Recovering Community: the role of the revival of Buddhism in Cambodia

Note on budget

Since my academic affiliation for the duration of this research project has been the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS), Copenhagen, no 'högskolemoms' has been drawn, the administration fee drawn by NIAS has been 10%, and payment of my salary has been made gross each month. I arranged with the Swedish tax authorities to pay in my social fees at 25% of the gross figure independently, together with taxes. This has formed the basis of the calculation for the final account submitted with this report.

Conferences

The outcome of this research is briefly outlined below and in the publication list. It has also resulted in the conference I organized in October 2005 'Reconfiguring Religion, Power and Moral Order in Cambodia', which has subsequently led to the publication of the edited volume 'People of Virtue' (see publication list). It has also been the inspiration for the conference I am now co-organizing for November 2007 'Culture and the Configuring of Security'. My thanks to the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation for generous sponsorship of all of these activities.

The Inquiry and Approach

This study was designed to examine the regeneration of Buddhism currently taking place in Cambodia and to explore how this influences collective recovery and re-creation of community following organised violence. Focus has been upon how and by whom Buddhism is being reshaped and applied to some of the problems resulting from Cambodia’s traumatic history: fractured relationships, persistent fear and mistrust, disrupted social and cultural order. The study proposed to consider the ways in which the legitimacy of today’s religious actors may be contested or compromised by various economic and political forces; analysis of the ethnographic material was to be analysed against the background of engagement of religion in national and even international discourses and practices of recovery and reconstitution. 
The theoretical tone of the study was therefore to understand Buddhist ritual and everyday practice not only as the ongoing constitution of meaning, but also as a form of cultural capital that is socially located, transacted and contested within relationships of power. Meaning is not necessarily shared by cultural actors but is often negotiated within a social organisation and praxis of communication. Attention has therefore been paid to social networks, political and economic factors and kinship.

Methodology

This study was begun in early 2003  with an initial month of fieldwork during which preliminary contacts were established and plans drawn up for a return trip later in the year. On this initial trip I conducted several visits to temples in and around the capital city of Phnom Penh and spent time scouring the libraries of various NGO offices and other institutions. This enabled me also to interview NGO staff about their experiences of running programmes in rural areas and to gain an overview of aspects of the foreign NGO encounter with Buddhism. These encounters have subsequently provided inspiration for exploring the discrepancy and sometimes conflict between ‘emic’ and ‘etic’ value systems (see KENT 2007a). 
In the autumn of 2003 I returned to Cambodia for a longer stay of almost two months. On this second field trip I enrolled for private language tuition, established contact with a field assistant and selected a field site in Northwestern Cambodia for more focused field research and ultimately identified a village, which I call Veal village, and pagoda upon which to concentrate. My research assistant, Mr Tou Seakhai, and I spent several weeks visiting and establishing contacts in pagodas in Battambang town and in the surrounding villages before deciding upon Veal village, but have since maintained ongoing, though less frequent contact, also with four other sites. We initially conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with monks and lay-nuns,  members of the lay pagoda committees, worshippers and donors attending the temples, representatives of the Ministry of Religion and Cults, NGOs working in association with Buddhism and with local healers who had various kinds of connection to the pagodas. This helped us establish a basic network of people to whom we could later return.
Further periods of fieldwork were conducted during 2004, 2005 and 2006 amounting to a total of some seven months. During each field trip a period of time has been devoted to language study, including tuition in Khmer script. In the time between each field trip Tou Seakhai has continued to work with participation, conducting interviews and observing developments at the selected sites and to send regular field reports electronically while I remained in Sweden. This has provided me with invaluable ongoing insight into the daily lives of those who have become the core participants in this study. Seakhai has proven to be a gifted field worker who readily takes initiative and whose reports are both meticulous and clearly formulated. He has also become a dependable discussant who is keen to exchange views on his own interpretations or opinions about the data and this has greatly enriched fieldwork. 
As is often the case in close working relationships between researchers and their field assistants, Seakhai has himself become an important informant about his own culture. With characteristic Cambodian generosity, his family have welcomed me as a proxy member. I was invited to Seakhai’s wedding and have since become the honorary grandmother of his first daughter. Seakhai has taken me to visit the farmland belonging to his parents, some 30km from Battambang town, and explained to me the complex  history of how the land was obtained, the conflicts that arose from this and the way in which they were managed with the help of the pagoda and political connections. Through his marriage, Seakhai has also developed indirect contacts with the military and this has opened yet another area of insights. All of this has helped deepen my understanding of Cambodian life. 
Introducing Wat Thmei
The pagoda that became the primary focus of this research, and which I refer to as Wat Thmei (lit. New Pagoda), lies in Veal village, a rice-farming community around fifteen kilometers from Battambang town. The land is flat and although some trees grow near the water, the rest of the landscape is featureless paddy fields. The houses in the village are mainly simple, wooden constructions on stilts with thatched roofs. Many are dilapidated. Several substantial concrete buildings however now stand in the temple compound and more are under construction. Behind them is a long, low, wooden school house and a pagoda pond. 
The pagoda was founded in 1999 by a group of local elders. Previously, a wooden building on the site had housed a centre that provided medicines for the elderly on a co-operative basis. This was established by the head monk’s (whom I call Venerable Sambath) maternal grandfather and was supported by foreign donations. In those days, people say, the villagers were suspicious of it because they thought it was under the control of proselytizing Christians. Because of this, the centre arranged for Ven. Sambath to come to the centre from the nearby pagoda he had ordained at, and some Buddha statues were installed. This increased the centre’s popularity, but later on sponsorship dried up and the locals were too poor to maintain it alone. The villagers in this area had not previously had their own pagoda but the situation motivated Ven. Sambath to seek external support and his success has been remarkable.
Ven. Sambath began attracting support from Khmer-Americans who still had connections to the area. Since 2001, several large concrete buildings – including dwelling cottages, a dining hall, a meeting hall, a library and toilets – have been constructed and a bridge has been built with pagoda funds to the other side of the creek. The main shrine hall is not complete, which means no consecration ceremony has yet been held. When I first visited the pagoda in 2003 there were two fully ordained monks, four novices and a handful of nuns living there. Numbers have now swelled to some twenty monks and novices.
Ven. Sambath soon established a reputation for fortune-telling and healing. A steady stream of visitors to the pagoda comes from local villages, Battambang town and even farther afield for help with worldly problems, illness and life crises. The Ven. Sambath usually performs a water sprinkling ritual for his clients, chants Pali stanzas from a secret palm-leaf manuscript and he may give them amulets for protection. Usually people make donations in return.
Although Ven. Sambath’s role is that of a Buddhist clergyman, the strictness of his adherence to the 227 precepts stipulated in the Buddhist Vinaya text seems to be of little interest for villagers, who are in any case unlikely to be well-versed in the scriptures. He is considered to conduct himself with acceptable decorum but perhaps more importantly, he addresses some of the villagers’ most pressing desires for the restoration of security and order – moral, physical, social, psychological, cultural. He cultivates social/political networks for protection and support, he performs healing, he attracts resources and uses these for community services and for the construction of the pagoda; he accumulates power and manages this in the service of the villagers. He has strong kinship links on his mother’s side to villagers, to the director of the school and to members of the pagoda committee.

