Samdech Preah Maha Ghosananda( 1929-2007)

       Samdech Preah Maha Ghosananda (1929 – March 12, 2007) was a highly revered Cambodian Buddhist monk in the Theravada tradition, who served as the Patriarch (Sangharaja) of Cambodian Buddhism during the Khmer Rouge period and post-communist transition period of Cambodian history. His Pali monastic name, ‘Maha Ghosananda’, means “great joyful proclaimer”.

He did not believe this could be done through grand temples or enclosed institutions. Certainly he could have gone that way. Like many others he had been a dek wat, a “temple kid”, washing the monks’ dishes and carrying their alms-bowls. Unlike others, he became a monk and remained one, getting all his education in temples and eventually gaining a doctorate in Pali, the scriptural language of Theravada Buddhism. He was a polymath and an intellectual. Yet he could not stay out of the world. Rather than devoting himself to monastic scholarship, he built hut-temples in the refugee camps and handed out dog-eared photocopies of the Buddha’s Metta Sutta, or Words of Love:

                                   With a boundless heart
                                   Should one cherish all living beings:
                                    Radiating love over the entire world
                                    Spreading upwards to the skies,
                                    And downwards to the depths…

On his walks his message remained the same. It needed no complication. The work, he knew, would be slow: “step by step”, as he liked to say. It would continue as long as Cambodians felt divided from each other and brutalised by their past.

After 1980 he was made much of. He represented the Cambodian government-in-exile at the United Nations, and was influential in the peace talks; in 1988, he was made Supreme Patriarch of Cambodia. Several times he was nominated for the Nobel peace prize. He founded more than 50 temples across the world. Some he spoke at; but his first priority lay elsewhere. It was to appear, birdlike, out of the Cambodian forest, to surprise a man digging or a woman washing; to remind them that the power of love was stronger than the forces of history; and then to move on.

                                      For the pure-hearted one
                                      Having clarity of vision,
                                      Being freed from all sense desires,
                                      Is not born again into this world.

                                               

           I’d like to express my deeply respect to the spirit of Samdech Preah Maha Ghosananda. He helps to pave my way and builds the firm confidence in my thought. I’m walking step by step with my strong hope and confidence to my dreams with his advices. I understand, Now there are still important challenges facing Cambodia- poverty, corruption, a narrow political base concerned with making money rather than providing service. Yet thanks to people of compassion such as Samdech Preah Maha Ghosananda, as he would say,” listen carefully, peace is growing in Cambodia, slowly, step by step.”

By: Heng Krishna