Nine-month report

Dear friends,

I hope that this post finds all of you healthy, happy and well. Belong I have included my most recent report, written about a week ago when I was at Wat Campuh K'aek. I am now back in the city, having a brief visit with my brother Aron, and will return to the wat in about a week. I will continue to check my email regularly for the next few days, so if you have any questions or concerns, this would be a good time to contact me. I will return to lay life and more regular communication on July 10th. Please take care of yourselves, and I look forward to the day when we meet again in person.

Many blessings for peace in your hearts and in your livelihood,

Ven. Khema Nando
(Trent W.)


It has indeed been awhile since making my last report, and not a little has happened since that time. Since ordaining as a Theravada novice monk at Wat Rajabo, Siem Reap Province on Magha Puja, 2549 years after the Buddha's passing into Nirvana (February 13th, 2005), I have been mostly concentrating on studying and practicing the Buddhist path. Due to my teacher's, the Ven. Pin Sem, impending trip to the United States in late May, I left Wat Bo on May 25th to move to Wat Campuh K'aek, Kandal Province, about an half-hour from the center of Phnom Penh. I will be here until the Venerable returns from America on July 7th, at which time I will return to Siem Reap and disrobe on July 10th, just before the start of the rains season retreat, during which disrobing would not be possible. This means that I will be extending my time as a monk here to five months and will have only two months remaining to finish up my research before heading back to California. It was a hard decision to make, because I know that I will be much more pressed for time during those last two months. However, being a monk here for an extended period has really given me a chance for a very intimate view of Buddhism in Cambodia, and despite my efforts to take a break from research and focus solely on meditation, I feel that I have made much more progress in the past few months.

I am very grateful for the experience I was able to have at Wat Bo. Even though the monastery is not set up to be a meditation monastery and I was basically alone in my practice, the support of Ven. Pin Sem's teaching and the whole community brought many changes about in my mind and heart. Furthermore, it brought me into deep connection with the ways of Buddhism in Cambodia, and the lives of the monks and pious laypeople. I never once felt like, nor was I treated as, a researcher a Wat Bo. I felt like I could make my contribution to the community and also receive the support of others. Most of all, I woke up every day in peace, thankful for the robes and begging bowl, and for the teaching passed down through many generations. On the urging of an American doctoral student, Erik Davis, who I met shortly before my ordination, I have made extensive notes on my experiences at Wat Bo.

I am now at a very different monastery on the other side of the country, and everything is once again different. There is no teacher here like the Ven. Pin Sem and the general environment seems to be less conducive to meditation. Indeed, to my knowledge, there seems to be no monk or layperson who have extensive knowledge about Buddhism beyond rituals and chanting. However, this is also an excellent opportunity, because this wat is very famous for its rituals and chanting, and my research on smot definitely tends towards that side of the religion. My smot teacher, Prum Ut, is also in residence here, so there are many opportunities. For me, it seems weird to be a monk and not to be sitting in meditation all day long, but in truth few monks in Cambodia include meditation as part of their study and practice. It is sometimes frustrating to not have the same kind of support I had at Wat Bo, but I recognize and appreciate that new situations give rise to new opportunities.

My learning about Pali and Khmer chanting at Wat Bo has been very beneficial to my research on smot chanting. The language of Buddhism in Khmer is now intimately familiar to me, as it fills my breath and my ears every day, and smot songs that would take a week to memorize before I ordained are now only a matter of a few hours. And while I understood the meaning of the chants before, they now seem so much more real and vivid, and I can sense the life and context of the language much more clearly. I am also able to learn a great deal about the ceremonies in which smot is used, and how it is connected to other forms of chanting. In all, I have a much clearer picture of what I am studying now and what I have left to accomplish.

Recently, I have been trying hard to write down as much as I can about what I have observed and learned over the past nine months, a process I should have begun in more depth earlier, though most of what I failed to write down that not yet escaped from my memory. I do realize, however, that the most important product of my research will be this writing.

When I return to Phnom Penh and eventually back to my smot teacher's village in mid-July, my goals for the remaining two months will have to be simple, as the time time will fly by faster than I will believe. First, I intend to to finish up the the manuscript research I started with the Ecole-francais d'extreme orient in January. I had some opportunity before I left Wat Bo to learn the way to read these older palm-leaf and accordion reed paper manuscripts, the language of which is similar phonetically to modern Khmer, but almost every word is spelled differently than it is today. Whereas in January, I was somewhat lost in reading such documents, I now have more confidence that I can find and use relevant materials. The main purpose of this is to make copies of the manuscripts to take back to the United States for further study in college. Secondly, I plan to continue to study with Prum Ut, write a more complete biography of him and assistant master Keot Ran, and continue to take notes on village life and ceremonies. I do not expect to study many more songs from him, but I do plan to invite him to record in the CLA studio, to get a more complete record of his repertoire. During my stay at Wat Bo, by chance I made some contact with other smot masters from various provinces. Although I will not have time to study from them, I hopefully will conduct interviews and possibly make audio cassette recordings. As for the other teachers and professors I studied with in Phnom Penh, I hope to get some questions answered from them, but I realize that I probably will have little chance to study in depth with them.

Although over three months are still remaining before I go back, I realize that there will be many things that I will not be able to accomplish and will have to wait for another time or another person. But I rest in the fact that if I continue to write and keep a good record of my study here, then that will hopefully be something of lasting value, no matter how incomplete it may seem.

Wat Suvanna Muni, known as Wat Campuh K'aek, Kien Svay District, Kandal Province, Kingdom of Cambodia
May 24th, 2550 B.E.