The temple boy’s tale

Temple boy with pet, Wat Sarawan, Phnom Penh

Temple boys occupy one of the lowest rungs on the social ladder, but they can rise to great heights. Hun Sen’s family were very poor, and when he was 13 he was sent to Phnom Penh to become a temple boy at Wat Neakavoan. Today, as everyone knows, he’s the Prime Minister.

Souleang Keosupha is 21 years old and in the first year of a law degree at Build Bright University. Originally from a village in Ratanakiri province, he has two brothers and a sister and is the third in his family. His father is a farmer but his mother passed away in 1997 following the delivery of his youngest sister. The baby survived, but the neighbours were convinced the mother’s death was because an arp* had eaten the afterbirth after they failed to bury it correctly.

Keosupha was 7 years old at the time and in the second grade.  A monk from his village noticed Keosupha studying hard, and took pity on him because he was motherless and his family was extremely poor. Four years later the monk took Keosupha to stay with him at Wat Ounalom in Phnom Penh, where he was registered in Grade 2 at Preah Norodom Primary School, a kilometre from the monastery.

“Unlike other kids who cried when they were away from their family, I did not indulge in self pity but determined to return home a success, with pride.

“Every morning I was woken up at 4am by the monk, who sometimes punished me or sprayed water on me if it took me too long to get up. When you are 11 years old, you know how difficult it is. Later I needed the alarm clock to wake me up, but now it’s a habit to get up early.

“As soon as I got up I started to learn Pali straight away, then my public school homework. All the temple boys were the same. After that we would sweep, clean, water the plants, boil water, cook and prepare the breakfast and serve it. We ate after the monks had eaten, then we took turns washing the dishes. Only then could we go to school.

“After school, we prepared the food that the monks got from begging, then served them lunch and finally we ate. Then we were allowed to take a nap. Sometimes we were taught English by the monks during our spare time, then we prepared our own dinner, using the leftover food from lunchtime.

“During the rainy season we all had to participate in chanting from 8.30 a.m. to 9.00 a.m. We also chanted every time before we had meals. This merit-making was expressing gratitude to the donors for what they gave us to eat.

“The monk supported me with clothes and study materials, using money that people gave him. Sometimes he asked people directly to buy me things.

“My father has remarried now and has other two children. I only visit once a year, at Khmer New Year.

“I am now doing a degree in law. I could have chosen to study technical skills but while these would be useful to me personally, by studying law I will be able to assist my community as whole, as there are innumerable disputes and conflicts in our province, and the villagers there really need my support.

“The monk isn’t able to support me financially, so I pay my own university fees with support from my parents and relatives. Plus, I supplement this with a part-time job as an assistant to a cameraman, and I’m able to earn around $50 a month.

“In the future, I want to be a civil servant in Ratanakiri Province. I want to work as a lawyer or in fields related to the law.

“I will always remember the words of the monk who, despite having so little, helped me to pursue my education up to tertiary level. I owe the monk and my family so much. I have to go back and help my village.”

*Arp: vampire that preys on pregnant women.

Temple boys in the grounds of Wat Ounalom, Phnom Penh

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Spirit Worlds, a study of Cambodian belief and society – due out October 2015.

The first nun’s tale

A nun (daun chi) presents food to a monk. Photo by Nick Shippen, travel writer and photographer – part of a photo-essay on nuns and their relationship to the monkhood in the context of Angkor and the tourist industry.

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Women who wish to follow the Way face a major obstacle: there are no nuns in Theravada Buddhism. I’ve called them nuns for convenience, but ordination in Theravada has to be part of chain stretching back to Buddha, and the chain for nuns died out long ago. Women may, however, become helpers to the monks and follow the eight precepts rather than the ten. These women are called yeay chi or daun chi – yeay and daun are both terms of respect for an older woman, with daun chi being more formal.

Chan Sopheap started living in Wat Phnom Orderk (“Turtle Mountain Monastery”) in Battambang province when she was not yet twenty years old. This was in the time of Lon Nol, who overthrew king Sihanouk in 1970. Not many years later the Khmer Rouge took control and sent her to a labour camp. After the Khmer Rouge were driven out she returned to the monastery in Battambang and lived there until she met the man who was to become her husband, a former monk who had been forced out of the Sangha by Lon Nol. (Lon Nol, concerned that too many potential soldiers were escaping conscription by putting on the robe, had decreed that no one under fifty could be a monk).

For the next twenty-five years Sopheap lived with her husband and children in Battambang and later in Siem Reap. About 2006 or 2007 she became very ill, and her husband agreed that she should return to Wat Phnom Orderk, where their second son was a monk. “By serving the monks as a daun chi I would build up kamma to overcome my illness.”

