This year’s Pchum Ben observance in Phnom Penh had a new twist: All 86 pagodas in the city have been ordered to share with poor AIDS patients the food and gifts they receive from worshipers during the festival.
The directive, made recently by head municipal monk Non Nget, means that all of the ritual offerings collected—including special cakes prepared only on Pchum Ben—will be distributed to hospitals and squatter camps this week, according to Sem Sarin, abbot of Daun Penh district’s Wat Botum and Non Nget’s deputy.
“It’s an obligation for monks to take care of their parishioners when they are in trouble. A pagoda and its parish need to cooperate and take care of each other,” he said Sunday.
Sem Sarin said that when monks visited AIDS patients, they would offer them “all our dharma”—Buddhist teachings and blessings—“to mentally encourage the patient.”
The donations mark the first time religious leaders have rallied all Phnom Penh pagodas behind a collective cause, he said.
The idea was the brainchild of the Salvation Center Cambodia, a local Buddhist advocacy group that has been working with HIV/AIDS victims since 1994.
Food and gifts such as clothes, money, noodles and cakes have been collected from pagodas and stocked at Wat Botum.
The amount of the offerings surprised Salvation Center Cambodia Director Prum Thoeun. But he noted that monks remain influential and respected in Cambodia.
Prum Thoeun said that despite a “still poor” level of participation, religious leaders are becoming more aware of the spread of the deadly disease. He said monks’ involvement in HIV/AIDS programs has increased markedly in the last year.
While a few religious leaders think monks—who are supposed to be chaste and above worldly desires—should not involve themselves with an issue embedded in passion and sex, they have not interfered with the program. However, the center has been rebuked a few times over the years, Prum Thoeun said.
The organization has trained 20 monks to be HIV/AIDS educators, and 20 more are now being trained.
At a recent seminar, Chhorn Eam, a secretary of state in the Ministry of Cults and Religion, told monks and nuns that unconditional compassion was their duty.
He told a story about the Buddha taking care of a monk who had been abandoned by his fellow monks because he was ill and ugly. The Buddha treated the monk and washed his bloody clothes.
“Even our Buddha long ago helped patients,” Chhorn Eam said. “Why don’t modern monks follow this example?”
Etienne Poirot, HIV/AIDS program officer for the UN Children’s Fund, which is funding the monks’ training program, said the Cambodian clergy could be “very important to contribute to the building up of a strong and healthy community.”
The 15-day observance of Pchum Ben ended Sunday morning, with flocks of Buddhists bringing food and gifts to pagodas to feed hungry dead ancestors. In recent years, the centuries-old holiday has acquired a modern significance: A day of remembrance for the victims of the Khmer Rouge.
At Wat Kokos, a Takeo province pagoda once used as a Khmer Rouge torture center, hundreds of followers brought offerings and prayers for the relatives and loved ones they lost to the Pol Pot regime.
Bun Myna, 47, her hands full of rice and cakes, said she hoped the offerings would nourish her older brother, who was tortured to death by the Khmer Rouge at Wat Kokos.
At Phnom Penh’s Wat Svay Pope, opposite the Russian Embassy, some recalled that a stupa there had been built by former Khmer Rouge leader Ieng Sary—Brother No 3 in the Khmer Rouge regime which banned pagodas and religious practice.
“It’s ironic that Ieng Sary built a stupa here. He was a really bad religious traitor, but he practices Buddhism now,” pagoda-goer Sann Nimol said.
