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PROVIDENCE — Nestled between the tenements of the capital’s West End, sounds of chanting came from a building ensconced behind a red and white fence, crowned with a representation of Angkor Wat and dozens of red, saffron, white, and blue flags greeting visitors as they passed through the gate over the weekend.
Once inside Wat Thormikaram of Rhode Island, volunteers worked hard preparing food for the saffron-robed monks as other congregants brought food to be blessed by the clergy before an older man stood before the temple’s centerpiece, a statue of Siddhartha Gautama, adorned by lights, plants, and other colorful elements.
“Let us all turn and pray to the Buddha,” he said in Khmer, before leading the celebrants in group prayers.
The temple — the oldest ethnically Cambodian one in the U.S — was a hive of activity to celebrate one of the holiest times of the year for Cambodians, Pchum Ben.
In Khmer, ‘pchum’ means to gather while ‘ben’ is a reference to rice balls — roughly translating to food collection.
During the 15-day festival, it is believed that the gates of Hell are thrown open and the pret — ghosts — from there wander the Earth, the only time they can, searching for food.
Families do not know whether their dead ancestors entered Heaven — whose spirits can come to Earth at any time — or Hell so it is important that people take advantage of this time to placate them with offerings of food.
Thormikaram’s president, Panha Sum, said that while some spirits can receive food that is eaten by the monks, others can only eat dirty food, resulting in a Cambodian tradition where people will throw rice balls for the spirits in the hope that they will become dirty once they hit dirt.
“At temples in Cambodia they throw them everywhere and it gets dirty,” Sum said. “If they throw it everywhere over here it gets the temple so dirty.”
Instead, the Wat puts out bowls in which people place rice as offerings to the dead to avert the hygiene issue.
Sum said that a second focus of the festival is on the merit of a living person; which is another reason that people bring food to the temple.
Buddhist clerics, a class called the Singha, do not take a vow of poverty in the same way Catholic priests do; yet as part of their acceptance into the clergy, they promise to not handle money so as to avoid worldly temptation and thus hope to reach enlightenment.
“Now the festival is only 15 days,” Sum said. “But in ancient times, it would last the whole three-month rainy season so people would bring food to the monks so they would not be forced to break their vows to survive and they would hope to gain merit for heaven.”
Kim Heng came to the U.S. 41 years ago, after escaping the country that was still under the control of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime that killed 3 million in a genocide aimed at bringing the country back to “Year 0” to start society anew.
“Pol Pot stopped the celebration,” Heng said.
During the genocide, almost 2,000 of the country’s 4,000 temples were destroyed along with 25,000 of the country’s 66,000 monks.
With that in mind, the third aspect of the celebration is of particular import for her, solidarity.
“This is good for the community,” Heng said. “And most of my life, I celebrated it.”
The communal aspect, according to Sum, came from the 19th century Khmer King Ang Duong (pronounced Ahn Zuong) who played Vietnamese, Siamese (now Thai) and French interests against each other to liberate the country from Siamese and Vietnamese occupation.
“He was a clever king and a smart king,” Sum said. “He began to think about how he could bring people together and teach them to fight for their country.
“So he decided to use Pchum Ben as a way to sit down and talk to people about the economy and politics.”
The holiday’s focus on solidarity is not lost on young native Cambodians, such as Kimmor Oeng, a high school student in Providence who came to the U.S. to further his studies.
“In Cambodia, all of the temples are filled every day and there are a lot of old and young people,” he said. “I miss my home and coming to the temple I feel happy because I can come and hear so much Khmer. I feel like it is Cambodia.
“Here, it is mostly old people who I see coming,” he continued. “I am scared that the older people will pass away and young people will forget. I hope the old will tell the young to come and celebrate the culture and remember it for the future.”
“I did not come so often when I was young,” Heng said. “But now that I am older and retired I come a lot and I can appreciate and really learn from what they teach of the dharma (Buddhist teachings).
“We need to make young children learn and understand the importance of this celebration… We lost all of this once with Pol Pot. We can’t lose it again.”
kandrade@providencejournal.com
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https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20190929/keeping-tradition-alive