Preah Maha Ghosananda

Maha Ghosananda (full title Samdech Preah Maha Ghosananda - Khmer: សម្តេចព្រះមហាឃោសានន្ទ; Pali: Mahāghosānanda; May 23, 1913 or, more likely, around 1924 – March 12, 2007) was a highly revered Cambodian Buddhist monk in the Theravada tradition, who served as the Patriarch (Sangharaja) of Cambodian Buddhism during the Khmer Rouge period and post-communist transition period of Cambodian history. His Pali monastic name, 'Mahā Ghosānanda', means "great joyful proclaimer". He was well known in Cambodia for his annual peace marches.

He was born Va Yav in Takéo Province, Cambodia in 1913 to a farming family in the Mekong Delta plains. From an early age he showed great interest in religion, and began to serve as a temple boy at the age of eight years old. He was greatly impressed by the monks with whom he served, and at age fourteen received novice ordination. He studied Pali scriptures in the local temple high school, then went on to complete his higher education at the monastic universities in Phnom Penh and Battambang.

He was sponsored by Chuon Nath to travel to India to pursue a doctorate in Pali at Nalanda University in Bihar, at that time an institute known under the name of Nava Nālandā Mahāvihāra. While in India, he studied under the Japanese monk Nichidatsu Fujii, founder of the Japanese peace-oriented sect Nipponzan Myohoji and a former associate of Mahatma Gandhi.

In 1965, Maha Ghosananda left India to study meditation under Ajahn Dhammadaro, a famous meditation master of the Thai Forest Tradition. He remained with Ajahn Dhammadaro at his forest hermitage in southern Thailand, Wat Chai Na (located near Nakhon Si Thammarat), for eleven years.

In 1978, Maha Ghosananda traveled to the refugee camps near the Thai-Cambodian border to begin ministering to the first refugees who filtered across the border.

Maha Ghosananda's appearance in the refugee camps raised a stir among the refugees who had not seen a monk for years. The Cambodian refugees openly wept as Maha Ghosananda chanted the ancient and familiar sutras that had been the bedrock of traditional Cambodian culture before Year Zero. He distributed photocopied Buddhist scriptures among the refugees, as protection and inspiration for the battered people.^{[citation needed]}

When the Pol Pot regime collapsed in 1979, Maha Ghosananda was one of only 3,000 Cambodian Buddhist monks alive, out of more than 60,000 at the start of the reign of terror in 1976. Throughout 1979 Maha Ghosananda established wats in refugee camps along the Thai-Cambodian border, ordaining monks against the orders of the Thai military. He also founded more than 30 temples for Cambodian refugees living in Canada and the United States.

His entire family, and countless friends and disciples, were massacred by the Khmer Rouge.