Cambodian Buddhism in the United States

Carol A. Mortland

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781438466651
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Cambodian Buddhism in the United States is the first comprehensive anthropological study of Khmer Buddhism as practiced by Khmer refugees in the United States. Based on research conducted at Khmer temples and sites throughout the country over a period of three and a half decades, Carol A. Mortland uses participant observation, open-ended interviews, life histories, and dialogues with Khmer monks and laypeople to explore the everyday practice of Khmer religion, including spirit beliefs and healing rituals. This ethnography is enriched and supplemented by the use of historical accounts, reports, memoirs, unpublished life histories, and family memorabilia painstakingly preserved by refugees. Mortland also traces the changes that Cambodians have made to religion as they struggle with the challenges of living in a new country, learning English, and supporting themselves. The beliefs and practices of Khmer Muslims and Khmer Christians in the United States are also reviewed.

1

Introduction

Most resettled Cambodians are ethnic Khmer, but they include Cambodians who have Chinese, Lao, Thai, or Vietnamese ancestry. Although most Khmer refugees were formerly subsistence rice farmers in Cambodia, some were prominent in business, government, and the military and a few were urban students and workers. The approximately 150,000 Khmer refugees resettled in the United States after the mid-1970s included Theravada Buddhists, Muslims, Christians, Mahayana Buddhists, and practitioners of tribal religions. The majority of Khmer refugees were resettled in urban areas, and many continue to live there. Long Beach, California, has the largest population of people of Cambodian ancestry outside Cambodia, and communities of Khmer reside in other urban centers across the country, particularly in southern California, eastern Massachusetts, and the Puget Sound region of the Pacific Northwest. Over the decades, Cambodian Americans have increased in number, scattering to even more suburbs and towns. By 2010, over 275,000 people of Khmer descent resided in America (United States Census 2011).

The vast majority of resettled Cambodians are Theravada Buddhists, as over 90 percent of Cambodians have been for centuries. The daily practice of Khmer religion has been vitally important to the great majority of resettled Cambodians as they struggled to cope with the experiences that caused them to become refugees and attempted to survive economically and retain and reestablish traditional relationships, customs, and rituals. Decades later, the majority of first-generation Cambodians continue to spend most or all of their free time with one another, socializing in Khmer, eating traditional food, and observing their traditions. Most second-generation Cambodian Americans do not share their parents’ experiences or understand their beliefs and practices, but they continue to consider themselves Khmer and follow the religion of their parents.

Cambodian Buddhists in the United States explores the ways Cambodian refugees reestablished the rituals, personnel, and physical facilities of their traditional faith in America as they began arriving in the mid-1970s. To provide a context for discussing the establishment of Khmer Buddhism in America, this chapter briefly reviews the history of Khmer refugees, previous research with Cambodians, and my contacts with Cambodians since 1981.

A Brief History of Cambodia

For millennia, present-day Cambodia was home to hunters, gatherers, and fishermen who anthropologists think paid homage to spirits of the ancestors and the earth. Ancient rituals surviving into the modern era indicate that as the domestication of crops and animals became the dominant survival strategy and residents began living in permanent villages and engaging in networks of trade, they continued practicing rituals to appease the spirits around them (Porée-Maspero 1962−1969). With the development of a sophisticated and productive trading and social polity with high population density, high rice production, and a complex canal system, Funan was established in southern Cambodia around 2,000 years ago (Bizot 1976). Left behind is evidence of both Hinduism, a 4,000-year-old Indian religion consisting of numerous gods, texts, and rituals, and Buddhism, founded by the Buddha about 2,500 years ago.

By the ninth century CE, power in the region had shifted from Funan to Angkor and, from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries, King Jayavarman II and his Angkor successors oversaw an expansion of agriculture and population. Until the twelfth century CE, Hinduism was the state religion of the Khmer Empire, but waxed and waned in influence along with Mahayana and Theravada Buddhism, with temples (wat) alternating as ritual sites and displaying both Hindu and Buddhist elements (Chandler 1983). Buddhism developed in part in reaction to Hindu tradition and rigidity, providing its followers relief from the caste system. Over the centuries, Buddhism developed into Mahayana Buddhism, a branch of Buddhism emphasizing celestial Buddhas, bodhisattvas, and magical rites.

Theravada Buddhism arose later as a reform sect focused on countering the spirit beliefs and extravagances some perceived in Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism (Lester 1973). In contrast to Mahayana Buddhism, Theravada Buddhism focuses on worship with a community of monks and encourages believers in acquiring wisdom, discipline, and deliverance from life’s suffering. Cambodians molded Indian ideas into a unique form, with Khmer-style images of the Buddha prevalent as early as the seventh century. Two Indian gods often blended to become one, such as Shiva and Vishnu becoming Haraihara, a favorite god of the Angkorean kings, and local sprits were sometimes given the names of Indian gods (Chandler 1983). Khmer kings also named themselves after Hindu gods and the Buddha while claiming they were descended from the ancestor spirits (meba or neak ta) of the original settlers.