The Community Spirit

After the first month of fieldwork I authored a working paper (KENT 2003b) in which I addressed the issue of the nature of community in Cambodia. This paper was based mainly on a literature review that I felt I needed to undertake early in my work in order to clarify the direction my fieldwork was to take. It also made use of initial field findings. The notion of community in Southeast Asia generally, and in Cambodia in particular, has been a matter of considerable debate (BROWN 1999; KEMP 1988; OVESEN et al. 1996; THION 1999; VAN DE PUT 1997; WATTS 1999). In a chapter he has authored for the edited volume that Professor David Chandler and I have recently prepared for publication (forthcoming with NIAS Press, January 2008) Kobayashi Satoru uses the Khmer term chomnoh to capture the special way in which a loose and flexible community is articulated through and in relation to the pagoda rather than in relation to geographical space or economic/political interdependence. In my working paper I propose that the pagoda marks the hub of this fluid community, while the guardian spirits, neak ta¸mark the periphery.
An enhanced understanding of the particular nature of the chomnoh has proven indispensable to my fieldwork. Individuals may attend several pagodas regularly, and villages may be internally cross-cut and externally linked by villagers’ loyalties to various pagodas or monks. This makes it especially important for the fieldworker to practice a flexible, snowballing methodology in pursuing the social links that may make up a moral community. Seakhai and I have therefore been cautious not to a priori limit the scope of our investigation by focusing only upon those living in the immediate vicinity of, for instance, Veal village but to work instead by following links from the pagodas outwards.

“Power” and culture

A primary concern of this research has been the issue of power, which, in the Asian context has to do with far more than political authority alone. The special nature of power in Southeast Asian contexts, its association with asceticism and discipline and the way in which it is harnessed to the maintenance of social and moral order has been discussed from a number of angles in the literature (e.g. ANDERSON 1990; CROSBY 2000; TAMBIAH 1976; THOMPSON 2004; WRIGHT 1990; WRIGHT 1992). Insight into the rendering of power in these environments may reveal much about how security is conceived and practiced according to cultural schemes. 
Understanding how power in Cambodia is constituted and manipulated through socio-cultural process requires also paying attention to issues such as gender (DERKS 2005; FRIESON 2001; GUTHRIE 2005) and social networks (HENG SREANG 2006). These schemes may make the transposition of ideas about national boundaries, human rights agendas, peace-building initiatives and development programmes deriving from other cultural settings problematic. In the course of gathering data for this study, the concept of ‘security’ and its relationship to power has become of increasing interest. This has become the core of a number of manuscripts and publications (KENT 2003a; KENT 2004b; KENT 2005; KENT 2006; KENT 2007b) and of a conference to be held in Höör in November 2007, with generous support from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. The theme of culture and security is further elaborated below, and developing theory for addressing the relationship between culture, power and security continues to remain central to my ongoing research interests. 
Buddhism and the shaping of the Khmer universe
The rural pagoda has long formed the heart of a characteristically flexible communal life in Cambodia (ANG CHOULEAN 1990; EBIHARA 1968). It provided a spatial representation of village culture, where the village-based monastic system bound a doctrine of enlightenment to engagement in the community and containment of its spirits. The pagoda was the traditional seat of scholarship and a storehouse of local knowledge of agriculture (CHAY 2002) and medicine (BERTRAND 2004). The pagoda lay committees often provided credit and other facilities and thus performed wealth redistribution and insurance (ASCHMONEIT et al. 1997a; ASCHMONEIT et al. 1997b). The pagoda was a focus of social and cultural activities and the rural monks were strong protectors of local tradition and custom. In general, prior to the war of the 1970s, some three-quarters of men over the age of seventeen would have spent a period of one or two years in the sangha as novices or monks (KEYES 1994: 46) and this created direct ties between almost every family and the monkhood.  
The traditional form of Theravada Buddhism found throughout rural Cambodia from the late 13th century onwards made use of Pali or Khmer vernacular texts and oral transmission for its perpetuation (HARRIS 2005: 83). Bizot’s (1976; 1981; 1988) unique works, carried out in the period just prior to the Khmer Rouge takeover in 1975, give an account of the “esoteric” Buddhist tradition as it was practised in Cambodian villages. This tradition made use of Pali as a source of sacred syllables and formulae rather than as moral didactics. Its methods were applied both to the pursuit of nibbana and to mundane ends such as healing and invincibility (see CROSBY 2000: 141-142). They could also be used to provide the practitioner with power over others and even to kill enemies. 
The strands of Cambodian Buddhism that preserved these practices became known as the Mohanikay Order (nikaya), which remains to this day by far the larger of Cambodia’s two nikayas. A second, smaller Cambodian order, known as the Thommayut emerged in Cambodia in the latter part of the 19th century under the patronage of royalty and endorsed by urban elites. This order, which arose in Cambodia through the importation of courtly Buddhist practice and thought from Thailand, utilized the Pali canon as a didactic instrument and tool of authentication. The Mohanikay/Thommayut schism was then, however, cross-cut by the emergence of ‘traditionalist’ and ‘modernist’ developments. The traditionalists may be described as those monks who opposed the Thommayut as a foreign threat to Khmer unity and religious identity. However, influential members of the Mohanikay order began promoting modernization of Buddhism through a rationalist reform that in some respects tallied with Thommayut developments (HANSEN 2007; HARRIS 2001; HARRIS 2005; KEYES 1994). This caused considerable tension as it invalidated the powers cultivated in rural tradition. Rightful control of the Khmer universe, then, was claimed and contested in Buddhist terms.