So she went back to Turtle Mountain, serving the monks and studying the Way, until her daughter asked if she would come with her to Phnom Penh where she wanted to do a ten-month course at the National Institute of Education. Naturally she agreed, as she could not send the girl to the city alone. She originally intended to take a room for the ten months, but rents in the capital proved too expensive and so, with the help of the abbot of Turtle Mountain, she obtained permission from the abbot of Wat Lanka to stay in this, one of the most prestigious monasteries in the capital.

I asked Sophea about the spirits, as I was curious to know what an intelligent and learned woman would have to say about the spirit world.

“Boramey and neak ta are not part of Buddhism (preah put sassana). These things don’t exist. Spirits come from Brahmanism (prumman sassana), which is all about the unseen. Brahmanism is about magic. I know of some people who came and asked a monk to sprinkle their new motorbike with holy water for good luck. That same day they were killed in an accident on the way home. Who can believe this? No pure monk will do this thing with magic water. Buddhism is about good and bad deeds. Your lot in this life reflects your deeds in your previous life. Everything that happens to you is due to the karma that you’ve built up in your previous life and this one.”

Sophea will return to Battambang when her daughter’s course is finished. The daughter will probably stay on in Phnom Penh as a teacher, and after a few years will apply for a scholarship to study for a Masters degree in English in Australia.

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From Spirit Worlds, an investigation of religion and belief in modern Cambodia – due out in October.

The first monk’s tale (Wat Preah Yu Vong)

Wat Preah Yu Vong is one of my favourite monasteries in Phnom Penh, not least because it’s utterly atypical. The main gate is on Norodom Boulevard south of Independence Monument. The gate is never closed, and indeed can’t be closed, because only the decorated arch remains. It gives on to what looks like, and is, a network of narrow residential alleys. I’m told the alleys are unsafe, the haunt of drug addicts and petty criminals, but it looks peaceful enough at mid-morning, a time when evil-doers are still in bed.

Once upon a time Wat Preah Yu Vong was just like any other monastery, neither particularly famous nor particularly obscure, housing the normal number of monks in the normal complement of buildings. Everyone, monks and nuns and temple boys and cats, lived happily together until fall of Phnom Penh to the Khmer Rouge on April 17, 1975. The Khmer Rouge were the enemies of religion, and the monks of Wat Preah Yu Vong, like all others, were disrobed and sent to labour camps, where no doubt most of them died.

Phnom Penh fell again, this time to the Vietnamese and renegade ex-Khmer Rouge, on 7 January 1979, a date that continues to be celebrated as Victory Day. Traumatised Cambodians began making their way back to the city, searching for lost families and lost homes or simply for food. The first to arrive squatted in whatever houses they could find; if the true owners returned later they could either fight for their rights or just move on. Mostly they moved on. People began living in parks, along the river, and wherever else they could find a place and build a home from sheets of tin and plastic. One of these was places was the abandoned Wat Preah Yu Vong.

A former nun named Koma Pich made her home in the preah vihear. Koma Pich was the chul rup (human vehicle) for a boramey spirit, or in other words, a shaman. She installed her gods (meaning their statues) in the preah vihear and offered help and advice to anyone in need, which in those days was practically everyone. Her performance as a shaman was electrifying, and so great was the respect in which she was held, and so entrenched her position, that when monks returned to the wat they were unable to expel her. The vihear was simply divided in half, the monks on one side and Koma Pich on the other.

At first the government placed severe restrictions on the monks, not even allowing them to leave the monastery for the daily alms round, but time and the political tide were on their side. By the late 1980s religion was being viewed with official favour again, and the head monk asked the authorities to give back the temple. The authorities agreed, and Koma Pich packed her gods and vanished from history.

With the vihear back in their hands the monks installed new Buddha images (the originals had disappeared, nobody knew when or where) and painted scenes from the life of Buddha on the walls so that it became a proper temple again. But the grounds remained overrun with squatters. They’d subdivided the monastic buildings and built them into their houses, turned the paths into alleys, planted gardens and set up teashops, and generally transformed Preah Yu Vong into an urban village. Even the chedey, the shrines for the ashes of the dead, had disappeared inside people’s living rooms, ghosts or no ghosts. The monks tried to buy up the houses, but the price of real estate had started to rocket, the monks were poor, and nobody wanted to sell.

And that’s where things remain today, a single ornate roof sheltering a handful of monks floating over a sea of quite solid little houses.

Wat Preah Yu Vong now has just nine monks, a very small number for a monastery in Phnom Penh, and its history was told to me by one of them, Thach Panith. As his mixed Vietnamese-Khmer name indicates, he’s Kampuchea Krom, meaning an ethnic Khmer from southern Vietnam, although his parents settled in Cambodia long ago. They placed him in a village monastery as a temple boy when he was very young because they couldn’t afford to feed and educate him, and he liked the monastic life and became a novice at the age of 15. Eventually he became a full monk, graduated from Buddhist high school, and moved to the capital and Wat Preah Yu Vong. He’s now studying archaeology at the Royal University of Fine Arts. He enjoys the subject and wants to study more and use his knowledge to benefit society.

