“DON’T GET INVOLVED WITH POLITICS” – So they tell us!

Op-Ed by CHN
During July and August of this year, I had a chance to travel across the United States and Canada to do a research on how Cambodian communities practice Buddhism and why most of the Cambodian temples in North America forbid the holding of events that relate to “Politics”. I am sharing below what I found out during my journey. I am fully aware that this article may anger some of the temple leaders who forbid holding “Political” events in their temples. Nevertheless, if they are angry with what I write here, it really means that what I found is indeed the truth.

Before talking about temples abroad, I would like to briefly mention about how Buddhism is practiced and controlled in Cambodia. As you may already know, Buddhist monk leaders in Cambodia always claim that they do not get involved with “Politics” while most of them are members of Cambodian People Party (CPP) and they always vote for the CPP during election time. They not only just vote for the CPP, they even use their power to threaten Abbots at all temples in Cambodia to vote for the CPP. For Abbots who are not CPP members, the monk leaders will use dirty tactics to accuse/threaten them so they can take remove that Abbot from power and replace him with another one of their allegiance. Also, when a temple has an Abbot who is a CPP member, then most of the monks residing in that temple are also CPPP members, otherwise, they will have a hard time living in that temple. This is how the CPP controls religion in Cambodia.

Now, the question that we should ask is whether monks in Cambodia get involved with Politics or not? Publicly, they all will say “No” because they never do anything to oppose the Cambodian government controlled by the CPP. This is why all the monk leaders in Cambodia always forbid other monks from being involved with Politics because they are scared that other monks will join parties that oppose the CPP. There are some courageous monks who join political parties other that the CPP, however, their numbers are very small.

In Cambodia, every year, you may hear that there are more temples being built than schools. Why? Because powerful officials behind the Cambodian government want to see it that way, they don’t want to see Cambodian people educated, they purposely tell Cambodians to live a peaceful life so that when they die, they can go to Heaven. Therefore, in order to go to Heaven, they have to build even more temples and they should not care too much about what is going on with their country (corruption, land confiscation, illegal Vietnamese immigrants in Cambodia, joblessness, poverty, etc…). Furthermore, when people build the new temples, it costs them a lot of money and the majority of the materials used to build these temples are not even made in Cambodia.

In fact, these building materials are imported mostly from Vietnam and Thailand. So who benefits from building a new temple? Of course, NOT the Cambodians, they are those countries that have strong connection with the powerful Cambodian leaders, and these countries sell these building materials to Cambodians.If you visit Thailand or other countries that practice Theravada Buddhism like us, you will see how the people in these countries respect their monks. The monk leaders in those countries are well-educated. Most of them have PhD and they can even speak English fluently. For the monk leaders in Cambodia, every time they speak to the public, they never forget to remind to the Cambodian people about the “January 7” victory in which Vietnam helped Cambodia, rather than telling the people that is was a date when Vietnam invaded Cambodia. It is really sad to see how our religion is being led by those uneducated monks. I had also heard disgusting stories about monks who had to pay bribes to Tep Vong or Non Nget, the Cambodian Supreme Buddhist Patiarch and Patriarch, respectively, to get their signatures allowing them to travel abroad. Corruption is even taking place inside Cambodia’s religion.

Suffice it to say that Buddhism in Cambodia is controlled by uneducated and corrupted monks. Let’s now turn to see how the Cambodian temples are organized abroad. Most of the temples abroad are commonly started from a small house. The temple is run as a non-profit organization that has a board to control that temple. Thus, most of the monks do not have power in their temples. They basically just conduct religious services, eat, and sleep. Some temples even tactically forbid the monks to drive so they cannot go to school. They are scared that, when monks can speak English, they will demand for their rights to lead the temple because, after all, the temple is where the monks live, not the temple leaders. The monks are the ones who provide religious services and directly conduct the fundraising to pay for the temple’s mortgage. Every so often, you will hear stories about the temple leaders swindling the temple’s money and some of them even had to face the court because of their abuse of power in the control of monks and in the control the temple’s finance.

When these temple leaders sponsor monks from Cambodia to conduct religious services at their temples, rather than sponsoring monks who are educated, they mainly sponsor those who are related to them in some fashion or another instead, even if these monks merely know basic religious chanting and have very limited knowledge about religion. Most of the Cambodian monks abroad don’t even know how to teach basic Meditation because they cannot even perform meditation themselves. There are many well-educated monks in Cambodia who have completed their studies in Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka, India, but they are not sponsored to conduct religious services for Cambodian communities abroad because those monks do not have connection with the temple leaders abroad.In fact, the CPP maintains its agents abroad.

These agents are ordered to make the round of Cambodian communities and they tacitly tell Cambodians not to be involved with politics because they know that when Cambodians living abroad are involved with politics, of course, they will oppose the ruling CPP party.

Buddhist temples have a profound meaning in our Cambodian’s culture: most of our community activities revolve around the temple. Thus, CPP agents are very scared when Cambodians use temples to hold events to discuss how Cambodians living in Cambodia fare – events that these CPP agents label as “Politics,” never mind the fact that these events are merely held to discuss about Human Rights issues or to hold a Candle Light Vigil to pray for an activist unfairly imprisoned in Cambodia.

Moreover, some of the monks, who were originally sponsored to come as religious workers and, later on, they obtain the rights to live abroad permanently, used to be CPP members. Thus, for these CPP-monks, they will always try to preach the “don’t use temples for politics” mantra. Should you meet such monks, please do a research on their background, because, almost 90% of them would have ties with the corrupt monk leaders in Cambodia. While I was visiting California, one of the monks I met was always against using his temple to host any events that are viewed as opposing the current Cambodian government because he said that he does not want to use his temple for politics. Later on, when I met him at a Buddhist event in Cambodia, I was very surprised to find out that, in fact, this Californian monk maintains a very good relationship with Tep Vong and Non Nget.

If the temples abroad are not used for hosting events related to “Politics” – as the CPP agents label them – who will benefit from them?

By now, you should be able to answer this question by yourself: of course, the CPP will benefit from them. Thus, when you see a temple that is not allowing the holding of any political events, then that temple is directly or indirectly supporting the corrupt Cambodian government led by CPP.

Below are my two-cent suggestions on how to improve our Cambodian communities practice our religion abroad:

1.The temple can have a board of directors to help take care of the temple, but that temple must be led by the Monks. The monks should have full rights to decide what to do to improve, maintain the temple, and handle all the financial issues. I saw some temples have more than 10 members in their board of directors just like running a company, but monks are merely puppets in their temple.

2.Monks must be allowed to drive so they can go to school. Monks must go to school to obtain an education, or at least, so they can speak English enough to handle their own temple.
Furthermore, when they can speak English, they can also spread our Cambodian religious practice to other foreigners as well. The monks cannot afford to just chant prayers, sleep and eat. Because of the reasons cited above, for some of the monks, once they obtain their permanent residency status, they would defrock, leave religion and move on with their life simply because they don’t want to be controlled by a helluva board of temple directors.

3.Monks who are sponsored abroad must at least complete a university degree in Cambodia or in another Asian country, such as Thailand, Burma, Sri Lanka or India. Sponsored monks must NOT have family ties or relationship with members of the temple board of directors or other monks in that temple. This condition would provide a fair chance to smart monks who are capable of conducting religious services to come over even if they do not have connections with temples abroad.

4.Temples should be a place to teach about culture, religion, language to the younger Cambodian generations. Some temples are scared to allow the involvement of young Cambodian members because they are afraid that these young Cambodians would learn their dirty tricks. Just imagine this: if Cambodians abroad control monks and temples as they do now, within the next decade or so, we will not see a single young Cambodian frequenting temples abroad any longer.

5.Temples should be allowed to host any events that relate to issues of concerns by the Cambodian communities, and it should even allow politicians to come and talk about political issues that are of interest to its Cambodian members.

Of course, there are many Cambodian temples that have done a great job in the United States and Canada. Some temples now even have the Dharma Hall just like in Cambodia. Following my trip across North America, I came up with the following conclusion which, if not 100% true, is at least 90% true: “If you frequent a temple some time back, and you now return to this same temple 10 or 20 years later and it still remains the same, you can tell that the monks in that temple are just being treated as puppets by a bunch of temple board of directors.” The same also goes to temples that have not been upgraded or do not open up to people’s involvement to create more activities to serve our Cambodian communities.