Modern Buddhism

During the French protectorate (1863—1953) several key monks became responsible for modernizing the Mohanikay order. In particular, the scholar monk, Ven. Chuon Nath (1883-1969) and his close friend Ven. Huot That, both of whom were schooled in French and in rational, critical approaches to the study of Buddhism, began reforming Cambodian monasticism. 
This reform movement received endorsement from the French since it suited their intellectual agenda for Khmer Buddhism and their desire to resist growing Thai influence over modernization of the sangha. However, these modernizing monks met fierce resistance from the Patriarchs of both orders and Buddhist traditionalists generally. Any explicit co-operation with the French was seen as a threat to traditional Khmer Buddhist authority and the modern printing techniques promoted by the modernists were felt to undermine the magico-religious power embodied in the palm-leaf texts. The modernist phalange of the sangha received support from not only the French, but from some aristocratic families and the royalty and this sealed the fate of the traditionalists. In 1938 and 1943, under Chuon Nath’s supervision, the first ever officially approved Cambodian dictionary appeared in two volumes, thus altering traditional orthography and later even vocabulary. Chuon Nath eventually became supreme patriarch of the Mohanikay order and he continued his mission of cleansing Buddhism of popular rituals and ‘superstitious’ practices. The autonomy and integration of the pagodas in daily village life began to weaken as pagodas fell increasingly under the control of a bureaucratizing, elite-endorsed sangha that restricted the various duties of monks by ordinance. With the constraint of magico-religious practice and formalization of rational and foreign doctrine by an urban, cosmopolitan elite that furthered French interests, powerful traditions of egalitarianism and autonomy that formerly bound together Khmer communities and their local spirits faced a daunting challenge. 

The tables turn

During their rule, the French attempted to sanitize and modernize Khmer Buddhism through such efforts as the establishment of the Buddhist Institute, the founding of the first ever Khmer language newspaper and the dissemination of Buddhist literature. Ironically, in the early 20th century, modern Buddhism was transformed from a tool of oppression of traditionalist rural Khmers that worked in tandem with colonial power, into a tool of nationalism, in opposition to the French. The early stirrings of Khmer nationhood were fed by several incidents in which the colonial authorities flouted the sanctity and authority of the sangha. On 20th July 1942, some 1,000 people took to the streets of Phnom Penh in a protest action – the renowned Umbrella War (EDWARDS 2004). Around half of these were monks and the modernist grouping was well represented among them. The French responded harshly and with continued reform, thus further radicalizing the monkhood. The French had clearly failed to position themselves within the Khmer moral universe. In March 1945, King Sihanouk declared Cambodia independent, although the French did not in fact agree to grant the country independence until 9th November 1953.
Although Sihanouk’s subsequent rule was actually marked by considerable repression, the period is remembered today by urban and rural Cambodians alike as a golden age when everybody’s needs were met. The accuracy of these memories is perhaps less interesting than what they tell us about Khmer ideals;  Sihanouk’s ritual and rhetorical elevation of central Khmer values in his Buddhist socialism (CHANDLER 1998 [1983]: 199) is recalled as having nourished the wellbeing of the people. For the masses, Sihanouk’s displays of deference towards the sangha resonated well with popular understandings of the proper ordering of relationships between religion and power and thus his rule promised to maintain a distinctive sense of “Khmerness”.

