Author Archives: P&L

About P&L

Life is about "studying, working, and doing good". What else life means to you? In the process of middle path is the successful effort of life!

សីលប្រាំសំរាប់ការអភិវឌ្ឍន៍ជាតិ

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ជាទូទៅប្រជាជនខ្មែរយើងរមែងដឹងអំពីសីលប្រាំសំរាប់ការរស់នៅប្រចាំថៃ្ង ប៉ុនែ្តការយល់និងការបដិបត្តិអោយបានជ្រាល ជ្រៅ នៅមានកំរិតនិងមន្ទិលសង្ស័យនៅឡើយ។

សីលប្រាំចាត់ទុកជាតំលៃខាងសីលធម៌មូលដ្ឋានរបស់មនុស្សជាតិ។ ព្រះពុទ្ធជាម្ចាស់ទ្រង់ទទួលស្គាល់ថាសីលប្រាំមិនត្រូវ បាននរណាបង្កើតទេ គឺវាមានមកដោយធម្មជាតិរបស់វានៅក្នុងចក្រវាឡនេះ។ ព្រះពុទ្ធគ្រប់ព្រះអង្គដែលបានបដិសន្ធិនៅ ក្នុងលោកយើងនេះ រមែងអោយតំលៃខ្ពស់ទៅលើសីលប្រាំថាជាតំរូវការមូលដ្ឋានសំរាប់សុវត្ថិភាពសង្គមនិងសុខមាលភាព របស់មនុស្សជាតិ។

យុគសម័យពិភពលោកបច្ចុប្បន្ន សីលប្រាំត្រូវបានគេបកស្រាយថាជាសិទ្ធិមនុស្ស តំលៃសីលធម៌ខាងសង្គម ធាតុផ្សំនយោ បាយសំរាប់សមភាពសង្គម និងការអភិវឌ្ឍន៏ប្រកបដោយចិរភាព។

បន្ថែមលើការបកស្រាយខាងលើ សីលទីមួយអំពីការជៀសវាងការធ្វើទុក្ខបុកម្នេញនិងការសំឡាប់សត្វមានជីវិត គឺត្រូវគ្នា ជាចំបងទៅនឹងការប្រកាសជាសាកលស្តីអំពីសិទ្ធិមនុស្សរបស់អង្គការសហប្រជាជាតិក្នុងខណះពេលដែលការប្រកាសជា សាកលនេះត្រូវបានប្រទេសរីកចំរើនជាច្រើនយកទៅអនុវត្តសំរាប់សមភាពនៃការអភិវឌ្ឍន៏ទាំងផ្នែកសង្គម សេដ្ឋកិច្ចនិង នយោបាយ បណ្តាសហគ្រាសឯកជនក៏បានយកសិទ្ធិមនុស្សនេះមកប្រើដោយមើលការខុសត្រូវបុគ្គលិករបស់គេតាម គោលការណ៍ជាក់ស្តែង។ ជាឧទាហរណ៍ដូចជាបុគ្គលិកទាំងអស់មានឋានៈស្របច្បាប់ក្នុងការទទួលបានការឈប់ពេល ឆ្លងទនេ្លឬថែទាំកូន ការឈប់សំរាកឬការឈឺស្កាត់ដោយទទួលបានប្រាក់បំណាច់ និងផលប្រយោជន៍ដ៏ទៃផ្សេងទៀត ជាច្រើន។

រាប់ចាប់ពីសីលទីមួយដល់សីលទីប្រាំ សីលទាំងអស់នោះគឺជាអង្គប្រកបយ៉ាងសំខាន់ជាងគេមួយក្នុងការទប់ស្កាត់ នូវរាល់ទង្វើរំលោភបំពានមានដូចជាការរំលោភបំពានផ្លូវកាយ ផ្លូវសំភារៈលុយកាក់ ផ្លូវភេទ ផ្លូវវាចា និងផ្លូវចិត្ត។ ឧទាហរណ៍ ការរក្សាសីលទីមួយ វៀរចាកការធ្វើទុក្ខបុកម្នេញនិងសំឡាប់អ្នកដ៏ទៃ បុគ្គលនោះអាចគ្រប់គ្រងអំពើ ខ្លួនឯងចេញផុតពីការរំលោភផ្លូវកាយ ការរក្សាសីលទីពីរ វៀរចាកការលួចប្លន់ បុគ្គលនោះអាចគ្រប់គ្រងអំពើខ្លួន ឯងចេញផុតពីការរំលោភផ្លូវសំភារៈលុយកាក់ ការរក្សាសីលទីបី វៀរចាកពីការប្រព្រឹត្តខុសផ្លូវកាម បុគ្កលនោះអាច គ្រប់គ្រងអាកប្បកិរិយាខ្លួនឯងចេញផុតពីគាររំលោភបំពានផ្លូវភេទសេពសន្ទវៈ ការរក្សាសីលទីបួន វៀរចាកការនិយាយ កុហកនិងញុះញង់គេ បុគ្គលនោះអាចគ្រប់គ្រងអាកប្បកិរិយារបស់ខ្លួនគេចផុតពីការរំលោភបំពានផ្លូវវាចា និងការរក្សា សីលទីប្រាំ វៀរចាកការសេពគ្រឿងញៀននិងផឹកទឹកស្រវឹង បុគ្គលនោះអាចគ្រប់គ្រងខ្លួនឯងចេញផុតពីការរំលោភបំពាន ផ្លូវចិត្តទៅលើអ្នកដ៏ទៃ។

