Buddhism Under the Red Flag

By David DeVoss

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 The silver bowls have been replaced by plastic ones, bought on the black market.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.

Neither Ho Chi Minh nor the CIA was able to find a way of using Buddhism as a rallying point. The only time Indochina's Buddhists were roused to unified action was in the early 1960s, when harassment by Viet Nam's Catholic minority provoked a series of public demonstrations that helped topple Catholic President Ngo Dinh Diem.

Because it has neither dogma nor Pope, and lacks both the promise of immortality and the threat implied in sin, Buddhism is often dismissed as a weak religion. In reality it offers one of the few elements of cohesion in the ethnographic jigsaw that is Southeast Asia. On the plains, the Buddha's concepts of the "flood" (travail in the material world) and "further shore" (the search for nirvana) are apt metaphors for peasant lives constantly subjected to natural disasters. In mountain societies, which are often driven by a lust for Lebensraum, Buddhism's "middle way" tempers excesses.

Indochina's current Communist regimes seek their own middle way to deal with their Buddhist populations. In South Viet Nam, people are free to worship, but those who meditate with the 15 monks (out of 30) who remain at the Vinh Nghiem pagoda in Ho Chi Minh City are reminded by the bust of Uncle Ho and numerous red banners that the religion is tolerated only as an appendage of the state. In Laos, over the past five years, one-fourth of the peasant population of 3 million have swum or rafted across the Mekong River to Thailand. One of the most famous of these waterborne refugees is Laos' 88-year-old Supreme Patriarch, Pra Yodkaw Vachirorods, who sighs, "Buddhism is alienated and separate from the people. Religion is dying in Laos."

Scholars in Thailand disagree. They are sanguine about Buddhism's long-range prospects in Indochina, since they feel the Gautama's ideas are not incompatible with Communism. Observes Thai Scholar Sulak Sivaraksa: "Christianity and Communism have a lot of ideological conflicts, but this is not the case with traditional Buddhism, which is socialistic in that it champions the equality of man."

Ironically, despite the previous violence, religious tolerance is greatest today in Kampuchea. At the Royal Palace in Phnom-Penh, joss sticks are on sale again, and on Sundays, swarms of worshipers file through the ornate silver pagoda. Outside the capital, United Nations trucks that haul rice during the week are busy on Sunday transporting Buddhists and their gifts of food and flowers to rural temples.

The government of Heng Samrin has spent no money rebuilding temples. For now, Kampuchea's impoverished peasants seem prepared to accept the financial burden of maintaining Buddhism by themselves. The 100 families in the tiny hamlet of Damrak Ampil, 12 1/2 miles west of Phnom-Penh, recently contributed enough money to cast a new bronze Buddha and begin restoring their roofless temple. "Lord Buddha sustained us during our darkest hours," explains Village Committeeman Chea Non. "Our village is poor, but our faith is strong."

--By David DeVoss/Phnom-Penh

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