace both within ourselves as well as in our communities and nations. Emerging from the forest Much of Ghosananda’s biography is known only in the most rudimentary form. This is due to his extreme reticence to reflect on his past, and a lack of documentation from his early years. Almost everyone he knew was killed during the Khmer Rouge regime. He was born in Takeo Province, Cambodia in 1924. Even as a child he was known for his generosity: a story goes that one day his parents left him to watch their shop and he gave everything away to passers-by. He began serving as a temple boy at a young age, and at 19 was ordained as a novice monk. A favorite student of the Supreme Patriarch, Somdech Prah Sangha Raja Chuon Noth, he was sent to Nalanda College in India, where he received a doctoral degree in 1957. While this was a period of rigorous academic study, he also learned Gandhian methods of engagement from Nichidatsu Fuji, founder of the Japanese Buddhist sect Nipponzan Myohoji. In 1965 he went to Thailand and studied with the famous Buddhist reformer Bhikkhu Buddhadasa, known for connecting meditation practice with his radical social philosophy. He then began a nine-year meditation retreat under the master Achaan Dhammadaro. He recalled Dhammadaro as a strict teacher who accused scholar monks of being “parrots” because of their superficial, memorized knowledge. This anti-intellectual focus on meditation for understanding and personal transformation had a great impact on Ghosananda’s social teachings. It was during Maha Ghosananda’s secluded forest retreat, in 1975, that the Khmer Rouge gained power. As news of the genocide spread, he became grief stricken. Like all Cambodian survivors, he suffered great losses – his entire family, including 16 siblings, was killed. But Dhammadaro, fiercely insistent on mental control, incorporated the tragic situation into his instructions, exhorting his student “not to let the suffering of Cambodia imprint on your mind.” Ghosananda remained in the forest to prepare spiritually for the right opportunity to be of service. That opportunity came in 1979 when Vietnam invaded Cambodia. Refugees flowed into factional Thai-border camps. Within days, Ghosananda emerged from his retreat. He was one of the few surviving senior monks, and was received as a saint-like figure by many refugees. He began his work in the form of Buddhist ministry and restoration. He established simple shack-temples in every refugee camp and taught meditation and the need for inner peace. Because of this, Ghosananda was not welcomed by many camp authorities, especially the Khmer Rouge factions. But he insisted on non-partisanship and nonviolence, keeping a “no weapons” rule in his temples, thus establishing the only respected “neutral space” that refugees had for moral and spiritual sustenance. Large numbers of refugees had also moved to North America and Europe. In 1981 Ghosananda came to the United States. He founded some 50 temples overseas. He also co-founded the Inter-religious Mission for Peace and dedicated himself to fostering international awareness of Cambodia’s plight. In 1988, he was elected Supreme Patriarch, a title later reconfirmed by King Sihanouk, and led a contingent of monks to the U.N.-sponsored peace talks between the four warring Cambodian factions. There Maha Ghosananda asserted that there was a fifth force that he called “an army of peace,” comprised of monks and other peacemakers. It would use “courage” and “bullets of loving-kindness (metta) for ammunition” in its struggle for reconciliation. It was soon after this that his advocacy culminated in the Dhammayietra.
The Dhammayietra The Dhammayietra is an annual month-long peace walk comprised of monks and lay people who travel through politically unstable regions to promote peace. It was conceived in 1992 as a one-time event to ease the fear of Cambodian civilians and begin the reconciliation process after the genocide of the 20-year war. Years of propaganda had led to factionalism among Cambodians in the Thai border refugee communities as well as those living in the country under Vietnamese rule. As the United Nations brokered a peace agreement between warring parties, Maha Ghosananda and a group of aid workers, including Elizabeth Bernstein and the Jesuit brother Bob Maat, recognized the need for a non-partisan, spiritually-based event to begin the healing. While the U.N. planned the logistics to repatriate some 350,000 refugees, this group, loosely known as CPR (Coalition for Peace and Reconciliation), understood the need to address the fear and trauma in a new way. A peace walk was collectively conceived as an effective nonviolent approach. Maat, Bernstein, and Ghosananda were all students of Gandhian nonviolent activism. They met with Quaker activists and conducted educational programs with Buddhist leaders that helped to clarify their strategy of consensus-building and nonviolent action. This involved developing group decision-making skills, nonviolent activism, and the application of Buddhist teachings to personal and social issues. Political awareness was also necessary: while one might assume that a peace walk would complement other peace efforts and have been welcome, but the organizers faced opposition by all four Cambodian factions and the Thai government. The