We held the lecture at a Japanese class at IFL Royal University of Phnom Penh again as last year. About 30 students participated in our lecture, and most of them were join the lecture for the first time.
We invited the members of “Sna Dai Khmer” who’s doing social activities, and Mr.Hang Vandet, the secretary of the Ministry of Culture and Religion as a speaker. They made a speech about the present situation of Cambodia, and their activities.
Sna Dai Khmer, the team of 4 young women, their current activities is mainly educational support of Chhunpou Prek Village in Takeo Province. They are doing activities as: 1. Train the young villagers to volunteer teachers, 2. Managing English and Traditional Dance class, and 3.Make the library for kids, and so on.
The villagers are closely united, and they built the school by themselves using the natural material like bamboo and banana leaves, dig the pond, and also organize the mutual cooperative. They are very motivated people and want to get a good education for children. Thus they asked Sna Di Khmer members to support their education.
The team member made their speech very passionately, and they said that it is very important for the children to get equally good and right education. It would make more widely possibility for their future, and let them to be worthy and happy life. And moreover it might lead to improve the community.
They said that the reason why they are doing those activities, it is their pleasure to do for the people with love and compassion, and also it is related to the offering in Buddhism.
I was very impressed with their speech.
The second speaker Mr.Hang Vandet, his speech covered various topics about politics, economics, religion, culture and society, and he commented the current situation of Cambodia. Especially he said that there were some illegality in the election time few years ago, and pointed out the low morality of the citizen beside the development of economy, because of the Buddhism is not penetrate into people. I was surprised of it a little bit.
He expressed his wish to the students as a message at the last: Please take care your body and mind, and please learn exhaustively anything you’re interested in, with keeping both the doubt and eagerness. His message had left a strong impression on my mind again.
Finally it was our team CEP turn to speech, but there’s not much time remain, so we’ve cut the explanation about our activities and start with a question about the different between real happiness and pleasure by Mr. Okada. And then made a short lecture about the spirit of offering, which is called ‘Dana’, the base on social work or voluntarism by Ven. Saito Daiho.
The main purpose of Dana is individually to become a Buddha, and holistically to develop societies. Dāna is a practice to release persistence and to, beyond yourself, nurture your minds to be a Buddha. It is not only the abandonment of insistence, but also a path to give blessings for others and share pleasure around you. And explained about an attitude and attention when you practice Dana. While Ven.Daiho was speaking, students hear to him very earnestly, sometimes they laugh and nod to it. But when it comes question and answer time, few questions come out of them, so we didn’t get any positive response to our lecture.
We introduced our Peace project using the bullet jewelry at the end, and told them that Cambodian people had gone through many hardships to get a peace as of now, so we should take better care of peace each one of us reminded about it.
Sna Dai Khmer team and Mr.Hang Vandet made their speech with Khmer, and we made our lecture in Japanese, so Mr.Sor Songheng had interpreted Japanese into Khmer. He make the translation with attractive gesture and sometimes with joke so that the students to enjoy it. I felt it is very nice of his character to be a leader of young generation.
Although the whole contents are very interesting lecture including various aspects, one point would be material for our reflection about time keeping.
Also we’re lucky that we can see and talk with Prof. Nipiseth and Prof. Loch Leaksmy, who is the Head Department of Japanese, come back to Cambodia by chance. We talked about the situation of Japanese class, and donated the textbooks directly.
We’d enjoyed much the lecture and communicate with university students, and it is very honor to share the knowledge and communicate with them every year.