The eclipse of Khmer culture

Although Cambodia’s history has been one of repeated political disruption over the past two hundred years, the Khmer Rouge era was unique in its attempt to establish a complete cultural break with the past. Prior to the Khmer Rouge era of 1975-9, there were an estimated 88,000 Buddhist monks in the country. It is believed that over a third of monks were executed by the Khmer Rouge cadres when they came to power in 1975, but only a few percent of the original figure are believed to have survived the era, many having died of starvation and disease. Reports suggest that over half of the country’s pagodas may have been razed and others damaged or desecrated during the years of Khmer Rouge rule and subsequent civil war.
After the defeat of the Khmer Rouge by the Vietnamese in January 1979, a restricted revival of religion was permitted. Some pagodas began to engage in reconstruction of roads, schools, medical and social services, although the state apparatus maintained tight control of the sangha throughout the 1980s. Some of the surviving village elders began spontaneously reconstituting lay pagoda committees, monks were ordained and temple festivals and Buddhist rituals began to be revived. The Vietnamese occupants re-ordained seven Khmer former monks in an attempt to earn some legitimacy in Cambodia. The youngest of these, Venerable Tep Vong, was then appointed head of a unified sangha but subsequently also as Vice-President of the Khmer National Assembly and Vice-President of the Central Committee of the Khmer United Front for National Construction and Defence. The party that evolved under Vietnamese supervision and later succeeded them (see GOTTESMAN 2003), the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), has since continued to support Ven. Tep Vong and he therefore continues to be popularly viewed as the religious mouthpiece of a Vietnamese-friendly government and consequently as part of a potential threat to Khmer integrity.  
Following the effacement of Buddhism during the Khmer Rouge reign of terror and its muting during the decade of Vietnamese occupation that followed, it burgeoned as soon as restrictions were lifted in the early 1990s following the Paris Peace Accords. After the Vietnamese withdrawal at the end of the 1980s, the new government relaxed restrictions on Buddhism in a bid for legitimacy and the number of monks increased rapidly reaching over 50,000 today.  Contributions from the rich in Cambodia and from overseas Cambodians have enabled the restoration of many pagodas and repopulation of the sangha. In the 1990s, laymen began utilizing villagers’ temple donations to found elementary Pali schools in Phnom Penh.  However, the almost total destruction of the clergy and their literature during the Khmer Rouge era, and the constraints on reconstruction under the Vietnamese occupation, mean Buddhism must be largely reinvented rather than reconstructed.
The monkhood today is also politicized not only by the background of Supreme Patriarch Tep Vong, but also by the fact that the 1993 constitution enshrined the right of universal adult suffrage, thus absorbing the Cambodian sangha into the electorate for the first time ever. This provided a formal framework within which tendencies towards partisan political fissioning among monks already noted among exiled Khmer monks during the 1980s (HARRIS 2001) might deepen and crystallize. Evidence of how the reinvention of Buddhism is taking place hand in hand with procedural multiparty democracy peppers the landscape of Cambodia today: colourful, sometimes gaudily renovated pagodas are interspersed with large signs on the roadside and outside houses advertising political parties. 

Reinventing religious legitimacy

No matter how much the monkhood visibly grows the question remains as to what extent its religious legitimacy can be rebuilt in a globalizing context in which the guiding principle is to cultivate rather than still desire. Furthermore, today’s Khmer monks as well as citizens are subject to new kinds of political influence and, indeed, menace (HUGHES 2003). I have addressed these problems in several presentations and publications that draw upon the ethnography gathered in the course of this study (KENT 2004a; KENT 2004b; KENT 2007a). 
Today’s pagodas, like those of the past, attract young men seeking food security, accommodation and education. Many Cambodians complain, however, that the education monks receive today is only secular—“computers and English”—and that the monks are not taught to practise discipline. Lack of leadership is frequently blamed for this state of affairs by monks and lay people alike. 
In 2004, for instance, I interviewed a group of young monks at a monastery in Battambang town (se KENT Forthcoming 2007). What they told me articulates views shared by many intellectual young Cambodians. All of them came from poor, rural backgrounds and ordained largely to access free education and to offload some of the burden on their family’s resources. 
One of the monks explained how village parents often encourage their sons to become monks, partly to make merit and secure a better future, but also so they will learn discipline and be less likely to fall in with gangster groups. I asked whether a period of time in the monkhood actually does prevent people from becoming gangsters. The monk replied that gangsters are the result of poor leadership and if there is poor leadership in the pagoda, then gangsters will be gangsters even in the monkhood and he explained that good leadership consists of the Buddhist sublime states: loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity. The other monks joined in, telling me that head monks are not always elected by the monks but are often instated by local politically backed officials. Some head monks, they continued, do not act to help younger monks with their hardships (banyhah). When selecting which monks are to accompany them to ceremonies those leaders, they complained, only choose monks who support them so other monks get no chance to receive the donations given on these occasions. This, they said, was compounded by the fact that young monks who are occupied with their studies are not so visible to the laity, which means they do not attract the donations necessary for survival.
I asked why the sangha does not see to it that the monks are treated fairly and supported, and the group became lively. Together they responded that the government commits sin (bap) and corruption and that religion simply copies the government, and this means that “neither can help the other”. I pursued this further, asking why religion follows the government. The monks hesitated, then whispered, “Because of the leader of the monkhood (Ven. Tep Vong).” Not wishing to pursue this sensitive issue where others might overhear, I asked them for examples of good monastic leadership. They mentioned two local senior monks and the modernist monk of the early 1900s, Ven. Chuon Nath. These people show scholarship, discipline and integrity, they claimed, while so many of today’s monks practise magical rites to earn money at the behest of wealthy patrons, who often do not even know how to address a monk correctly. 
These monks’ muted critique of the government and its politicization of religion, and their reinvention of Ven. Chuon Nath shows how understandings of the past may be drawn upon as a source of ideals for building the future. These disenchanted young men may be the seedlings of a new intelligentsia that is again looking to modern Buddhism for inspiration in the reconstruction of Khmer moral identity.

