At the doorsteps of the pagoda, the noise of traditional Cambodian music and the smell of incense instantly overwhelmed me. I took off my shoes and hastily left them next in a pile of at least a hundred others. Once inside, my landlord, his wife and his two young children, age fourteen and twelve, dropped to their feet. Bowing repeatedly, they murmured some Khmer words, possibly a prayer for safety and wealth. Upon paying brief respects, the family “diversified” their responsibilities. The kids, as if pre-programmed to do so, swiftly took jasmine flowers to the front alter, bowed again and laid them down respectfully. My landlord prepared a handful of incense while his wife prepared food and drinks as offering. The family then gathered at the feet of a monk, pushed the food towards him and asked for blessings. Holding a microphone, the monk began his prayer in monotone. He put his hand into a bowl of “holy water” and sprayed them onto the family as he chanted. It was only afterwards which the family showed some sign of relief – at least the first parts of the necessary rituals had been completed.
The family continued their busy errands around the temple. There were numerous statutes of Buddhist gods, all in different emotions. The family rushed around the temple to make sure that they did not neglect to put down money, food and incense for any one of them. As I watched them and others in silent amazement, my landlord quietly came over.
“This is a national-level temple,” he said proudly. He pointed to the picture of Hun Sen, the Prime Minister, and the King’s family on the left. “They worship their ancestors here too,” he added and hurried off again.
These scenes reminded me of the Chinese tradition in which two calendar days are allocated each year for visiting the graves of ancestors. The anxious crowd inside pagodas also reminded me of the people elbowing each other every Lunar New Year to get the first blessings and pay the first respects at the temples.
Except these Chinese festivities do not quite match the frenzy of Cambodia’s P’Chum Ben.
According to my local colleague, P’Chum Ben is all about going to the right pagoda, praying at the right time, using the right monk, bringing the right food, paying the right amount of money (and to the right person)… In short, it involves meticulous actions. And the scale of the activities during the P’Chum Ben period is certainly unmatched. Tuktuk drivers, instead of screaming for tourists, wait patiently outside pagodas for business. My landlord’s car ran on snail’s pace for two hours before reaching the pagoda. Everybody seems to be heading somewhere, to all different directions. Some travel as a big family, others travel with just a few relatives. In any case, congestion and frenzy may be the two best words to describe the activities at this time.
P’Chum Ben appears to be an expensive but necessary part of Cambodian life. The period lasts for 15 days and almost every family, from poor to rich, would visit pagodas in their ancestral homes. Visiting one pagoda, however, is not enough. Cambodians believe that their ancestors’ spirits fly to different pagodas in search of their living relatives but they cannot eat the food offered by other families. The locals would not stand a chance of “starving” their ancestors by visiting just one. Seven. Seven is the perfect number.
What’s also important is the food and money offered. Around the pagodas are lines of silver-plated containers where visitors lined up to dump in rice. Small alters decorated with bananas, apples, oranges, bamboo-leaf-wrapped sticky rice, etc. have little basins on the front to collect money. Money is attached to the baskets of food which women carried in for the monks. I saw an extended family coming in with two bags of 50kg rice, several boxes of water and soft drinks, fruits and rice. Food and money is surely a big deal. You cannot offer enough.
Finally, by noon, the crowds began to dissipate. According to my landlord, you can only pay respects in the morning. Some old people would come once in early morning, say, at 4am, and return again at 10am or 11am.
I left the pagoda with many questions which I do not dare to ask. For instance, what may happen when you visit seven pagodas and still fail to “meet” your ancestors? How can you be sure not to miss your ancestors? Where would poor people get the money to prepare all these food and travel to seven pagodas in the provinces? And what happens to the mountains of food given to the monks? I wonder if all these rituals are out of respect or out of fear, whether people are asking for forgiveness, protection or wealth. Do people know what they are praying for? Do they know what the monks are praying?
Returning to the office on the following week, I saw several colleagues who, in subtle ways, gave different answers to these questions. When asked about his four-day P’Chum Ben holiday, one joked that his wife and mother did all the work. He just waited outside because, according to him, “how can one pray when the pagoda is so noisy and crowded?” Another also smiled when talking about P’Chum Ben, but for a different reason. He was sincerely praying for his ancestors, especially relatives who died in the wars. He also enjoyed his time with the extended family. “We went to Kampong Som (or Sihanoukville) together. We only meet like this once each year.” Surely, P’Chum Ben appears to have multiple layers of meaning – what you make of it, I guess, matters more than what others feel as well as what the original Buddhist, religious or spiritual meaning was.
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