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Panca Sila or Five Precepts for Nation Development

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Buddha promoted middle path for the attainment of Enlightenment. Worldly speaking, it is a middle path for social, political and economic development. In the past, the world experienced extremism in its political development such as so-called divine monarchic absolutism or secular authoritarianism. New moderate political system is liberal democracy in which it is believed to evolving from past stigma and intractable conflicts. This system is considered hybridizing or blending for the success of human endeavor.

Panca Sila or Five Precepts for Nation Development

In general, Cambodian people will be aware of Panca Sila or Five Precepts in their daily livelihood, but their understanding and practicing of these precepts are somehow skeptical.

Five Precepts are considered fundamental moral value of all beings. The Buddha himself accepted that no one created these precepts; they have naturally existed within this universe. Every Buddha in this universe will value these Five Precepts as basic need for social security and well being of mankind.

In modern world, Five Precepts have interpreted into human rights, social norm of moral value, political substance for fairness, and sustainable development.

Further to above interpretation, the first precept of avoiding harming and killing of other beings preliminarily coincided with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations. While this declaration has been used by many civilized countries for the fairness of social, political and economic development, the private corporations have also adopted human rights to treat their employees in a durable manner. For instance, the employees are entitled to receive parental or maternity leave, vacation pay, sick leave and other various benefits.

From the first to fifth precept, they are the best premises to handling with all types of abuses including physical, financial, sexual, verbal and emotional abuses. For instance, by observing the first precept to avoid harming and killing, one can cope with their action of physical abuses; by observing second precept of avoiding from stealing, one can cope with their action of financial abuses; by observing the third precept of abstaining from sexual misconduct, one can cope with their behavior of sexual abuses; by observing fourth precept of abstaining from telling lie and cheating, one can cope with their behavior of verbal abuses; and by observing the fifth precept of abstaining from addicting to drugs and alcohol, one can cope with their behavior of mental abuses.

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Khmer Studies Forum at Ohio University this March

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Khmer Studies Forum 2013
flyerksf2013
ANNOUNCING the 5th Annual
Khmer Studies Forum
Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Ohio University

Registration is now open!
Click here to register.
** Register now to make sure you receive any
updates to the Forum schedule.**
The 5th Annual Khmer Studies Forum (KSF) will be held at Ohio University, in Athens, Ohio, U.S.A. on Friday, March 15, Saturday, March 16, and Sunday, March 17, 2013.The 5th KSF has as its theme “identity”: e.g., What is a Khmer? Who is Khmer? How is Khmerness recognized or expressed? How has Khmerness changed over time? We anticipate presentations representing a range of disciplines and approaches.The KSF provides an opportunity to facilitate discussion on topics including but not limited to Khmer language, history, culture, economics, politics, education, and the arts. Faculty, students and community members are invited to participate. Participation in the Khmer Studies Forum is free. The KSF is hosted and organized by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at Ohio University, with primary support from the Ohio Humanities Council and Arts for Ohio, with additional support from the Center for International Studies, the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism, IARTS, and the Contemporary History Institute.
PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Sophal Ear, Department of National Security Affairs, U.S. Naval Postgraduate School
10 am
March 15, 2013		 Baker Theatre
Dr. Sophal Ear is an Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. His research focuses on post-conflict reconstruction, stability, transition, democratization, the political economy of governance, foreign aid, development, and growth in Southeast Asia in general and Cambodia in particular. Dr. Ear serves on the Advisory Board of the Master of Development Studies Program at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, the Editorial Board of the International Public Management Journal, and the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Southeast Asian American Education & Advancement. He has been honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, and in 2011 was elected to a five-year term membership on the Council on Foreign Relations. His most recent book is The Hungry Dragon: How China’s Resource Quest is Reshaping the World (Routledge, 2013), co-authored with Sigfrido Burgos Cáceres.Dr. Ear will present a talk on Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines Democracy, a book he authored in 2012 (Columbia Unversity Press).For more information on Dr. Ear, visit http://sophalear.com/

