The Man Who Walked Through Minefields

Everywhere else it was 1975, but in Cambodia it was “Year Zero.” This is when the Khmer Rouge began their reign of terror.

Their goal? Create an Agrarian Utopia.

They wiped Cambodia clear of its history, closed hospitals, schools, factories, and forced people at gunpoint into the countryside to farm fields and dig canals.

They enforced their ideals through extreme violence. Families were intentionally broken up, and you’d be marked as an “enemy” if you had a college degree, could speak a foreign language, or if you simply wore glasses.

A network of prisons and torture centers were created across the country where prisoners were made to confess to fabricated crimes and then executed in nearby Killing Fields.

Meanwhile, forced labor and starvation caused hundreds of thousands to perish, and in four years, Buddhism would be nearly exterminated in Cambodia.

After years of hearing about his people’s suffering, a forest monk descended from his mountain monastery in Thailand and went down to meet the refugees fleeing the genocide.

This monk was Maha Ghosananda.

His entire family had been massacred along with his friends and disciples.

At the Sakeo refugee camp, he announced he would hold a Buddhist ceremony — 10,000 people showed up. Behind them lay ashes of cities, the bones of relatives, and the horrors of war.

After chanting some invocations, he was silent for a time and people wondered what he would say. What could he say after everything that had happened?

He said only one thing. He repeated it over and over again. It was a single verse spoken by the Buddha:

Hatred never ceases by hatred;But by love alone is healed.This is an ancient and eternal law.

He repeated these lines over and over until 1,000s of voices joined in. Waves of survivors fell to their knees and wept.

He went from camp to camp handing out photocopies of the Metta Sutra of loving kindness, ordaining new monks as he went.

In 1992, he led the first of his famous peace marches across Cambodia to bring reconciliation to his people.

He led 350 monks and nuns through territory still controlled by the Khmer Rouge and where the earth was littered with landmines.

He said that they needed to journey to the places of human suffering—from refugee camps to battlefields—and make them their temples.

He repeated the peace walk every year, and each time it grew in size.

At the start of the second walk, there were gunshots at the temple where marchers had gathered. Three marchers were wounded and a grenade was thrown at Ghosananda’s feet, but it didn’t explode. — He marched anyway.

Soldiers they met along the way put down their rifles and pleaded: “Please bless us in a way that our bullets don’t hit anyone, and so that no one else’s bullets hurt us.”

During the Third peace march they walked through West Cambodia where the fighting was still fierce. They were attacked and captured by the Khmer Rouge, but then released by the commander, who said “We, too, are tired of fighting for 20 years.”

At the time of the fourth march there were 10 million landmines in Cambodia—more mines than people. They collected 20,000 signatures to ban the use of land mines globally, and today 163 countries have signed the Ottawa “Mine Ban” Treaty.

On the fifth march they planted 2,000 trees along their route to combat illegal logging rampant during the civil war.

The sixth and final march was for peace & forgiveness between the Cambodian government and the Khmer Rouge, which had lost power but remained a rebel group. They met Ieng Sary, the second in command after Pol Pot, who asked Ghosananda for forgiveness and pledged to work for peace.

Ghosananda was later criticized for blessing Sary – but Ghosananda said “We do not know if he is lying, but the Dhamma forgives people who return to the light and give up fighting.”

He was selected as the Supreme Patriarch of Cambodian Buddhism and rebuilt the country’s temples. But unlike most Supreme Patriarchs before him, he didn’t spend much time in the temples.

Instead, he often wandered the Cambodian countryside, popping out of the woods to surprise a farmer in his field. He’d take their hands and say: “We must learn to forgive…. To heal through love … We must go slowly, step by step.” And then he would be on his way.

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