When he gets sick he prays to Preah Put (the Buddha) and to his dead parents. Belief in spirits and the ancestors, he says, predates Buddhism, and the people can’t forget them. For this reason he doesn’t criticise people who follow different religions or who believe in spirits, and he can’t say these people are bad or wrong, because he’s met people who say they’ve seen the mrieng kongveal and the chumneang pteah, although he never has himself, and he thinks they spoke the truth for them. He enjoys the life of a monk, the prayer and study and meditation, and has no thought of leaving the monkhood.

Pralung Pheakdey (“Spirit of Honesty”) is different. He’s 23, and he’s been a monk for six years. An orphan of sorts, he was brought up by his grandmother in a village in Kandal province and entered the monkhood because he wanted to earn merit for his lost mother, and also because a kru told him that his mother would come back if he became a monk.

His mother disappeared when he was eight years old. He can’t remember her, but people in the village have told him she might have gone to Thailand to look for work. He can’t remember her face. His father divorced his mother about the time he was born. He knows his father but has never spoken to him and doesn’t want to. His father, he says, was irresponsible, gave him life and then abandoned him. He’s not certain if will be a monk forever, because he doesn’t like public speaking, and monks have to do a lot of public speaking, such as giving sermons.

One final point about the urban village of Wat Preah Yu Vong: it’s northern edge runs along street 308, which is rapidly becoming hipster central for a certain segment of the expat community. One of the best pizza places in town is there, and an entire alley off 308 and within the Preah Yu Vong village is now lined with extremely stylish bars. Real estate values here really should rocket, but they can’t because nobody has valid land titles – they’re all squatters.

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From Spirit Worlds, out in August at a bookshop near you, provided you live in Cambodia. If you can’t wait to hear more about monks, you can sneak a preview look at the Second Monk’s Tale and the Third Monk’s Tale.

 

The second monk’s tale

(Extract from Spirit Worlds, my forthcoming investigation of Cambodian religion and belief, due out in October. This section describes the daily life of a monk).

Sothear is 27 and a native of Prey Veng province. He entered the Sangha when he was 14 because his family were very poor and could not afford an education for him. After graduating from Grade 12 (final High School) he moved to Phnom Penh and now lives at Wat Tuol Tom Poung near the Russian Market. This is how he spends his day:

The day begins at four in the morning when the drum wakes everyone for morning prayers. After that he studies or prepares for the day, and at around six he has a breakfast of rice-soup, eggs, and dried fish prepared by a daun chi. He takes this alone or with the monks who share his living quarters.

[NOTE: daun chi, or yeay chi, are the elderly ladies who live in monasteries – they wear black trousers and white shirts, shave their heads, and are not, despite common belief among Westerners, nuns.]

At around eight he goes out on his alms round. He visits shops and houses around Psar Toul Tom Poung (Russian Market), collecting donations – these are usually instant noodles, cooked rice, and cash, and he has no control over what is offered.

He gets back to the monastery by around 10 or 10.30 because he has to eat by noon. When he first became a monk he found this the most difficult part of the life (“often I starved, and I ate a lot of sweets and drank coffee and soft drink to stop the hunger”), but eventually he grew accustomed to it. He prepares his own lunch, usually rice, noodles, vegetables and fruit, and perhaps some chicken or beef or pork purchased for him by the temple boys, using whatever was donated that morning, although the monks in the dormitory share what they’ve gathered.

Cleaning is usually done by a daun chi, but if no daun chi is available he does this himself after his lunch. He takes a nap, then does some reading to prepare for his classes at Build Bright University, where he’s studying IT, because his ambition is to work as a database administrator for an NGO or private company. Most of the cash he collects goes towards his university fees and travel to and from classes, although some is given to the temple boys to buy chicken or fish and essentials such as salt and cooking oil.

Photo by John Einar Sandvand

It was difficult to find a monastery when he first came to live in the city, because so many monks from the provinces want to come to Phnom Penh to study. The country monasteries have few monks, but the city monasteries are crowded. Wat Toul Tom Poung has three hundred monks, and the biggest, like Wat Ounalaom, Wat Mahamontrei, and Wat Botum, have a thousand or more. Nevertheless he considers himself lucky, because he doesn’t have to pay for his electricity and water and food as monks in some other monasteries in the city do.