Menacing the monkhood

Shortly before a trip I made to Cambodia in March 2003, a widely respected monk named Ven. Sam Bunthoeun was shot to death as he was crossing the boundary to enter Wat Langkar pagoda in Phnom Penh. I have subsequently carried out extensive interviews with his sister and various devotees. Ven. Sam Bunthoeun was born in 1957 in Kandal province. He decided to devote his life to the monkhood and was ordained in 1980. His life story repeatedly emphasizes his dedication to the study of Pali, insight (Vipassana) meditation and dhamma. Because of his achievements, the story relates, he was asked by his teacher and lay people to begin teaching young monks as well as the laity. He continued to both study and teach and began to amass a following. This prompted the Patriarch Ven. Tep Vong and some of the officials of the Ministry of Religious Affairs in 1996 to recognize the pagoda he stayed at in Phnom Penh as a learning centre and Ven. Sam Bunthoeun became its president. In 2000, Ven. Sam Bunthoeun enrolled at the Buddhist University in Phnom Penh, where his main interest was in Buddhist philosophy.
His following grew rapidly and the centre was therefore moved to a large rural site at the foot of the mountain of Oudong, where the stupas of the ancestors of the royal family are situated. The grounds of this meditation centre reportedly stretch to some 15 hectares, about a quarter of which is filled land. Several huge concrete buildings are nearing completion, including a monks’ dormitory and school. Funding is evidently plentiful and informants at the centre have explained that the main donor is the wife of a wealthy Phnom Penh businessman. Ven. Sam Bunthoeun published numerous dhamma books in his lifetime and his Vipassana teaching continues to attract a broad following from all over the country.
Ven. Sam Bunthoeun was clearly an influential leader. It is possible that his moral legitimacy, broad-based following and ability to attract wealth troubled the government. Rumours abound about this death and in the absence of an efficient and independent police force or judiciary it is unlikely that a reliable picture of what happened will ever emerge. Some believe he was not killed by the bullets, but was taken to hospital and given a lethal injection. Some say his death was commissioned by his main donor’s jealous husband. Some contend that the murder was politically motivated since he supposedly encouraged monks to use their vote in national elections  (FALBY 2003; MCDERMID and SOKHA 2005). A former monk from Phnom Penh told me that just prior to his death Ven. Sam Bunthoeun attended a large ceremony in Phnom Penh and there publicly criticized the magico-religious practices carried out by many Cambodian monks, and this was why he had been killed. 
These rumours have particular resonance in the political climate of present day Cambodia. To ensure political survival, politicians eagerly patronize temples and some even spend time as monks. By performing righteous deeds such as donating to the temple or giving alms to monks, they gain access to the power of transcendent virtue, a sacred force or energy known by the Buddhist technical term parami. Politicians make their own power and merit visible through the success of the temples they support (GUTHRIE 2002). Today, the Prime Minister and many top officials are demonstrably sponsoring all kinds of pagodas, particularly where there are monks who specialize in the magical practices that officials sometimes use to augment their power. 
The true motive for Ven. Sam Bunthoeun’s murder is perhaps less interesting than the fact that his death clearly fuels a belief that the powerful leaders are buying off monks, exploiting for their own ends the powers that monastics should rightfully manipulate and silencing legitimate representatives of peace and order. Fear now effectively quiets many monks.

The ‘state’ of wellbeing

The Khmer universe is construed as one of primeval chaos (MABBETT and CHANDLER 1995: 124), in the Hindu sense of a source of both creative and destructive potency. The destructive potential of this universe is, I have proposed (KENT Forthcoming 2007), regulated by the symbolic complex of Buddhism. A key notion for understanding this logic that I have discussed at length elsewhere (KENT 2006) is the Khmer concept sok  -  which translates roughly as wellbeing or peace of mind, deriving from the Pali term sukkha and recalling the Buddhist tenet that suffering is overcome by transcending the passions and desire, and by practising virtue. The Khmer term sok therefore draws upon a system of meaning that goes beyond the English notion of security and is inextricably tied to Buddhist understandings of virtue. The head nun of one pagoda kindly gave me a copy of the notes she had prepared for teaching villagers about the concept of sok.  She writes:

"Making merit eliminates all kinds of sin. In order to make merit, we must make donations, follow precepts and meditate. People will get sok when they practice these three things."

Cambodians are only too aware of the brutal workings of raw power that has not been subjected to the civilizing force of Buddhist virtue:

"Mr. Suen is a soldier who has rank (bon sâk), guns, raw power (amnach), and a back (khnâng). In our society, when people like Suen have a big back, they have raw power and often abuse those who don’t have backing" (quoted in HINTON 2005: 115).

It is the potentially destructive nature of this kind of raw worldly power that the religious system offers hope of containing. Beneficent power is symbolized in Cambodia and elsewhere in Southeast Asia by the sunshade, which forms a central ingredient of Buddhist ritual. The sunshade provides shade from the harsh sun and protection from the elements just as a powerful patron or king—represented by the central pole—provides protection from danger to clients or subjects (Hinton 2005: 111). Following the widespread Hindu/Buddhist logic of hierarchical encompassment (Kapferer 1988), these “shaded” subordinates may in turn be uplifted by the righteous power of their protector. 
This provides a frame of reference for the evaluation of authority. Throughout the Buddhist world peace and prosperity are conceptually linked to the idea of the synchronized rotation of the “two wheels of dhamma” : the wheel of worldly authority (ānācakka) and the wheel of the brotherhood of monks (dhammacakka) (see Harris 1999: 3). It is the duty of the righteous ruler to steer these wheels correctly. In Cambodia this idea is as pertinent now as ever. Heng Monychenda, director of the Cambodian non-governmental organization Buddhism for Development, has coined the apt term “dhammocratic” to convey his argument that today’s leaders need to be obedient to the moral teachings of the Buddha (Heng Monychenda 2005). He notes that Cambodians see hope of security in virtuous, just rulers (dhammika rulers) – rulers who rightfully accumulate and manage cosmic power for their dependents in generative, non-destructive ways. 