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Hun Sen Cites ‘Miracle’ for His Role in Royal Cremation

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Hun Sen Cites ‘Miracle’ for His Role in Royal Cremation

By Neou Vannarin - February 17, 2013, The Cambodia Daily

Prime Minister Hun Sen on Thursday said that the brief delay in lighting the casket at the late King Father Norodom Sihanouk’s cremation on February 4 was a “miracle” that allowed him alone to finally ignite the flame after four failed attempts by others.

Speaking at an inauguration ceremony at Phnom Penh’s Svay Por Pe pagoda, in his first public speech since the cremation, Mr. Hun Sen said the delay in cremating the form­er King’s body—scheduled to be burned at 6 p.m. but not ignited un­til shortly after 6:30—was be­cause Norodom Sihanouk’s spirit was waiting for the prime minister to personally light the casket.

“This is a miracle of the late King Father’s sacred power; an impossible thing occurred at the time,” Mr. Hun Sen said. “Ig­niting the royal flame was attempted five times before it worked, this is a sacred power.”

Mr. Hun Sen said that King No­rodom Sihamoni and Queen Mo­th­er Norodom Monineath were un­successful in their first three at­tempts to set the casket alight. For the fourth try, the Queen Mo­ther in­vited the two supreme patriarchs of the Mahanikaya and Dha­m­mayuttika Nikaya Buddhist sects to join the monarchs in igniting the flame, but this also failed.

“For the fifth time, it was me alone,” said Mr. Hun Sen.

“I knelt down to the feet of his majesty [the King Father] and prayed that I was sorry for setting [his body] on fire, but I had no choice. So, I brought forth the fire, and the flame finally ignited.

“I told the Queen Mother that his majesty did not want to leave his children. In response, the Queen Mother said ‘[the King Father] was waiting for you,’” he said.

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Controversy over Cambodia PM’s land titling plan

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Controversy over Cambodia PM’s land titling plan
By Michelle Fitzpatrick (AFP) – Oct 6, 2012

PHNOM PENH — Cambodian students have fanned out across the impoverished nation to help grant land titles to villagers in an ambitious but contentious new scheme spearheaded by the prime minister.

When Hun Sen announced his titling plan in June, apparently without first consulting local authorities and communities, it was billed as a way to clamp down on land conflicts, seen as Cambodia’s most pressing human rights issue.

But the strongman premier later backtracked, saying the more than 1,600 student volunteers recruited would not be measuring land in disputed areas at all, baffling campaigners who already lamented a lack of detail about the plan.

“For those in non-conflict areas it’s very good, but it doesn’t address the major problem. People who are most in need of land titles won’t receive them,” said Nicolas Agostini of local rights group ADHOC.
The university students are now tasked with demarcating 1.8 million hectares (4.4 million acres) of uncontested territory so officials can issue titles to 470,000 families within the next few months.

In the project’s first major milestone last month, Hun Sen personally delivered more than 500 property titles to families in Kratie, the same eastern province where security forces shot dead a 14-year-old girl during a land battle with villagers in May, in a case that shocked the nation.

Land ownership is a highly controversial issue in Cambodia, where the communist Khmer Rouge regime banned private property in the late 1970s and many legal documents were lost.

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Beyond the Killing Fields

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Cambodia 1.jpg

Op-Ed: The Economist: Intelligent Life

Nearly 50 years ago, Nicholas Shakespeare’s family was forced to flee Cambodia. Now he and his father return for the first time since the fall of the Khmer Rouge, and find ordinary Cambodians enduring a new kind of agony

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, January/February 2013

“IT’S THE SAME STAIRCASE!”

Excited, my father starts climbing it. We are in the air-conditioned residence of America’s ambassador to Phnom Penh, formerly the British embassy. On a humid day in 1964—in an incident unreported at the time because Western journalists were banned—my father walked down this staircase to confront about 1,000 angry students who had come to trash the building. They were acting on instructions from Cambodia’s ruler, Prince Norodom Sihanouk.

