Editing Cambodia (section)

=== Socially Engaged Buddhism after 1979 ===

The Vietnamese-installed People's Republic of Kampuchea, facing a profound legitimacy deficit after 1979, turned to Buddhism as an alternative source of authority once denied access to the monarchical tradition associated with the exiled Sihanouk. A newly re-ordained clergy under Tep Vong (b. 1932) was reconstituted under close state supervision, with ordinations initially restricted to men over fifty; restrictions eased substantially only after 1988, when Hun Sen's government reversed course and began actively courting Buddhist legitimacy.

The most internationally recognized figure of the subsequent period is Maha Ghosananda (1913–2007).

==== Maha Ghosananda and the Dhammayietra Movement ====

A monk trained in insight meditation and influenced by the Gandhian peace activism of Fujii Nichidatsu's Nipponzan Myōhōji movement, Maha Ghosananda spent the Khmer Rouge years ministering to refugees on the Thai border before becoming central to the postwar reconstruction of the Cambodian sangha. In 1992 he initiated the Dhammayietra ("Dhamma pilgrimage") movement, an annual peace walk through war-affected and heavily mined regions of the country, often skirting or entering territory still controlled by the Khmer Rouge. Later marches took up landmines (1995), deforestation (1996), and reconciliation with Khmer Rouge defectors at Pailin (1997). Often called the "Gandhi of Cambodia," Ghosananda framed the walks explicitly as an application of Buddhist non-violence to collective trauma, and as a challenge to the assumption that monastic practice required withdrawal from worldly danger.

Beyond the Dhammayietra, the 1994-founded Buddhism for Development organization has trained monks in rural development work, while "tree ordination" ceremonies — in which threatened trees are wrapped in monastic robes to discourage illegal logging, a practice adapted from Thailand — represent a further extension of engaged Buddhist practice into environmental activism. A smaller current of "human rights Buddhism" has periodically brought monks into direct confrontation with the state, most dramatically in September 1998, when monk-led protests against that year's election results were met with police gunfire and the disappearance of an estimated five to seventeen monks; this activism continues to meet resistance from both state authorities and more conservative sangha leadership, who regard it as an inappropriate politicization of religious life.