The threshold of civilization

The sacred geography of the Cambodian pagoda is organised around the vihāra, which forms its kernel (ANG CHOULEAN 1988). This building is surrounded by the ritual perimeter defined by eight sīma (Sanskrit and Pali for ‘boundary’ or ‘limit’) stones, which demarcate but do not prohibit access to the sacred space within. The stones are buried in deep pits dug on the cardinal and intercardinal points, and a further ninth hole is dug inside the temple, before the shrine. A vihāra is not considered ready for the ordination of new monks or for them to make their confessions until a sīma has been established.
The structure of this nine-unit system reproduces that of the mandala – the model according to which Southeast Asian cosmological topography was traditionally arranged  (TAMBIAH 1976). The mandala pattern is found in designs, diagrams and drawings but also in the architecture of great structures such as the Bayon and Angkor Wat. Throughout Southeast Asia this pattern recurs historically in the ordering of the cosmos and the structuring of space and polities. In terms of political relations, the mandala system comprised an influential centre surrounded by relatively autonomous satellites, whose tributary leaders enjoyed substantial liberty as long as they paid their tributes and provided armed forces when required. 
The nine sīma pits of Cambodian Buddhist temples play on this ancient pattern and its satellite units. The temple area that is enclosed by the sīma is theoretically beyond the reach of secular power. The monastic order was formerly largely immune to secular jurisdiction, co-existing with the ruler in an “ambiguous symbiosis”; the power of the ruler was restricted through the application of Buddhist ethics (HARRIS 1999) and monks therefore embodied the authority to morally moderate secular power. The mandala-patterned local world would have fallen under the influence rather than control of an analogously structured, encompassing centre. 
At the ground-breaking ceremony that is held to seal the sīma, the large, ritually prepared stones or “roots” are lowered into the holes, which are then filled in. At some temples a demarcation is made above ground by a decorated stone “leaf”. Thus the sacred territory of the temple is demarcated from the less sacred space of the rest of the monastery grounds. Over each of the nine pits a spherical stone about the size of a human head is suspended from a beam by rattan. At the climax of the ceremony, a layperson at each of the peripheral pits slashes the rattan with a machete and releases the stone into the pit. At the central pit, this part of the rite used to be carried out by a temple lay officiant, achar, or a member of royalty. Nowadays, for the central pit this role is usually taken by a high ranking official (Khmer, neak thom). 
As threshold to the underworld, the sīma may be understood to mark out the border of the civilized world or srok, keeping it distinct from yet enabling ordered interaction with the wild  (prei, lit. forest), potentially destructive/potentially creative powers of the universe beyond. The pagoda is thus both a portal to and barrier against untamed powers. By enabling access to but by also domesticating the wilderness the pagoda promises fertility and preservation. 

Transactions with the dead: p’chum ben

The symbolic charge of the sacred perimeter is clearly manifested in the festival of p’chum ben – the festival of the dead.  P’chum ben is celebrated in pagodas throughout the country, with local variations, and takes place in accordance with the lunar calendar in September-October, beginning on the full-moon of the month of photrobot and continuing throughout the moon’s wane. During this festival, the gates of the underworld are opened and the spirits of the dead are given a fortnight’s release. These spirits, conceived of as hungry ghosts, are thus enabled to commune with the world of the living and beseech their living relatives to feed and care for them through the intermediaries of Buddhist monks. 
The celebration, which marks the end of the rainy season and the beginning of the season of growth and fruition, enables the living to transfer merit, in the form of the specially prepared rice balls, to the ghosts of those who have died with stores of bad kamma. Some of their suffering may be alleviated in this way, and their sojourn in the realms of Hell might even be shortened. Khmer people reason that since one cannot know the fate of one’s ancestors, a general donation should be made on their behalf, even though they may reside in a Heavenly realm. On the final day of the fortnight, people gather at the temple to distribute the rice to the spirits by throwing it over the sīma of the vīhara, out into the surrounding area where the spirits have gathered. This is conducted as day breaks and afterwards the families return home to prepare offerings of food on a straw mat with which they ask their ancestors for protection. The festival ends with the return of the ghosts to their infernal home, often by floating their symbolic representations on a hollowed banana tree stem along the river, back to the underworld. The gates of Hell then close upon them once again.  
There are close associations between the Khmer celebration of merit-transfer to the dead and themes of prosperity and regeneration of the srok (nation, but also civilized world). Porée-Maspero (1985) has described how the royal version of this festival includes images of crocodiles and nagas (the untamed serpent of the underworld) and how it is also the occasion for consecration of a new Buddha statue. The royal rite is concluded twenty-four hours earlier than those in the rest of the country, invoking the spirits of the dead and asking for their protection of both the King and all the inhabitants of the kingdom. Alongside this, the various Brahmanic deities are also invoked to mark the end of their rainy season retreat – to welcome their powers back to the world.
It has been reported (ibid.) that in the villages around Phnom Penh, the same day that p’chum ben is celebrated, a celebration is also held in honour of the earth deity, here known as Thvay Brah Phum. Just as offerings to the dead were made on a straw mat in the home, so now are offerings made to the deity and prayers are offered to ensure a good harvest. Similarly, reports of buffalo racing being held in association with p’chum ben have been made (BOU SAREOUN 2001) – the racing being explicitly associated with bringing fertility to the fields. 
The role of Khmer monks as domesticators of potentially dangerous spirits, such as the bray spirits of those who died a violent death (ANG CHOULEAN 1990) or the tutelary neak ta (FOREST 1992) has already been noted as has Buddhism’s role in harnessing power for the sustenance and welfare of the Khmer universe. A laywoman I asked about p’chum ben told me that those people who are alive today and who steal, act violently and disrupt social order are the reborn, restless spirits of those who died under the Khmer Rouge regime. Other laypeople have explained the existence of corrupt officials, brutal leaders and young gangsters in this way. Since those who died under the Khmer Rouge regime were not cremated in the presence of monks their souls are not controllable. The portal to the underworld, it seems, remains open for these souls; disorder is erupting in the midst of society and the sīma can no longer reliably keep them at bay. The rapid revival of p’chum ben since the end of the war may be understood in part as an attempt to reassert the distinction between the realm of the dead and that of the living, and thus to mollify the country’s traumatic history.

