I knew so little about Cambodia, a country so near to my own and separated from the northern state of Kelantan by a short boat ride. For a long time, I merely considered it to be the buffer country which prevented the Communist domino spilling over from Vietnam into Thailand.  Until very recently, nobody visited the country, so it was only in December 2005 when I was planning to visit the famous Angkor Wat temples around Siem Reap in north west Cambodia that I researched the country on the Internet.  It was only then that I learnt more about the sad history of this nation of 14 million people. 

The people of Cambodia or Khmers have been Buddhists since the13th century.  They were once part of a great empire which began from the coast of Vietnam and stretched west encompassing much of present day Thailand, an area 5 times its present size. But history has not been kind to the Khmers.  Cambodians today feel they have been repeatedly victimized, first colonized by the French, secretly bombed by the Americans, exploited by the Vietnamese and scorned by the Thais who adopted their script and culture for their own glory. But they are saddest when they think of the period from 1975 to 1979 when their own people, in the insane form of the Khmer Rouge, caused the death of up to 3 million Cambodians, out of a population of 7.3 million, through the most brutal acts of genocide, torture and deprivation,…. while the rest of the world feigned ignorance. The victims included monks, teachers and professionals, the educated, their best and their brightest. Today their small nation is wrecked with poverty, disease, illiteracy, social problems and the remaining trauma of war including the absence of infrastructure and millions of unexploded landmines that continue to claim daily victims. Yet, remarkably, out of the recent brutality of their war, today’s Cambodians are among the friendliest people one can encounter.

With the reestablishment of democracy and freedom in the 90s, the Cambodian people vigorously rebuilt their religious institutions and embarked on the construction of monasteries with great vigor and enthusiasm. Everywhere in the country today there are large and beautifully decorated wats; in the villages, in the cities or standing in the midst of padi fields. Men began to ordain in the ancient traditions and now there are about 50,000 monks in the Cambodian sangha.  However, as only 3,000 out of the estimated 65,000 monks survived the Khmer Rouge years, there were few teachers to convey the living teachings.  Thus, religious education and discipline have fallen far behind. Naturally, the situation among the nuns and the laity is not better.  To compound the problems, well funded foreign missionaries, eager to exploit the situation descended into the country. They quickly established aggressive conversion programs fronted by schools, orphanages, and aid projects and introduced beliefs that further weakened and divided the people and which eroded confidence in their culture.

So it was with mixed emotions that I enjoyed the glories of Siem Reap and its Angkor Wat era temples. The pain the country suffered continued to be largely visible. Gangs of street children roamed the streets.  Men without limbs dragged themselves through the tourist crowds begging for money. And poverty was everywhere.  There is a saying that in Cambodia, if one threw a stone in any direction, there, one would find an opportunity to help. And indeed, a lot of aid was pouring into the country, from various governments, NGOs and individuals, building schools, houses, community halls and orphanages, giving microcredit, digging wells, caring for vulnerable children, tackling drug abuse and so on.  However, it was quite obvious that there was hardly any aid to support the cultural and religious renewal of the people.  This was the one thing they needed most to rebuild their self respect, their national identity and a foundation for optimism as their country leaps into the modern world.  Yet, this was left to the own resources of the Cambodians.

Coming back to Malaysia, I felt that this gap in assistance to the Cambodians should be addressed and was enthusiastic in finding a way to support the Dhamma resurgence in Cambodia. I observed that while the Cambodians have difficulty in finding the educational resources to rebuild their religion, Buddhists here and in many countries often have a surplus. I believed that the most immediate way I could help was to support and assist in the printing of Dhamma books in the Khmer language to be distributed free in Cambodia. This was an effective method of Dhamma propagation in Malaysia and had become so popular that it had developed into a major activity of many organisations. It is common for books on various aspects of the Dhamma, sometimes even hard cover editions, to be printed for free distribution. But resulting from a combination of poor distribution practices, choice of subject and weak interest, many books are then passed from one temple to another, until they are left to turn yellow in boxes or shelves.

With this idea in mind, I googled the Net looking for people who would be willing to translate Dhamma books from English to Khmer without charge. But Cambodians do not have a large presence on the Net and the few possibilities I emailed did not elicit much interest. Eventually, perhaps through the intervention of devas as it was so unbelievably co-incidental, an Australian who came across my inquiry in a Cambodia travel discussion forum recommended two contacts, the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh and a Venerable Sophan Vodano, a Cambodian monk who was then staying in Canada. Incredibly, both contacts turned out to be tremendously fortuitous.The Buddhist Institute is an old and venerable institution whose mission was to collect, print and disseminate Dhamma texts.And it turned out that Venerable Sophan, one of the rare Cambodian monks who spoke English, had earlier translated into Khmer, the book “Good Question, Good Answer”, the exact book I had in mind for the project. This particular book written by Ven Dhammika summarises key tenets of Buddhism into a simple question and answer format. It has been tremendously popular in the galaxy of free books and is a clear favourite for introducing people to Buddhism. In addition, Ven Sophan, who like many in his time was orphaned as a young child, had educated himself and is the founder and director of Khmer Youth Education Buddhist Centre (“KYEBC”), a Siem Reap based organization that in the past several years, had organized retreats for as many as fifteen thousand school children and youths. I could not think of a more suitable person in the whole of Cambodia to collaborate with.