first Dhammayietra began in the refugee camps on the Thai border, traveled through Khmer Rouge territory and highly contested land, and ended in Phnom Phen. The initial walkers were 100 refugee Cambodians, but hundreds of local supporters joined as it proceeded through the countryside. It was a testament to the eagerness for peace. Both poor villagers and soldiers joined the march or received blessings from the monks. Soldiers laid down their arms and explained to the walkers that they did not want to kill anymore. Villagers gathered spontaneously in the early mornings to receive a water blessing from the monks as a means of psychological purification. And unexpectedly, walkers began to meet relatives they had not seen for decades. Deep reconciliation and re-connection of the walkers on the personal level became such a regular occurrence that many walkers began calling the walk “Dhamma Teak Tong” or “Dharma Contact.” Through emotional healing, reduction of fear, and reunion with relatives, the Dhammayietra greatly facilitated the repatriation program. The success of the walk led to an annual event with year-round preparation and training. Each year the walkers overcame tremendous difficulties. There was extreme heat, insufficient food and water, the danger of landmines, and the danger of encountering warring factions along the route. The walkers often heard gun battles, and the one time that they allowed an armed escort, the escort itself drew an attack that ended tragically with the deaths of two walkers. Through the years, the Dhammayietras focused on different issues facing the country, such as deforestation, democratic elections and a democratic constitution, domestic violence and women’s issues, and supporting the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. However, the basic format and intention remained the same: a group of people, led by Maha Ghosananda, took vows of nonviolence, received instruction in Buddhist meditation, and walked peacefully through parts of Cambodia that had not experienced peace for several decades. The Dhammiyetra organizers hoped to bring peace to the walkers themselves, to those who helped or encountered the walk, and others who were touched by it. This took place through workshops, literature on nonviolence, and Ghosananda’s daily Dharma talks on how Buddhist practice leads to peace. Ghosananda himself served as the primary role model for individual, social, and organizational behavior. In leading the Dhammayietras, Ghosananda was explicit in the need for an ethically conditioned mental state to bring social peace: “Peace (will) triumph over war” he said, “when people can walk down the street with peace in their minds. That’s the only step-by-step process that will bring an end to the great suffering of the Cambodian people.” Critiquing Ghosananda’s approach The label “engaged Buddhist” is not without difficulties, and questions have been raised about the practical effectiveness of Maha Ghosananda’s work. Some critics pointed to his failure to make a sustained critique of social and governmental structures at the center of Cambodia’s crisis. Ghosananda’s stance seemed only to exacerbate these questions. He made few attempts to justify his work or explain how it was effective. He did not acknowledge a difference between traditional Buddhist practice and social action. For him, a meditation retreat, rebuilding a sangha, and leading a national peace walk were all peace activities. His social teachings were perplexingly simple: he spoke almost exclusively about the need for inner peace to create social peace and suggested the use of Buddhist meditation to reach this goal. Personal transformation was the master key for social transformation. For Ghosananda, Cambodians were one family, and therefore human-level reconciliation could not be avoided. Citing the Buddhist narrative of the killer-turned-saint Angulimala, he asserted that even the worst criminals can be transformed and re-integrated into society. Society will only be healed when everyone, both perpetrators and victims, are transformed through inner peace. Therefore a gathering in which people walk peacefully and encounter others who are transformed by this peace was a natural outgrowth of his notion of social engagement. For Ghosananda, consciousness was the starting point for social ethics because one’s mental state generates all verbal and physical activity. All involved are personally responsible for the health of society. Therefore Ghosananda unfailingly started and returned to one’s mental state when discussing social action. For example, when discussing the landmine crisis, he asserted that to remove landmines, the metaphorical landmines in one’s heart (greed, anger, and delusion) must first be removed. Furthermore, by focusing on internal peace he insisted on the continuity of thought, speech, and action. Ghosananda answered questions about social justice with straightforward discussion about the Buddhist teachings of no-self (annat) and karmic causality (paticcasamuppada). Therefore, while Ghosananda was correctly classified as an advocate of traditional nonviolent strategies towards peacemaking, his all-encompassing form of nonviolence was often overlooked. For example, he said the mental activity of anger is unethical and must be avoided.
While meditation is commonly seen in contrast to social action, or at best a complementary tool, for Ghosananda it was the prerequisite for internal and external peace. Complementary methods of meditation, such as metta (loving kindness), samadhi (concentration), and vipassana (insight) were applied by Ghosananda for the purpose of internal peacemaking and effective nonviolent action. While he used narrative and philosophical examples, these tended to be simple, such as comparing peace to water that flows everywhere. His most famous poem illustrated this idea:
One way to understand Ghosananda’s notion of how this process can happen is to see self-generated peace as a gift that is offered to those in need. The ethical activities of giving and selfless service are well developed within the Theravada tradition as synergistic roots for both personal spiritual development and social action. One common framework is the reciprocal relationship of giving that exists between lay and monastic communities, a pattern that the organizers have attempted to replicate in the Dhammayeitra. For Ghosananda, giving (dana) was the primary perfection (parami). While he was known for spontaneously giving away priceless belongings, and even running into difficulties as the abbot of a temple for giving money to poor refugees, all agree that the most important thing he offered was his peaceful mental state. When asked what he did in the refugee camps in his shack-temple when there was “nothing to do,” his response was characteristically simple: “I was seeking peace so I would have something to give to others.” Personality as pedagogyMaha Ghosananda produced nothing in the way of doctrinal commentaries or strategic overviews that might serve other engaged Buddhist leaders and remain as his literary legacy. While he had a distinct personality, he was a Buddhist monk in the most “ordinary” sense. Perhaps it was the ordinariness of Ghosananda’s responses within a Buddhist context, and the lack of apparent activism, that allowed a wide range of Cambodians and all polarized factions to take part in his work. Yet it was, in fact, his personality – described as radiant, peaceful, gentle, occasionally eccentric, and prone to quizzical Zen-like answers – that is remembered and remarked upon. Though scholarly accounts ignore this, interviews with co-workers focus on his state of consciousness or his character. This is most poignantly exemplified both by his remarkably consistent peaceful state, which stands in sharp contrast to his life experience, and by his transformative presence. Thus while respected for what he has said and done, he is primarily respected for how he was. Several of Ghosananda’s personality traits are noteworthy. First, he seemed to live in the moment. He was fond of saying, “Here. This. Now,” as a way of focusing attention on the present. His teachings were spontaneous and often humorous, and yet relentless in their consistent return to first principles.
His responses to the above questions were typical: he often gave one-word or single-sentence answers throughout an interview. Yet he was reported to speak sixteen languages and often gave dharma talks in four languages simultaneously. Ghosananda did not appear goal-oriented other than to be peaceful in the present moment. He often replied to questions of how peace can come to Cambodia by saying, “Step by step. Each step is a meditation … each step builds a bridge.” A typical example that demonstrated his non-partisanship came from an interview conducted during a walk for peaceful elections:
Another example: “Wherever there is conflict we will walk … it’s like breathing. If we stop, we die.” Ghosananda was also noteworthy for his lack of interest in political power or material possessions. While a Supreme Patriarch, he lived an itinerant life style and had no official staff. He established dozens of temples, but had no official or legal relationship with any of them. This was also the case with the peace movement he led. Nor did he have a school or disciples in the traditional sense. He traveled unaccompanied, arrived unannounced, and his whereabouts were often unknown even to his closest associates. He was well known for giving things away. He handed people books, food, his wool cap, and gifts that people have given him. He gave away precious items to random people without a moment’s hesitation, such as a valuable Buddha statue that the Dalai Lama gave him. It seemed he owned nothing but his robes and passport. A simple, consistent ethosIronically, Maha Ghosananda’s direct approach to peacemaking often confused those who sought to describe his work. Ghosananda viewed restoring Buddhism as peacemaking – yet he upset both social activists and traditionalists because he not only saw no contradiction between bringing peace to Cambodia and striving towards internal peace, but instead implied a necessary co-dependence of the two. We are best served to return to Ghosananda’s simplicity. For Ghosananda, the most important action for a peacemaker is to be peaceful because without this all other actions are inconsistent and unethical. An angry peacemaker is not a peacemaker at all. In contrast, a peaceful person is inherently a peacemaker, because their being peaceful has a positive effect on others. Because these teachings are simple, they remain immediate and accessible to everyone; under the circumstances of a holocaust in which a population is left powerless and without resources, individual peace can be found, a semblance of order installed, and social peace cultivated. While some aspects of Ghosananda’s work were case-specific, others can serve as models for replication or adaptation. For Cambodians and non-Cambodians alike, Ghosananda’s example calls for self-reflection by nonviolent social activists in particular. It reveals an intimacy between an individual’s motivation and work, and implies a need to incorporate one’s own ethical development, which must include consciousness, into both daily life and activism. Following his recent death, we should examine this relationship in the hope of moving towards a more ethically sound and consistent approach to social action. Matthew Weiner is director of program development at the Interfaith Center of New York, and a doctoral candidate in ethics at Union Theological Seminary.
©2007 Fellowship of Reconciliation |
