Ed Crisostomo / The Press-EnterpriseBuddhist monk Sokha Chan, right, accepts offerings from the crowd during the Khmer Buddhist Society's new year celebration.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
By DAVID OLSON
The Press-Enterprise
Worshippers began arriving at the Khmer Buddhist Society of San Bernardino at 8 a.m. Saturday with their offerings of fried noodles, beef curry and jackfruit-studded desserts.
By noon, disposable plates of food and drinks covered the raised wooden platform where monks chanted, the bounty spilling onto the adjoining straw mats and rugs on which worshippers sat and put their hands together in prayer.
Saturday was the biggest gathering of the year for Inland Cambodians, a new year's celebration that drew hundreds of people to a nondescript home that in 1991 was converted into a temple.
The traditional Cambodian new year festivities take place April 13-15, which in Cambodia is a national holiday. But because most people in the United States work on at least some of those days, Buddhist temples here typically celebrate on the weekend before or after the actual new year, said Sokha Chan, head monk at the temple.
That means many U.S. Cambodians get to celebrate the new year twice. Chan and the other San Bernardino monks traveled to a Pomona temple's celebration last Sunday.
Other Inland Cambodians went to Long Beach, which has Southern California's largest Cambodian community.
Buddhism has three main branches. Most Cambodians belong to the Theravada branch. Followers of the other two -- Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism -- marked the new year in February.
The San Bernardino festivities were scheduled to stretch well into the night, with traditional Khmer music and dancing.
The Khmer are the main ethnic group in Cambodia.
In the morning, as the orange- and maroon-robed monks sat against a wall chanting prayers in honor of their and others' ancestors, barefoot worshippers brought an endless series of plates of homemade food to the platform. Volunteers periodically carried the plates to other spots in the temple to make room for more offerings.
Many people placed $20, $10, $5 and $1 bills onto silver-colored trays. Some of the money will be used for a planned temple expansion.
The monks then walked outside clutching metal bowls and cloth bags.
Dozens of people gathered in a giant circle around a huge patio. Each worshipper spooned rice into the monks' bowls and placed bills of money into the bags.
When the monks' bowls filled, a temple member emptied the rice into big plastic washing tubs.
The monks then returned inside the temple. After more prayers, they began eating. When they were done, everyone else followed.
"It's like a big potluck," Vouch Kim Lun said with a smile as she held her 2-year-old daughter Savanna, the smell of incense and grilled beef wafting through the air.
Lun, 35, also brought 3-year-old Brianna to the temple, as she does throughout the year. There are few Cambodians in Lun's Colton neighborhood, and she wants to make sure that her daughters grow up with Cambodian traditions.
Kim Sreng moved from Cambodia to Moreno Valley a year and a half ago to live with relatives and to send money to family still in her homeland. Saturday made her feel a little less homesick.
"This is the one time of year I can see so many Cambodians," Sreng, 28 said.
Sokan Hunro, who moved to Long Beach in November after 17 years in Redlands, returned to the temple for the celebration. Unlike in Long Beach, there is no Cambodian neighborhood in the Inland area.
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