BY Caitlyn Emmett, Columbia Missourian, March 29, 2010

HALLSVILLE, MO (USA) -- A haze of sunlight streams in through the trailer temple’s window, illuminating the peaceful quiet that envelops Mey Savann as he begins to close his eyes and chant.

Savann is a Cambodian Buddhist monk and the spiritual leader at the Wat Angkor Cambodian Buddhist Temple in Hallsville. He is the only Cambodian Buddhist monk who lives and practices in Missouri.

Savann immigrated to the United States from Cambodia in 2001. In October 2005, he moved to Hallsville to become the spiritual leader for the Cambodian community in mid-Missouri.

“The reason I like to reside here in Hallsville is because of spreading the religion of Buddhism, which is my main object," Savann, who only speaks Cambodian, said through a translator. "I moved from California [to Missouri] because there was no Buddhist monk who resides here.”

As a Cambodian Buddhist monk, Savann’s day-to-day activities include five main things: searching for donations, meditation, thinking about the life of Buddha, trying to figure out the life beyond ours and trying to understand what the future will hold.

Savann said he became a Buddhist in 1980 when he was just 18-years-old. He said he became a monk because “to become a monk is to represent the culture, the tradition, of the Cambodian family.”

According to Buddhist tradition, monks rely on lay people to provide them with their basic needs.

“In our community, we have maybe more than 300 or 400, but it’s throughout the state – it’s not just from Columbia," said member Phillip Path. "We have people from St. Louis, Kansas City, and other surrounding areas from here, and it’s not just Cambodian, we have many other nationalities too that become Buddhist members."

Different families within the local Cambodian community provide Savann with food on different days. “Sometimes I like all the food, but sometimes I have to watch for my health too, and so some food I cannot eat as much of,” Savann said.

Being surrounded by community is a comfort to Savann. He said he feels that being the only monk and living alone can become a bit lonely sometimes. Savann does not like to focus on the future and instead pays attention to the present, but he said he hopes that someday another monk may join him and help in his work.
 

Theravada Buddhism is the religion of virtually all of the ethnic Khmer, who constitute about 90 percent or more of the Cambodian population. Buddhism originated in what are now north India and Nepal during the sixth century B.C. It was founded by a Sakya prince, Siddhartha Gautama (563-483 B.C.; his traditional dates are 623-543 B.C., also called the Gautama Buddha), who, at the age of twenty-nine, after witnessing old age, sickness, death, and meditation, renounced his high status and left his wife and infant son for a life of asceticism. After years of seeking truth, he is said to have attained enlightenment while sitting alone under a bo tree. He became the Buddha--"the enlightened"--and formed an order of monks, the sangha, and later an order of nuns. He spent the remainder of his life as a wandering preacher, dying at the age of eighty.

Buddhism began as a reaction to Hindu doctrines and as an effort to reform them. Nevertheless, the two faiths share many basic assumptions. Both view the universe and all life therein as parts of a cycle of eternal flux. In each religion, the present life of an individual is a phase in an endless chain of events. Life and death are merely alternate aspects of individual existence marked by the transition points of birth and death. An individual is thus continually reborn, perhaps in human form, perhaps in some non-human form, depending upon his or her actions in the previous life. The endless cycle of rebirth is known as samsara (wheel of life). Theravada Buddhism is a tolerant, non prescriptive religion that does not require belief in a supreme being. Its precepts require that each individual take full responsibility for his own actions and omissions. Buddhism is based on three concepts: dharma (the doctrine of the Buddha, his guide to right actions and belief); karma (the belief that one's life now and in future lives depends upon one's own deeds and misdeeds and that as an individual one is responsible for, and rewarded on the basis of, the sum total of one's acts and omissions in all one's incarnations past and present); and sangha (see Glossary), the ascetic community within which man can improve his karma.

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AsiaRooms.com can announce that anyone staying in accommodation in Siem Reap at the end of May will find that there are festivities taking place for one of the region’s most famous faces. May 28th will be a day of processions and festivities as Cambodia’s Buddhists mark the birth, enlightenment and death of Buddha. Known as Vesak Day, the celebrations take place in temples across south-east Asia, with countries such as Thailand and Malaysia also marking the event. Anyone who wants to witness some of the religious ceremonies taking place is advised to visit one of the many Buddhist temples located around Siem Reap. Travellers can spend the morning listening to sermons from monks or can sit back and take in the meditation sessions and chanting that usually take place. Monks dressed in orange or saffron robes will lead candlelit processions in the evening, which wind their way along Siem Reap’s streets. There is no charge to observe any of the day’s activities and tourists are even invited to take part in certain rituals throughout the festivities. One of the ways in which to pay your respects to Buddha is to participate in a ceremony of the circumambulation of a stupa three times, which is said to also be a sign of respect for Dhamma and Sangha, Urbandharma.org reveals. Posted by Charlotte Springer