OMG ...I see i was totally shocked
posted on E-sangha
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Time to remember 1991 massacre at Thai Buddhist temple
by Angela Cara Pancrazio, The Arizona Republic, Aug 9, 2006
West Valley, AZ (USA) -- It's August again. And when the month arrives at the Thai Buddhist temple in the West Valley, it is time to remember the tragedy. It is time to gather near the concrete life-size bust of Pairuch Kanthong that tops the stone memorial holding his ashes and those of the slain monks.
<< Winai Booncham, the abbot at Wat Promkunaram, has forgiven those who murdered his predecessor and friend Pairuch Kanthong (highest picture on board) and eight other people in 1991.
Kanthong, a Thai Buddhist monk, was busy building a temple when, in August 1991, two teenagers massacred him along with five monks and three other people at Wat Promkunaram, a Buddhist temple in Waddell.
On Thursday, it will be 15 years since Arizona's worst mass murder. Instead of abandoning the temple, the new abbot, Winai Booncham, six monks and the Thai community have worked hard over the years continuing to build on Kanthong's dreams.
Booncham arrived a day after the slayings. He helped clean blood from the carpet where his friend died.
After the tragedy, monks were too scared to stay there. Except for Booncham.
In spite of his fears, Booncham left his Thai Buddhist temple in southern California and moved into the Arizona temple.
Booncham and Kanthong had known each other in Thailand. The two monks had come to America at the same time and kept in touch.
He took Kanthong's body back to Thailand for cremation.
Then Kanthong began appearing in Booncham's dreams. Kanthong, the temple's abbot, told his predecessor that he needed the monk to take over where he had left off.
Back then, Booncham was a young monk with a fresh-shaved head of close-cropped jet-black hair.
His hair has faded and is now sprinkled with flecks of gray.
In the days leading up to the anniversary, Booncham is anxious. In the beginning, Booncham had no time to cry.
After all these years and several attempts, Booncham concedes that he is unable to honor the monks with his words.
Inside the L-shaped temple, golden Buddhas and pink roses, Kanthong's favorite, crowd the altar that rises behind Booncham's bare shoulders.
Booncham sets down his cup of Starbucks coffee and clutches his orange-yellow robe at his heart.
"On memorial day," he says, "I cannot speak."
"I cry."
"I see everything in this temple, like a dream, I see my friend. I see what happens in my mind. And how my friend suffered before he died."
Two Avondale High School students, Johnathan Doody and Alessandro "Alex" Garcia, were convicted and each was sentenced to nearly 300 years in prison for the killings.
Dressed in military clothing, armed with a 20-gauge pump shotgun and a .22-caliber rifle, Doody, 17, and Garcia, 16, showed up at the temple around midnight on Aug. 9, 1991.
In the morning, a woman who had come to the temple to cook for the monks discovered the nine victims.
After such a horrific crime, the impulse might be that of revenge or to hold a grudge against the killers.
Booncham remembers one of Kanthong's treasured Thai Buddhist sayings, "Don't brood over the past."
"When we talked," Booncham said of Kanthong, "he'd say, 'it's in the past, don't think about it.'"
Buddhists believe you are born, you serve but eventually you will be gone.
They understand and expect death. They believe in heaven and reincarnation.
"It was time for them to go," says Jantra Choosakul-Oswald, the temple's treasurer.
"It's still not the right way to go," she said.
"We've forgiven those who have done the crime. It's still very hurtful.
"For us to move on and not recognize them with a memorial would be way too harsh. That's why we will remember them always.
"We love them. We still think of them."
If Buddhists believe in rebirth, then around the temple it feels as if Kanthong has returned.
The heavyset grinning monk seems to be everywhere.
When the Wat Promkunaram gates open, he is the stone sentry looking over the driveway. The cottonwood trees that were a mere yardstick tall when Kanthong planted them, have risen a couple of stories tall.
His cottonwoods now cast shadows over the monk's lush garden of eggplant, basil, lemon grass, and mint planted alongside the mango, banana, pomegranate and loquat trees.
The painting of Kanthong, the portrait that he liked so much that he often mused about how that was the image he would most like to be remembered by at his funeral still hangs on a wall near where he died.
The community hall that he envisioned, where the monks eat their two meals a day, where young Thais study language and where new monks have their heads shaved, was built from donations after the killings and cash from cans that he collected.
And even more than the monument that was erected for the monks, it is Kanthong's old orange Chevrolet Suburban propped up on wooden blocks that is a constant reminder of the monk.
The battered orange Suburban might not run and looks like an old heap, but they kept it, says Tommy Thirasungsit, because it holds so many memories.
The history of the temple is locked inside Kanthong's car.
Kanthong would load up his car and drive to Los Angeles just to get more money for his cans. When the Suburban was breaking down, he'd risk driving 60 miles to Penny Noomee's home in Apache Junction to borrow her car to comb Canyon Lake for more cans.
During the snowbird season, Pairuch Kanthong hitched a trailer to the Suburban and drove it to Quartzsite. He hid his orange robe under a coat and covered his shaved head with a hat as he cooked satay so the women like Thirasungsit and Noomee could sell Thai food to raise money for the temple.
"He loved this temple. He built everything," Booncham said.
"Before I do anything at the temple, I ask Pairuch to help me."
Source: http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=64,3025,0,0,1,0
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