During the late twelfth to early thirteenth centuries, Buddhism gradually gained ground over Hinduism, and Jayavarman VII’s regime marked a clear division between the Hindu past and a Buddhist future. A thirteenth-century Chinese envoy (Chou Ta-kuan 1992) described Pali-speaking Theravada Buddhist monks; an association of spirits with stones, soil, and water; a belief in the protective power of tattoos; and New Year games still present among twenty-first century Khmer Buddhists in America. Although continuing Hindu rituals and allowing Indian priests to preside over certain court ceremonies, Jayavarman VII saw himself as a Buddhist and a living Buddha. Rather than build temples for Brahman priests, he constructed libraries, hospitals, rest houses, roads, and temples for thousands of Buddhist monks. Temple art shifted from Hindu pantheon scenes to Mahayana and Theravada Buddhist themes with inscriptions in Khmer and Pali, Buddhism’s sacred language (Harris 2005).

As Buddhism gradually eclipsed Hinduism, it influenced Angkorean society to be less hierarchical by placing more importance on lay religious participation and accepting local traditional beliefs (Higham 2001). The village temple was the cultural, educational, and social center of the neighborhood, and its monks the custodians of Khmer society and identity, providing a buffer between aristocrats and commoners. Yet hierarchy remained important, supported by Buddhism ideas that emphasized the importance of deferring to superiors such as the king, teachers, monks, and government officials (Houtart 1977). Although kings became benefactors to monks by donating food and land for monasteries, they continued to memorialize themselves through temple construction and maintenance.

Angkor, the world’s largest medieval “hydraulic city,” was apparently sustained and then ultimately overwhelmed by over-exploitation and the detrimental environmental impact of the complex water-management network that supported its rice economy (Buckley 2010). Laborers totaled almost one-third of a million workers, a large proportion of the estimated Angkorean population. The excesses of Angkor kings may have led to a rebellion by over-worked and over-taxed workers who maintained the economy that supported the rulers’ temple construction and maintenance. A Ta Prohm temple inscription states that 12,640 people served the temple, and more than 66,000 farmers produced the 3,000 tons of rice needed annually for the vast number of priests, dancers, and temple workers.

Angkor’s decline intensified in the fifteenth century with pressure from its neighbors. Both Thai and Vietnamese invasions led to large-scale death and destruction as Khmer rulers resisted or yielded land or power to one neighbor or the other, often using one to avoid the advances of the other (Briggs 1951). By the 1770s, Vietnam occupied Cambodia’s Mekong Delta. In the nineteenth century, the Vietnamese promoted Mahayana Buddhism among Cambodians, while the Thai advocated for Theravada Buddhism. With the approval of the Khmer king, monks from Thailand established a new Theravada Buddhist order in Cambodia called Thommayut. Although it received royal patronage, the order was less popular than the Mahanikay order practiced by most Cambodians, who viewed the Thommayut order as more Thai than Khmer (Harris 2001).

Cambodia’s freedom from continuing depredations from Vietnam and Thailand came at the hands of a country 6,000 miles away. In order to gain an advantage over Britain in the region, acquire a land route to China’s markets and trading posts, establish naval supply stations in Southeast Asia, and protect its own missionaries, France named Cambodia a protectorate in 1863 (Briggs 1951). France’s greatest legacy to Cambodia during its colonialization was the exploitation of Cambodia’s tax revenues and resources. Cambodians received few benefits in return. Primary education for children continued at temple schools, but the French did little to expand or improve the system and, by 1954, a mere 144 Cambodians had earned a baccalaureate degree (Kiernan 1996). In business and finance, the French encouraged Chinese Cambodian involvement, but restricted the practice of the majority of Cambodians to food production, fishing, weaving, and carving.

Leaving ceremonial powers to the king, and ruling primarily through Vietnamese administrators, the French “mummified” Cambodia by reinforcing its traditional monarchy and social structure (Kiernan 1996). They left intact traditional divisions between urban and rural Cambodians and intensified class differences. An exception to France’s general disregard for Cambodia was its interest in Cambodia’s heritage. French scholars studied Cambodia’s history, identified ancient cities and works, and restored Angkorean temples. The French instituted Khmer language and Buddhism studies, established Pali schools for Khmer monks, and strove to give Cambodians pride in their heritage (Rajavaramuni 1984).

