Word: kampuchea
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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...
...bowls have been replaced by plastic ones, bought on the black market.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...
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...
...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...
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...