Dollarizing the pagoda

With the rapid rebuilding of temples taking place in present-day Cambodia, sīma consecrating ceremonies are frequent, but the reestablishment of order that they might predicate is now framed by new factors. In Giteau’s (1969) descriptions of the ground-breaking ceremonies she observed in the 1960s the villagers themselves were the main providers of resources and officiants. Nowadays, the pagoda has become the hub not only of local communities but of diasporic communities, spread across the globe; a great deal of the economic support provided to temples is now coming from overseas Khmer, or the urban wealthy within Cambodia. The monkhood is suffering from a lack of religious expertise, scholarship and legitimacy after its losses in the decades of disruption, and villagers as well as monks are now facing poverty, a competitive market economy and general commodification of culture. Against this background consecration ceremonies have become important stages for the enactment of a new kind of political theatre in which power is demonstrated and relations of economic dependency regimented (HUGHES 2006).
As noted, the main focal pagoda of this study, Wat Thmei, is being supported heavily by Khmer American donors who either wire money from America or make donations when they visit. The pagoda committee members explained that because these people are living abroad, they want to invest in concrete structures so that they can see how their money is spent. The growing interest in financing ostentatious temple buildings may be explained in part by a general monetarization of the economy of merit, but also in part by the climate of mistrust, greed and corruption. A building provides some kind of concrete guarantee that the money has actually be invested in the pagoda. An elderly layman from a village in Battambang district reminisced,

"In the past we didn’t know what the dollar was, or what the US was. Everything was developed by the local people …[who had a] … strong relationship with each other … My parents always provided sacks of rice to the people building the pagoda and sometimes my parents went to join in the building work because they had a lot of free time after farming their rice."

Where once villagers would have donated labour or rice to their temple, the pagoda has now become absorbed into the market place where labour and goods are traded in exchange relations. The moral dubiousness of this new, market-driven world is a recurrent theme, as the elderly man expresses - the accuracy of his nostalgic memories being perhaps less interesting than his critique of contemporary values and his portrayal of a lost moral order,

The politics of profit and merit 

Since 1993, when the new constitution awarded Cambodian monks the right to vote, their role has also become sharply politicized and many pagodas now bear party colours. The village pagoda offers a platform for political posturing by those seeking votes in rural communities. The inclusion of monks in the procedures of democracy also means that politicians are anxious to control particularly those monks with grass-roots popularity and leadership qualities. The pagoda, with its population of often disenchanted youths, may become a hothouse of political foment. In 1998 monks defied the authorities by participating in street protests, supposedly against violence, and the police responded by beating and reputedly even murdering monks (MCGREW 1998a; MCGREW 1998b; SOKUNDARA POK and MOORTHY 1998). In October 2003 twelve monks in a Phnom Penh pagoda were threatened with expulsion after supporting the Sam Rainsy Party in the national elections (FROMMER 2003). The poverty and desperation of this new generation of monks, however, also makes them vulnerable to co-optation by the wealthy. 
The sīma ceremony distils the way in which the new religio-political economy is impacting upon local worlds. The numerous ground-breaking ceremonies taking place to mark the successful erection of new vihāras are great social events. The festivities take place over several days. A ceremony I witnessed in Battambang began with the deep holes being dug and then decorated with a roof structure and fence and slung with a large cloth that fell inside the hole. Visitors began streaming to the pagoda to make offerings into the holes, purchasing small packages to drop in containing combs, mirrors, notebooks, pens and so on – various symbols of success and beauty in a future life. On top of this, cash donations were dropped into the holes, including the ninth hole at the centre of the sanctuary. On the final day of the ceremony, the sīma stones were felled into the holes to close them and ritually ‘plant’ the sacred limits. The chopping of the rattan for the main hole was performed by the deputy Prime Minister Sar Kheng, accompanied by the district governor, police commissioner and other influential officials. The ceremony was overseen by both military and police officers. 
A member of the pagoda committee made a speech in which he noted that the pagoda had now been able to construct a new funeral room at a cost of over $10,000, aided by the support received from His Excellency Sar Kheng. Sar Kheng himself then announced that he had been at a ground-breaking ceremony the previous day and was due to attend another the following day,

"I am often invited by pagoda committees and local authorities to be the chairman for their ground-breaking ceremonies. Even though I am busy trying to solve the political deadlock in my country, I still come to join this ceremony. If a pagoda has an internal conflict between the achar, head monk and committee nothing in the pagoda can be developed. It is the same for the whole country. If all political parties start negotiating to find a solution, then we will have no problem … I am disappointed that some political parties do not cooperate with the government to find a solution to this deadlock."
 