The French, however, had little regard for Cambodians or their religion. An anthropologist described Cambodians as “ugly, dull-looking people, diseased and under-nourished, cowed and frightened, drably dressed in dingy black; with Buddha as their god, and opium as the way to Him” (Gorer 1936, 155). Louis Finot described Cambodian Buddhism as “a sweet religion whose doctrines of resignation are marvelously suited to a tired peoples” (Armstrong 1964, 30). Aware of French attitudes toward them, Cambodians responded to the French with demonstrations and violence, often led by Buddhist monks. Angered by France’s policies, Cambodians were also displeased by French efforts to convert them to Christianity, although those efforts were as unsuccessful as those of a sixteenth-century Portuguese missionary who left after a year, claiming Cambodians refused to become Christians without royal permission.

When the Khmer king died in 1941, the French appointed his great-nephew, Norodom Sihanouk, to replace him. Japan’s occupation of much of Asia in the early 1940s inspired the young king and many of his compatriots to consider independence for Cambodia. Surprised by growing nationalist demands, France granted independence to the country in 1955, and Sihanouk soon became the dominant figure in Khmer political life, yielding his title and royal ceremonial duties to his father and becoming a private citizen to better engage in politics. In sharp contrast to the patronizing exploitation of the French, Sihanouk exhibited concern for “his” children, and the 1960s saw an increase in modernization, educational opportunities, the middle class, and business.

As the Vietnam War between neighboring communist North Vietnam and anti-communist South Vietnam intensified, Sihanouk attempted to keep his country neutral, citing a proverb, “When two elephants are fighting, the ant should step aside” (Marlay and Neher 1999, 163), a proverb that has been variously ascribed to populations in East Africa, Thailand, and Cambodia. As the years passed, Sihanouk tilted to one side of the conflict or the other as he deemed necessary, saying, “I believe in sawtooth diplomacy” (National Geographic 1970). With the Soviet Union and its allies supporting the North Vietnamese, the United States and its allies lined up behind South Vietnam, increasingly frustrating Cambodia’s young leader. Sihanouk informed an American ambassador that he did not object to American forces engaging in “hot pursuit” of enemy soldiers in unpopulated areas (Bowles 1971), but he condemned American actions in the region which allowed the Vietnamese to establish bases inside Cambodia.

In 1963, Sihanouk ordered an end to American military and economic assistance and took control of Cambodia’s banks, insurance, and trade. However, excessive government taxes and corruption enraged struggling Cambodians, and the incompetence of the army meant Cambodia could not prevent Vietnamese troop intrusions or the flow of war resources across Cambodia to Vietnam. By the late 1960s, as foreign investment declined, war on Khmer land expanded, and Cambodia’s own communists increased in number, conditions in the country became increasingly chaotic and Cambodians’ dissatisfaction with Sihanouk grew. Sihanouk had looked to Cambodia’s Buddhist tradition for support, describing Cambodians as “socialists following the Buddha” (Chandler 1991, 161). Since the late 1950s, however, Cambodians had been exhibiting less respect for monks and temples, and monks were abandoning some restrictions and becoming increasingly involved in both pro- and anti-governmental demonstrations (Ebihara 1968).

As Cambodia was drawn more deeply into the Vietnam War, so, too, was the United States. By 1965, America had sent ground troops and economic and military aid to assist Vietnam and kept increasing its assistance over the next years. As the communists gained ground and American leaders and the public grew frustrated by the war, President Nixon shifted much of the assistance to Cambodia, seeing the country as a “key” to winning the war. Operating out of a large white building at the foot of Norodom Boulevard in Cambodia’s capital, America dispensed military equipment and millions of dollars for Khmer troop salaries (Tatu 1990). Growing from $20 million in the late 1960s, American military aid to Cambodia totaled $1.8 billion by 1975.

Unable to halt the chaos in his country and lessen the displeasure of his countrymen, Sihanouk was overthrown on March 18, 1970, by Lon Nol, a top general and politician. Street posters depicting Vietnamese in tanks cowering before a glowing Buddha reflected Lon Nol’s view of the world and, calling Vietnamese communists non-Buddhist infidels, Lon Nol ordered them to leave Cambodia within 48 hours. Cambodians turned on Vietnamese residents in their midst and, as war intensified, half of the 500,000 Vietnamese civilians in Cambodia were detained or expelled, and many were murdered. Vietnamese communist soldiers, however, remained in force. Thinking his “friendship” with President Nixon rendered Cambodia invulnerable, Lon Nol resorted to full-scale war; however, the combat-toughened Vietnamese communists, and the Khmer communists, the Khmer Rouge, easily and repeatedly defeated Lon Nol’s army, an army that was suffering from incompetent leaders, lack of resources, desertion, and corruption.

