Thai Buddhist clergy helps flood victims ... why Hochimonk Tep Vong and his cohorts are not helping Khmer flood victims??

Leading the Supreme Patriarch's flood-relief effort, Phra Anil Sakya has seen compassion corrupted

The hazard in helping

November 25, 2011
Subhatra Bhumiprabhas
Special to The Nation

Phra Anil Sakya requested five minutes at an international Buddhist conference in Guangdong, China, to describe the terrible flooding in Thailand and Cambodia. The monk had no idea he would in turn unleash a deluge - a surge of compassion from around Asia.

"Dharma happens without borders, languages or religions," says Phra Anil, assistant secretary to His Holiness the Supreme Patriarch and deputy dean of social sciences at Mahamakut Buddhist University at Bangkok's Wat Bovoranives Vihara.

From the beginning of the flood crisis in Thailand, Phra Anil has led a team of volunteers from the Supreme Patriarch's secretariat that visits the victims to distribute essential goods donated by neighbouring countries.

The Supreme Patriarch's Compassionate Relief Project has seen "survival packs" dispersed in 43 communities.

Chinese delegates at the Guangdong conference promptly dispatched two vans full of medicine to Cambodia and made a donation to Thailand, Phra Anil says. The Burmese sangha became the first group to make a donation through the Thai embassy in Rangoon.

Yee Lai Lin, Malaysia's representative on the conference's organising panel, helped establish centres to collect goods and cash at three temples in Kuala Lumpur - Chetawan, Buddhist Maha Vihara and Srilankan Maha Vihara.

With the help of Seagull Logistics and its clients in Malaysia, six shipping containers were filled with thousands of bottles of drinking water and tonnes of food and other items and sent to Wat Bovoranives Vihara.

As the trucks arrived, Thai volunteers separated the goods to assemble thousands of survival packs for Thais - including Muslims - and Burmese migrant workers living here.

Phra Anil soon discovered that the Muslim recipients could use only about 10 per cent of the packages' contents - the rest was haram, barred by Islamic strictures, so he and his volunteers quickly began preparing halal survival packs on behalf of the Malaysian donors.

Nevertheless, he says, "I told them that religion is in their mind - religion comes after the stomach is full."

Lest anyone on his team show reluctance to assist the Burmese migrants, the monk keeps reminding everyone of the important contribution the labourers are making to the Thai economy.

"What I always tell people who volunteer is to be careful about their own mind and the way they treat the flood victims," Phra Anil says. "It's only human nature that givers often feel they have some power over the recipients and thus become egocentric."

He saw news footage of volunteers getting angry in chaotic situations when frustrated flood victims became belligerent. He saw impatient volunteers violently throwing relief packages at the victims.

So Phra Anil feels compelled to remind his team also about the word "compassion" in the name of the Supreme Patriarch's relief project. They must always follow the Supreme Patriarch's calm, caring example, he tells them.

Phra Anil points out that this relief mission is nothing new for the Supreme Patriarch.

In 1970 - fully 19 years before his elevation to that role - Somdet Phra Nyanasamvara was led efforts to bring Thai assistance to victims of a tropical cyclone that struck Bangladesh (then East Pakistan).

And Phra Anil was at the Supreme Patriarch's side in 1983 as he provided comfort to flood victims in Bangkok's Minburi district. In 2008 the Supreme Patriarch's secretariat sent caravans of relief items to victims of Cyclone Nargis in Burma.

"With the Supreme Patriarch, we have a very good example to follow," the monk says.

But he wants to emphasise to all volunteers and those planning to get involved that, as much as the current crisis is an opportunity to show compassion, compassion is easily corrupted by the lure of fame and power.

Note the name

Phra Anil Sakya was born in Nepal to the Buddha's own clan, known as Sakya, or Shakya. In 1974, at age 14, he became a novice and was sent to study the dharma at Wat Bovoranives Vihara in Bangkok.

In 1980 he was ordained a monk with Somdet Phra Nyanasamvara as his preceptor.

Two years later he earned a honours bachelor's degree in sociology at Mahamakut Buddhist University. In 1987 he received a master's in anthropology from Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu.

In 1994 he was awarded a master of philosophy degree in social anthropology from Christ's College at Britain's Cambridge University. In 2000 he gained his PhD, also in social anthropology, at Brunel University in Uxbridge, England.

Phra Anil is assistant secretary to the Supreme Patriarch, a lecturer and deputy dean of social sciences at Mahamakut Buddhist University, a lecturer at Mahidol University's College of Religious Studies, and visiting professor at Santa Clara University in the US and academic institutions in Australia.