The British ambassador, Peter Murray, was away that morning and had left my father, John Shakespeare, the first secretary, in charge. Three days later, Murray sent a confidential despatch back to the foreign secretary, Rab Butler. This year, on the eve of our first visit to Cambodia since our abrupt departure nearly half a century ago, my father found a copy of Murray’s message in a damp cardboard box in his Wiltshire garage, along with letters, receipts, maps and photographs. Murray’s despatch begins: “I regret to report that the official premises of Her Majesty’s Embassy in Phnom Penh were attacked and badly damaged by a mob on the morning of the 11th of March 1964…As for what happened in my absence, I have the honour—and this for once is no formal phrase—to refer you, Sir, to Mr Shakespeare’s account.”

My father, now 82, reaches the top step. He has rarely spoken about his part in Sihanouk’s sacking of our embassy. The details come back as he looks down the staircase.

He remembers crowds of people assembling in the street out of a clear blue sky. “I saw somebody painting on the wall outside the embassy ‘US go home’ and I went and told him, ‘Look, you’ve got the wrong place. The American embassy is down there.’” More people turned up with placards bearing the words “Perfide Albion”, and in one case “Perfide Albino”. The shouts grew louder. My father instructed all the embassy staff, about 20 of them, to go up these stairs, to a safe area where secret papers were kept in a strong room. Then the crowd surged into the grounds.

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CAMBODIA: Every person can and should be Preah Batr Dhammik

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Another former Buddhist monk, Sophoan Seng, earned a graduate degree in political science from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and now serves as Director of KEEN Investment Groups LTD and president of Alberta’s Khmer Youth Association. He asserts that “the highest goal of Buddhism is ‘liberty’, not the ‘four necessities’, i.e., food, shelter, clothing, medicine.” He says, Buddha teaches that humankind is sustained through a balance and an equalization of “liberty” or “Nama” (the mind or spirit) and the “four necessities” or “Rupa” (the body or physical appearance), that is economic development (food, shelter, clothing, medicine) and spiritual development (liberty/human dignity) must go hand and hand.

Monychenda agrees with Buddha’s “Nama-Rupa” or “mind-matter” teaching which means the mind affects matter and matter affects the mind.

According to Seng, it’s true that Buddha sees humans need food (Rupa, the four necessities) to survive, but Buddha sees Nama (the mind, liberty) as taking the lead. Humans are made by the mind and through balancing Rupa and Nama will attain their highest level of enlightenment – the liberty of the mind from the bondage of greed, hatred, delusion.

FOR PUBLICATION
AHRC-ETC-003-2013
January 15, 2013

An article by Dr. Gaffar published by the Asian Human Rights Commission

CAMBODIA: Every person can and should be Preah Batr Dhammik

In my last article I wrote about Cambodians who longed for a Khmer Mahatma Gandhi or a Khmer Aung San Suu Kyi. Some believe the struggle against the violations of rights and justice of the Khmer people is slow because of the absence of a Khmer equivalent to such figures.

Yet, the world’s successful revolutions have rarely been led by a charismatic individual such as Gandhi or Suu Kyi. And even those remarkable individuals, it should be recalled, also are burdened with very human strengths and failings, as are we all. Would a Gandhi or a Suu Kyi do well in the Khmer environment? We like them for their abilities and skills – which can be taught and learned. Gandhi and Suu Kyi possess strengths – which we should learn and apply – and weaknesses – which we should learn and discard. Would those who long for a Gandhi or a Suu Kyi be willing and ready to learn from them to advance their causes?

A proverb says, “Nothing succeeds like success.” Another says, “Success has many fathers, failure is an orphan.”

From the same source

Gandhi was a Hindu political and spiritual leader in India, renowned for his commitment to advance causes through civil disobedience and nonviolence. His philosophical and political perspectives were derived from the teaching of Lord Siddhartha Gautama Buddha (563BC-483BC), himself a Hindu prince of the ruling Shakya clan.

Suu Kyi, daughter of Burma’s father of independence, Aung San, is a devout Buddhist. She returned to her homeland in 1988 after years of studying and living in England, to witness widespread killings of her people by the Ne Win regime, and broad protests against it. As her father’s daughter, she says, she could not remain silent. She spoke out against the regime and initiated a nonviolent movement for democracy and human rights. In 1989 she was arrested and spent 15 of the next 21 years in custody during which she read, wrote, and meditated. She was released in 2010.
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