Sam Bunthoeun was a Cambodian Buddhist monk who was active in restoring the religious tradition of meditation known as vipassana in the 1990s until he was fatally shot on February 6,2003.
11 Facts About Sam Bunthoeun
1.
2.
Sam Bunthoeun was born close to Phnom Penh in Kandal province in 1957.
3.
In 1995, the annual buddhist council formally validated the importance of vipassana meditation and called Sam Bunthoeun to propagate it from Phnom Penh.
4.
On February 6,2003, Sam Bunthoeun was fatally shot outside Wat Langka by two men on a motorcycle.
5.
Sam Bunthoeun was struck by two bullets to his chest, and died two days later at Calmette Hospital at age 47.
6.
Sam Bunthoeun's body was lain in state in a refrigerated glass case the center in Oudong for years.
7.
Almost 14 years after he was gunned down in Phnom Penh, Sam Bunthoeun was finally cremated over the weekend in a three-day ceremony in Kandal province that attracted hundreds of thousands of mourners in December 2014.
8.
Sam Bunthoeun is especially remembered in Cambodia today as one of the main promoters of the Khmer tradition of meditation known as a vipassana.
9.
Sam Bunthoeun opposed ritual blessings with water as a mere exterior purification and suggested meditation was a better way to inner peace and purification.
10.
Sam Bunthoeun founded and headed the Buddhist Meditation Center of Oudong.
11.
Sam Bunthoeun renewed the Cambodian practice of meditation in the 1990s in collaboration with Chheng Phon, former Minister of Culture, who set up his own meditation center as a lay man, and Preah Maha Ghosananda, whose dhammayietra was conceived as a walking meditation.