With the groundwork for a possible project in hand, I needed an official cover. So I proposed the project to the Committee of the Bandar Utama Buddhist Society and being the enlightened and compassionate people they are, the project was happily adopted. I named it Dhamma Aid Cambodia (“DAC”); not a very creative name, but one which I felt clearly defined its objective. (Note*)

The next few weeks I worked on several tasks. One was setting up a website to explain the purpose of DAC as I felt that people would appreciate knowing the rationale behind it. The funds were quickly raised with help from sympathetic friends and after a period where emails crossed between our three countries, the first batch of 3,000 copies of the Khmer edition of the book “Good Question, Good Answer” was available for distribution to the Cambodian people. Half the number of books was offered to the KYEBC for their next student retreat. The Buddhist Institute sent out notices to various wats to collect the rest. Soon monks, students, and laypeople traveled from across Phnom Penh and some from outlying provinces to collect the free books. The Buddhist Institute recorded the number of books and names of each person who collected them. Such was the value they placed on the books. The stock was soon depleted and so in the next few months, another 2 batches of this book was printed and distributed. It proved to be just as popular among the Cambodians as it is with Malaysians. Ven Dhammika, upon learning about the translation and distribution of his book in Cambodia, wrote me an email saying “I am so happy to hear that you are distributing so many copies of the book actually in Cambodia. This is energy and money well spent”. Another email was received from a British yoga teacher in Cambodia who said that he would personally collect and distribute the books to village leaders, businessmen, students, and prisoners as so many people were hungry for clear and simple explanations of their religion. I was quite happy with this.

In early 2007, I was informed that I could meet with the Ven Bun Sim Pandito, a Khmer monk who worked in the office of the National Inspector of Buddhist Education in Phnom Penh.He had traveled to Malaysia to attend a Vipassana meditation retreat.During my first meeting with this humble and pleasant monk, he advised me that his office was desperately short of an important book which was used in Buddhist high schools throughout Cambodia. This book Gihi-Pattipati or “Practice for Lay people” described the practices and popular chants for laymen. It was written by the Ven Chuon Nath, the previous Sangharaja of Cambodia and a deeply respected monk who is known for a series of innovations in Cambodian Buddhism and the modernization of teaching methods. DAC was happy to provide the funds for printing 5,000 copies this book. In July 2007, at a small ceremony in Phnom Penh to formally offer the books, Ven Sao Chanthol, the Sangharaja of Phnom Penh, expressed his deep gratitude to the Malaysian donors who made this offering as “the gift of Dhamma excels all other gifts”. He said that Cambodia is poor and needs many things but the Dhamma is the greatest gift that Malaysians can offer his people.

From Ven Sophan, I also learnt more about his organization, the KYEBC and the good work they do. Apart from organizing retreats for Cambodian school children and youths who otherwise would have little opportunity to learn the Dhamma, they also record talks using an old fashioned cassette recorder which is then sent to a radio station for transmission. Thus, during a visit to Siem Reap in September 2006, funds were raised by friends to equip the monks of the organization with laptops and other equipment to facilitate their work. This was in line with DAC’s objective of focusing our aid to support initiatives in the area of Dhamma education.

I also learnt about another organization, the Khmer Buddhist Education Assistance Project, an NGO founded by an American scholar of Cambodian culture, which runs several programs to assist cultural and religious renewal in Cambodia. This includes the provision of scholarships for poor and deserving monks studying at local monastic universities. Monks who do well are then provided further scholarships to pursue their Masters degree in Sri Lanka. It is expected that these monks will eventually become the next generation of leaders and teachers for their people. This program is highly valued by the sangha and the government as the sangha still suffers from a serious shortage of learned and educated monks in its ranks, a sharp contrast to the position before the war when Cambodia was noted for its high degree of Pali scholarship. In support of this initiative, DAC extended the scope of its projects by providing scholarships for four monks for that year.

It is clear that what DAC can contribute compared to the great need of the Cambodians is like a single drop of water on a parched land. But it is hoped that the results of this work will play a part in the resurgence of Buddhism among Cambodians. With this dedication in mind, every book printed by DAC carries on its cover, a note that it is sponsored by Malaysian Buddhist friends so that every recipient is encouraged with the knowledge that they have friends who support their passion for the Dhamma.

Malaysian Buddhists are generous in support of the Sasana but we are often ignorant of the plight of other Buddhist communities in the world. We regularly benefit from visits and teachings by teachers from foreign lands. In the same spirit, DAC, as a unit of the Bandar Utama Buddhist Society(Note*) represents Malaysians in extending a hand of friendship to Cambodian Buddhists.

In the scriptures, there is the story of Tapussa and Bhallika, two merchants who offered the first meal to the Buddha after his enlightenment and gained immeasurable merit through that act. We naturally assume this merit is the result of the personage of the Buddha. But we know that the merit of a deed is also proportionate to its need. I believe much of the great merit is because the Buddha, after his enlightenment, had fasted for 49 days before meeting the merchants and his body had a great need for sustenance. In the same way, I trust Malaysian Buddhists will continue to support DAC in its effort to assist the people of Cambodia who, after a long period of darkness, are reaching for the Dhamma again.

Note*: In early 2010, DAC ceased to be a unit of the Bandar Utama Buddhist Society and stepped out as an independent project.