When a ceasefire was negotiated in 1972, Vietnamese troops withdrew from Cambodia but the Khmer Rouge fought on, confident of victory. Exploiting Cambodians’ growing anger over poverty, governmental stupidity, and loss of livelihood and life, the Khmer Rouge expanded their control over two-thirds of Cambodia. Meanwhile, American leaders were determined to continue fighting in Cambodia, in the words of one, “the only game in town” in the struggle against communism (Tyner 2008). For much of 1973, the Khmer countryside was a free fire zone for American aircraft and, having turned the country into a military staging area, America made Cambodia “perhaps” the most bombed country in history (Owen and Kiernan 2006, 63), bombing 113,716 sites between 1965 and 1973 without the knowledge of Khmer leaders or the American Congress, killing thousands of Cambodians, and devastating much of the land (Shawcross 1979). Less than 25 percent of the total area of Cambodia was bombed, but on that land, more than one billion pounds of explosives were dropped during the early 1970s, more than three times the quantities America dropped on Japan in World War II (Etcheson 1984). A refugee wrote of villagers affected by B-52 bombs and chemicals: “Their homes, their villages, their schools, their temples were wiped out by the bombs,” adding, “We’re talking about people whose land has been passed from generation to generation” (Samkhann Khoeun 2003, 152).

The Americans military decreed that temples, temple ruins, and other religious buildings were not to be bombed under any circumstances, but Khmer and American pilots often violated the rules on hearing a building harbored enemy soldiers. One American pilot said Cambodians “had different feelings about pagodas than we did” and did not treat their sanctuaries as Americans do their houses of worship, adding that even their Khmer colleagues thought that, if the “enemy was using a pagoda as a sanctuary, he had to be driven out. If that damaged or destroyed the pagoda, so be it” (Wood 2002, 67−68). In response to the bombing, communist Khmer and Vietnamese troops moved deeper into the interior of Cambodia, disrupting the rural population. In 1972, 35 percent of Cambodia’s citizens were refugees in their own country and, by 1975, Phnom Penh had swelled from half a million occupants to three times that number.

Although American military intervention may have postponed a communist victory in Cambodia, it increased popular support for the Khmer Rouge (Kiernan 1996). Seeing that the war was lost, the American ambassador and staff left Cambodia in April 1975 by helicopter, taking a handful of Cambodians with them and abandoning the rest to their fate. Soon after, the Khmer Rouge took over the country. The war toll in Southeast Asia was enormous. Over 58,000 of the three million American troops who served in Southeast Asia were killed and 300,000 were wounded. In Vietnam, over one and a half million soldiers and two million civilians were killed (Rummel 1998) and, in Cambodia, millions of lives, traditions, and much of the country itself were destroyed.

Khmer Rouge

Immediately after their overthrow of the government, the Khmer Rouge sealed Cambodia off from the world. The full horror of Khmer Rouge rule, what survivors call “the Pol Pot time,” was not clear until they were forced from power in 1979 and Cambodians fled to Thailand and Vietnam. It was soon evident that the Khmer Rouge had changed Cambodia from a pre-industrial society to a country where twentieth century rice farmers and urbanites lived as Southeast Asian foragers had 10,000 years before, scavenging for plants and small animals to eat. As Angkorean kings had done hundreds of years earlier to build their empires, so the Khmer Rouge controlled a multitude of workers to grow crops and build irrigation works for a new utopian society, unconcerned with the human cost of their actions.

On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge evacuated Cambodia’s cities, forcing people into the countryside to live as slaves, cultivating rice and building dikes, irrigation ditches, and reservoirs that never held water and roads that went nowhere. Currency, banking, postal services, schools, and other institutions of life were abolished, and society was literally turned upside down with educated Cambodians obeying illiterate Khmer Rouge soldiers. Starvation was common, and disease and injury went untreated. Estimates of the number of those who died at the hands of the Khmer Rouge continues to be disputed, but the Cambodian Genocide Project of Yale University (2010) estimates that approximately 1.7 million Cambodians perished, 21 percent of the country’s population.

Trying to impose their own organization on people “like a new god” (Picq 1984, 3), the Khmer Rouge broke a religious tradition that had existed intermittently for 2,000 years. Article 20 of the 1976 Constitution of Democratic Kampuchea permitted freedom of religion but banned all reactionary religions “...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 Khmer Buddhism Beliefs
• Chapter 3 Rituals of Khmer Buddhism
• Chapter 4 Non-Buddhist Cambodians
• Chapter 5 Rebuilding Khmer Buddhism
• Chapter 6 Temple Expansion
• Chapter 7 Religious Personnel
• Chapter 8 Temple Organization
• Chapter 9 Beyond the Temple
• Chapter 10 Congregation
• Chapter 11 Temple Contributions
• Chapter 12 Temple Difficulties
• Chapter 13 Additional Difficulties
• Chapter 14 Epilogue
• Appendix Khmer Buddhist Temples in the United States
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover