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January/February
1999
Nonviolence in the Arena: "We take one step at a time. One breath at a time. Keeping mindful of our actions, our minds. With each mindful step, we move closer to peace. This is the process and nothing can stop it... Our journey for peace begins today and every day. The violence we face is indeed why we walk. We shall never be discouraged. We shall walk slowly, slowly, step by step. Each step is a prayer... We shall walk until we have peace."
Such are the words of the great Cambodian apostle of peace, Venerable Maha Ghosananda, who was awarded the Niwano Peace Prize for his tireless efforts to restore an "engaged Buddhism" among Cambodians the world around. During the reign of terror that began with the takeover by the Khmer Rouge, Buddhism was anathema in Cambodia. All but 3,000 of the nation's 62,000 monks disappeared - many of them murdered, many killed through overwork, starvation, and illness. Pagodas were systematically destroyed. Temple property was turned into torture camps, execution sites, and dumps for the corpses of the "killing fields." As a student of a meditation master, Maha was told not to let the sufferings of the Cambodian people disturb his concentration. He sought to obey, but remembers, "I cried for Cambodia every day." Finally he left the hermitage, and in 1978 traveled to the Thai/Cambodian border, where he sought to minister to the horde of refugees fleeing the carnage of the Khmer Rouge. It was then that he became what one of his followers describes as an "engaged Buddhist."
The Army of Peace 's first campaign came in 1992. Maha Ghosananda led a band of monks and others, including some Khmer, on a march that would take them into the hearts of the war-weary people of Cambodia. For four weeks they walked, heading for Battambang, the nation 's second-largest city, and eventually for the capital, Phnom Penh, where they arrived 1,000 strong. They had discovered that they could be a moving zone of peace for villagers who were beset by daily fighting and were ripe for the message of nonviolence.
Fighting for ideological reasons has now been eclipsed in Cambodia by fighting for the power to plunder the rain forests for profit. "Peacemaking is like breathing," Maha Ghosananda explains. "It is like breathing in and breathing out. If you stop breathing, then you will die, so we have to keep trying." He then applies the metaphor of breathing to profligate logging: without trees to keep the environment healthy, there is no air to breathe. As the deforestation marchers passed through each community, Maha Ghosananda ordained a tree. "When we ordained a tree, it became a monk," he explains. "And we told the people, "When you kill the tree, then you kill the monk." We put the yellow robe on the tree so they would see it was a monk." The march also demonstrated concern for the pillaging of the forests - often performed by the villagers for day wages in the service of illegal operators - by ceremonially planting 2,000 new trees. Such actions have convinced more and more people that nonviolence is the human future. "I would like to see training in nonviolence given in the schools, everywhere," he says - a wish devoutly shared by many of the readers of this journal. Dith Pran, the Cambodian reporter whose life was made famous by the Oscar-winning movie The Killing Fields, recalled the dark days immediately after the fall of the Khmer Rouge:
Maha Ghosananda accepts with equanimity the apparent contradiction of being compassionate to people who were formerly among the remorseless oppressors in the Khmer Rouge regime. When he meets someone like Ieng Sary, who was Pol Pot 's second-in-command and trusted confidant, Maha says, "You have to put out more compassion to help them, for they do not know that their actions harm themselves." Discussing such figures of terror as Pol Pot, Maha points out that "At the time of the Buddha also, many people committed the action of killing, but when they came to the Buddha, they gave up this bad action. People can change." Fundamental to Maha's approach to all people is to offer respect. "The dharma of the Buddha asks always that we should try to respect people. We have to think that in a previous life all people are our mother - the whole world is our mother." Put more traditionally, the Buddha nature is in everyone, and buddhahood is there for all who diligently pursue it.
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At
the 1988 peace talks, Maha led a contingent of Buddhist monks representing
the interests of nonviolence during negotiations for peace. There he announced
to the leaders of the four armed factions of his country that he was starting
a fifth army, an army of peace that would use for ammunition "bullets
of loving-kindness." "Hatred can never be appeased by hatred," he argued.
"Hatred can only be appeased by love."
Expanding
on both tactics and objectives, they marched again and again: to pour
oil on the waters of the violent election campaign in 1993; to try to
quell the civil war in 1994; to dramatize the danger of landmines and
other unexploded ordnance in 1995; to show residents of former Khmer Rouge
areas the power of peaceful conviction in 1997; and to protest deforestation
in both 1996 and 1998. 
Our
country was in ruins, famine was everywhere, families were scattered,
loved ones lost, and homes and villages destroyed. We were ill and tired,
and, all too often, despair and depression overcame us. It was Maha Ghosananda
who traveled to Cambodia, to the refugee camps in Thailand, and to Cambodian
communities around the world reminding us that Buddhism was alive in us,
and that we could call upon the sweetness and depth of the tradition.
Ghosananda's quest has been the journey of a hero. He has reminded us
by his own example to take each step slowly, carefully, and in mindfulness,
and to always continue on.