Bhante Dharmawara

Bhante Dharmawara
Born	Bellong Mahathera (1889-02-12)February 12, 1889 Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Died	June 26, 1999 (aged 110 years, 134 days) Stockton, California, U.S.
Citizenship	Cambodian American
Occupation	Monk
Known for	First Cambodian American Buddhist monk

Samdach Vira Dharmawara Bellong Mahathera (February 12, 1889 – June 26, 1999), also known simply as Bhante Dharmawara, was a Cambodian-born Theravada monk and teacher who died at the age of 110.

Biography

Bellong Mahathera was born on February 12, 1889 in Phnom Penh, Cambodia to a wealthy family.

He returned to Cambodia to visit in 1952 and established a connection to Norodom Sihanouk, then still king. In 1955 he accompanied Sihanouk to the Bandung Conference in Indonesia.

He first visited the U.S. in late 1955 and early 1956 when he was invited by the US Information Agency to attend a conference on education. In California, the yoga teacher Indra Devi introduced him to wine critic Robert Lawrence Balzer, who was already interested in Asian religions. With Dharmawara´s invitation, Balzer traveled to Cambodia and sojourned for two weeks in the temple where Dharmawara was staying, later writing about it in the book Beyond Conflict. An extended meditation course he taught at the Asoka Mission from October 1974 to March 1975 is described in the book Leaving Lucifer.

In 1989, following a shooting in which five schoolchildren were killed at a Stockton school, there was national press coverage when he went to the school to perform a ritual cleansing of the site.

Death

He died on June 26, 1999, aged 110.