At the end of his speech, Sar Kheng donated 10,000 Riel each to forty-three gathered teachers, 1,000 Riel for each student in attendance and 3,000,000 Riel as a donation for the main hole in the middle of the pagoda. He then awarded gold medals to seven people, including one monk, and a further fourteen silver medals, six bronze and thirty-three certificates of admiration. Finally, he inaugurated the funeral room before returning to cut the rattan and seal the sīma. Political power and its attendant propaganda thus take up a novel position, right at the core of the sacred space of the pagoda.

Those I have spoken to about the meaning of the sīma and the ground-breaking ceremony have spontaneously constructed their narratives around a common core concerning the notion of sacrifice. An elderly woman nearby Battambang explained that when she was young ground-breaking ceremonies were rare events, but she remembered seeing how people offered valuable items and noted that after the Khmer Rouge period, people would dig around the pagodas in the hopes of finding the treasure they knew should be there in a desperate struggle to survive. The woman’s narrative is threaded on a symbolic motif portraying how the sacred boundary was literally disembowelled and the values buried deep within it removed, scattered and consumed. An elderly nun reflected on the changing attitude towards these donations,

"In our modern society they don’t like to bury donations in the ground because they think they cannot make a profit this way. But if they sell the donations they will be able to develop the pagoda."

Commentaries such as these draw together the notions of self-sacrifice, morality and Buddhism into a symbolic cluster, manifested in the pagoda sīma, which signifies protection from dangerous powers but also their propitiation in the service of continuance of the world. 
An elderly layman cited earlier mentioned, as have many older people, that the interference of loak thom (alt. neak thom, “big men”, high ranking officials) into the pagodas is a new development,

"Not only did we not get support from the US in the past but we didn’t have any support from loak thom … In the past the loak thom only liked making donations to Buddhist ceremonies because they liked to get merit but they didn’t use their money for building pagodas because they didn’t want to interfere with the local people."

Villagers assessments of what is happening to the pagoda capture a consistent theme of moral disintegration concomitant with the mono-directional penetration of economic and political power into the cosmologically empowered centre – the pagoda. This inverts the ideal, mandala pattern of order according to which “power” should emanate from the centre outwards (HINTON 2005). 

The search for peace and happiness

Although tremendous hope is vested by Cambodians in the regeneration of their Buddhism, the Buddhism that is emerging has yet to restock its accounts in religious expertise. It may be losing some of its grass-roots anchorage and its concomitant ability to act as a buffer or mediator between the people and their leaders. The politicization of the sangha through its leadership, and its involvement in democratization, may also hamper its recovery. Without the vital ingredients of religious legitimacy, the sangha may become subsumed by the “rampant liberalization and unrestrained greed” (OVESEN et al. 1996: 83) and the political opportunism that are increasingly defining Cambodia’s destiny. 
Although there is a newly emerging Buddhist intelligentsia that is gathering members from backgrounds of both raw poverty and privilege, its members live dangerously—the more successful their efforts to construct a world based on sok, the greater seem to be the risks to their own security. A well functioning pagoda may provide a seat of learning about self control, the importance of which can hardly be overstated in a war-ravaged society where the folk model of “disproportionate revenge (karsângsoek)”  (HINTON 1998) is prevalent. But as some urgently pursue sok and the merit of rebuilding a cohesive Khmer cosmos, for others demoralized Buddhism, leached of religious legitimacy, continues to provide an efficacious tool for securing mundane and individual interests alone. Unchecked power can then run riot while the still debilitated symbolic complex of sīma, robe and virtues is unable to subdue it.
Perhaps a non-elite quest for a (nation-)state of Khmer virtue may be discerned in the activities of Ven. Sam Bunthoeun and the young monks in Battambang, though the format they select parts company with traditional, apotropaic Khmer Buddhism and recalls that which once served as the instrument of first Thai, later French and modernist domination. Nevertheless, the history of Buddhism in Cambodia perhaps shows how flexible it is as a cultural system since the very same format ultimately helped forge nationalism. 
Khmer Buddhism may take the form of an historically rooted set of traditions or it may become disembedded and modernist. Yet I am proposing that in order for Khmer civilization to persist, Buddhism, in whatever form it takes, must maintain its ability to both cultivate, but also check and control power in all its forms—to domesticate power for the protection and nourishment of the people and their world. Today, Cambodia is becoming absorbed into a global culture that is not of her making, a culture that promotes consumerism and democracy. Cambodia’s numerous poor are sorely vulnerable to the dangers and temptations of greed, vengeance and violence. This study has yielded some close up views of the minute workings of interpersonal politics in the realm of Cambodia’s contemporary religious revival. It has positioned these against the background of Khmer Buddhist history and against today’s rapidly changing political economy. The extent to which these new values and their systems may hinder the rebuilding of the logic of coherence of the Khmer universe remains to be seen. 

Author's note

I would like to convey my deeply felt gratitude to the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation not only for the generous economic support provided for this research, but for their understanding and support in the face of practical difficulties I have encountered due to injury and ill-health. The Foundation's support has enabled me to fruitfully pursue this research despite setbacks.

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