Effects of Buddhism on Khmer society

There are a lot of religions in the world such as Islam, Hinduism, Christianity, Shinto, and Buddhism. Among these religions Buddhism is the world’s fourth largest religion, which has about 350 million adherents in the world, and this religion was established more than 2000 years ago.

Buddhism can be divided into sects, Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism. Actually followers have different choice relevant to their belief. Some people belief in Theravada Buddhism such as Thai, Sri Lankan, Myanmarese, and Cambodian; the other believe in Mahayana Buddhism such as, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Japan. Obviously Cambodia is one country that has 95 percent of population believe in Theravada Buddhism and they try to follow Buddha theory constantly. Addition according to the 1993 constitution of The Kingdom of Cambodia Buddhism shall be the state religion see article 43. Of course Buddhism plays an important role in Khmer society. Therefore what are good effects of Buddhism of Cambodian people? Although Buddhism is not significant for a small number of Cambodian people. It is still very crucial for most of Cambodian population including me for three fundamental consequences.

The first fundamental consequence is that Buddhism is an identity of Khmer culture because Khmer has a lot of traditions and customs related to Buddhism such as festival and moral education. First festival refer to way of celebrating religious festival and traditional ceremony including Phchum Ben Khmer New Year Visak Bochea and so forth. Of course, other countries also practice Buddha’s theories and those countries have their own religious festival and traditional ceremony as well. Anyway how to celebrate the festivals and ceremonies is different from each other between our Country and other. Thus, foreigners know our country due to specific ways of celebration. Beside the festivals and the ceremonies, moral education can be considered as second consequence which is also an identity to be recognized by many people on the world. Buddhism offers theories to improve morality for example, when we are meet each other we have own greeting that we have to salute by using style of the greeting. Furthermore, Khmer people have been taught by Buddhist monks who can be regard as well-educated adherents.

The Buddhist monks have a big effort to teach laypeople connected with Buddha’s theories in order to have good morality; for instance Cambodian people are educated to respect their Parents older people teacher, etc. More particularly because of learning from Buddha’s theories, most of Khmer people have gratitude, they are grateful to their Parents ancestors or teachers. After being grateful, children and students try to repay good deeds for Parents and professor. Consequently moral education from Buddhism that make Khmer people respectful and grateful can be an identity of Khmer culture in the world. Offering loving peace can be considered as the second fundamental consequence from Buddhism due to getting psychological education and having loving- kindness. Firstly, psychological education from Buddhism educates Khmer people to love peace, in fact Buddhism contains many educational theories and plays a significant role to take part to lecture Cambodian people to have peaceful minds. In addition, the followers can have a good opportunity to practice in meditation to make themselves calm, so their mentalities are pure. The second important thing is having loving kindness which plays a key role to provide loving peace to Cambodian people who are Buddhist. Actually, when they have loving kindness, it means that those people pity and tolerate each other. Also, they don’t discriminate or make conflict one another. In contrast, they wish older people have success harmony and happiness in lifestyle. Therefore, no war can be occurred if they implement Buddha’s theories properly.