And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach…

“Buddhist monk Han Kimsoy teaches students–mostly orphans and other vulnerable children, many of them infected or affected by HIV and AIDS–in a school in the Beungkak neighborhood of Phnom Penh which is run by the Salvation Centre Cambodia, an organization that works with Buddhist monks and other activists to do education and advocacy and care for people infected or affected by HIV and AIDS.”

Photo by Paul Jeffrey, and please visit the website.

Sothear learned Pali and the usual chants in his village monastery in Prey Veng. This knowledge is essential, because he gathers with the other monks in the preah vihear on the holy days each month and on major festivals to recite chants. He also understands meditation, but only practices it on holy days.

Photo by John Einar Sandvand

Spirit-flags

Cambodian spirit-flags have long fascinated me. Their functions are pretty clear – they’re to signal that something is going on, a festival or funeral or whatever. Aesthetically they’re genuine art, elegant and original. Their origins and symbolism, however, are totally obscure. This post is a summary of the best article I could find on the ‘net, a guest post by Dr Rebecca Hall on the blog Alison in Cambodia. The photos are also hers – I’ve not had much luck photographing banners, they tend to blow in the wind and they’re a long thin shape that doesn’t fit easily in a normal 2:3 photo.

The Khmer word for a flag or banner is tung, and the commonest type is the tung rolok. These are the ones you see in the grounds of monasteries, usually outside the main prayer hall (the preah vihear). I’ve been told that they should always go behind the hall, never in front of it – but in Phnom Penh they’re always in front of it, never behind. The friend who told me this was quite shocked.

The tung rolok announces a festival or celebration. As the photo shows, they’re huge. The number of bamboo rods through the body indicates who’s being honoured – father, mother, monks, Buddha, the teaching, etc.

Note the overall structure of the flag: a triangular “head,” a body, and two “feet” at the bottom. Note also the dark patch of cloth at the crotch, where the genitalia would be if this were what it looks like, a humanoid figure. Note also the little triangular pennons off the main body.

Next is the tung sasana, the “religion flag”. The idea of a flag for Buddhism came from an international conference in Sri Lanka in the early 1950s, and all Theravadin countries have adopted it. The colours stand for the multi-coloured rays of light that broke forth from the Buddha at the moment of his enlightenment, illuminating the entire world. They symbolise the various attributes of the Buddha; there were five rays each of a pure colour, and one of the other five mingled.

So this banner is comparatively new, but it’s become completely acculturated and is frequently seen around monasteries – and unfortunately I have no idea exactly what it’s function is.

Finally we come to the most interesting banner. Dr Hall’s informants, who were mostly abbots and achars (achars are the monastery’s experts in ritual) all told her they were called tung aphithoam. I gather that aphithoam is the Khmer pronunciation of abhidamma, which is Buddhist metaphysics. Dr Hall had been expecting to hear them called tung krapeu, meaning crocodile banner, but the abbots and achars never did. Her translators called them crocodiles, but not the experts.

Here’s the tung aphithoam/tung krapeu. It looks very like the tung rolok, but it’s always white. It’s a death-banner. It’s hung outside a house where someone has recently died, and stays up for 3 to seven days, both being significant periods in the life of the new ghost.

And their function…  Dr Hall’s informants told her it’s to tell people there’s a death and funeral. The cremation takes place at the end of the seven days, with a big funeral feast.

I wonder though. In these seven days between death and cremation the ghost stays around the house, not yet aware that it’s dead. It’s invited into a new “house” (the coffin), and the word “coffin” must never be mentioned lest it be frightened. In other words, the seven days immediately after death is an extremely risky period for the ghost, and so I wonder if the flags have something to do with it – but I don’t know for sure.

And what about the crocodile? The reason Dr Hall was expecting to be told that this is a crocodile flag is that that’s the way it’s described in the scholarly Western literature. One very famous study links the crocodile to the naga, and suggests that the original earth-spirit of the Khmers, before nagas arrived from India, was the crocodile. Crocodile and naga and Preah Torani the earth-goddess all tie together, somehow, though it’s not for me to say just how. But for sure, earth-gods combine the functions of death and fertility (those patches on the groin of the tung rolok), and when I was walking around the monasteries of Phnom Penh with my friend, the one who was shocked to find banners at the front of the prayer halls, everyone we spoke to called them crocodile flags. And those little triangular pennons make the “body” look very crocodilian to my mind, though I’ve never seen them discussed.

There’s a story. Once upon a legendary time there was a monk who transformed himself into a crocodile and swallowed a princess. Bad croc. The king sent his army to rescue the princess, but alas, when they cut open the belly of the beast they were too late, and beauty was dead. So they skinned the crocodile and hung its hide up at her funeral.

That particular story ties in with ritual human sacrifice traditions (it has to do with the pagoda where the princess’s funeral was held, and a requirement for sacrificial virgins), but this post is long enough already.