khmer sources

VIENTIANE-Every morning at around six o’clock across this landlocked nation, Buddhist monks stream out of temple to receive ritual food offering from the people. By 11 am, soft drumbeats alert the people to take food to the temples for the monks’ last meal of the day.

As in other Southeast Asian nations where Theravada Buddhism is the dominant religion, Laotians go to the temple to make merit, pray or meditate. Often exquisitely decorated and surrounded by high white boundary walls, the temples are centers of community life in the rural areas.

The widespread popularity of any faith seems out of place in a nation with communist rulers. (After all, didn’t karl Marx say that religion was the opium of the masses?) But unlike in other communist counties, the government in Laos recognizes and supports religion-in this case Buddhism- as in positive influence in the live of the people. One could say that the propagation of Buddhism in Laos has the state’s blessing.

Khampheuy Vannasopha, director of the department for religious Affairs in the government-sponsored Laos Front for National construction, says Buddhism has helped maintain and strengthen national unity and solidarity. The teaching of Buddhism is compulsory in every primary school in Laos.

To a visitor, it does seem as if most Laotians remain devout followers of their faith. But many older Laotians and even monks are worried that the country youths-especially those in the cities-are getting less and interested in practicing their faith.

Venerable Vanna Souryavong, chief monk at Wat (Temple) Mixayaram Meoung Chanthaboury, says that unless there are special religious ceremonies, 90 percent of the temple –goers in Laos are older people.

"Most young people do not have a clear understanding of Buddhism," he says. "They don’t understand the importance of prying anymore. When they go to the temple, they don’t know to the practice Buddhism properly "

Jahnphong Luanglard, 79, also finds the attitude of the young towards religion very different from that of his generation. In the old day, he say, people went to the temple to learn, and their daily lives were closely linked to Buddhism. Today, he says, young people do not visit temple regularly and get their education in public schools.


In traditional Buddhist societies, temples are also considered educational institutions, especially among the males. Says Jahnphong: " I grew up in the temple that is why Buddhism is my foundation. Now, young people don’t think like me, including my children. Sometime they go to the temple just to follow me, but they know nothing about the meaning of going to the temple,"

According to official estimates, there are 4,937 Buddhist temple in Laos. They’re also 8,796 monks, 13,376 novice monk, and 450 nuns in the country to guide its more than five million Buddhists.

A long, colorful history Buddhism has a long history here. It arrived in Laos sometime during the 14th century, when the founder of Lan Xang (Land of a Million Elephants), King Fa Ngum, is believed to have brought the religion from the neighbouring Khmer Kingdom of Angkor to strengthen his rule.

Hundreds of year later, the communist Pathet Lao movement, which gained compete control of Laos in the mid-1970s, acknowledged the important role of religious devotion in state building. And so while Buddhism was coming under attack in Cambodia, where a group practicing an extreme brand of communism had seized power, the new regime in Laos used religion to reinforce its credentials. Monks were brought into the official education program to support Marxist ideology with Buddhist religious Marxist ideology with Buddhist religious maxims.

Phikhok (Monk) Khamphouy Boeep-phaphoe of Wat Sisangvone in Saysettha district says that Buddhists should go to the temple at least at least four times a month, especially during religious ceremonies, to experience the richness of their faith. But laments the monk, young Laotians now visit entertainment venues more often than temples.

Bars serving alcohol late in to the night are open all across the country. In Vientiane, young Laotian women can be seen drinking beer,

playing snooker, or dancing with foreigners in the many bars on Fa Ngum Road along the Mekong River. The capital has several popular nightclubs such as the mina, Novotel, and Soradith, where large groups of young people gather every night.

Phikhok Khamphouy believes the exposure of city youths to western cultural influences has much to do with their seeming disinterest in Buddhism. Although not as bustling as neigh bouring countries like Thailand and even Cambodia, Laos still attracts a fair share of Western tourists, and the cities they visit inevitably start offering venues that cater to their tastes and whims.

"Today," says Phikhok Khamphouy, "there are many temptations and it is too easy for young people to waste their time drinking, dancing, racing their bikes, misusing the Internet and engaging in anti-social activities."

HE looks so at home at a temple here in Vientiane that no one would suspect his homeland lies beyond Lao’s southwestern border. Venerable Vanna Souryavong, however, says that although he still visits Cambodia, his home country, from time to time, Laos will probably be the place where he will die.

The 66-year-old monk is the abbot at the beautiful Wat Mixayaram Meoung Chanthaboury on Setthamthirath road in Vientiance, just a hundred meters from the banks of the Mekong River. He is also the deputy chief of Vientiane’s approximately 1,989 monks. Venerable Vanna is believed to be the first Cambodian monk to occupy such high ranks in Laos since the 14th century, when a Laotion monarch invited a monk from Cambodia to be his adviser.

Like Laos, Cambodia is predominantly Theravada Buddhist. Venerable Vanna himself notes, "Buddhism in Cambodia has 84,000 dharma (doctrines) . In Laos we have 84,000 dharma as well. The only difference is the pronunciation."

He says Cambodian and Laotian monks have some short of exchange program with one another that enable them to enhance their knowledge of the teaching of Buddha, as well as help them appreciate other ways of approaching their religion.

In fact, this was why he came over to Laos in 1967, or three years before Cambodia disintegrated into civil war. He had planned to stay in Laos only up to 1970, but that was the year when the war began in Cambodia.

He says he could not speak Lao too well back then, and he "felt so sad and missed my homeland " He did not even know then that the next time he would see his relatives would be more than 30 years later.

But being stuck in Laos apparently saved his life. During the brutal Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia that lasted between 1975 and 1979, some 50.000 monks were killed in his country. This was even if many other monks gave up their saffron robes because the Khmer Rouge did not look kindly at the religious (and just about everyone else, for that matter).

Today Venerable Vanna is among the few Cambodian men who have remained monks, without interruption, for almost half a century.

But if years ago he could barely speak Lao, now he is no longer very fluent in his native tongue. Struggling to speak in Khmer, he haltingly tells of being born on May 15, 1940 to a peasant family in a remote district in the Cambodian northeastern province of Battambang. He became a nen — novice — in 1957, and than a phikhok or monk in 1962. When e decided to continue his Buddhist studies in Laos, he crossed the border in Stung Treng, and settled in Sarawan, a southern Laotian province. He left Sarawan for Vientiane in 1982. Years later, the former abbot of Wat Mixayaram Meoung Chanthaboury would become his major backer in getting the positions he has now.

For some reason, Venerable Vanna has a Khmer literature book in his hands while he is telling his life story. It is apparent, however, that he has become one with Laos. "Now I am Lao," he even says. "I do not want to move back to Cambodia."

"When the war was finished (in Cambodia), the bad thing also finished." He concedes, referring to the nightmare of living in a country where on was almost always in the crosshairs of someone’s gun. In late 1998, he was even able to go back to his hometown and spend a few days with his family. He maintains contact with his relatives up to now. He says, however, that he is too ill to finally go home. "It is too late for me." He says simply.

Venerable Vanna says that once he got over his homesickness years ago, he realised that "for a monk who follows Buddha’s way, location does not matter." "Buddha," he says, "does not mind whether you are in Laos or in Cambodia." The story was produced under the 2006 Journalism Fellowship Program of the Bangkok-based Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA).