Buddha Wept
This is the story of Ona Ny, who was born in a city about twenty miles south of Phnom Penh. Her name came to her mother in a dream, spoken by a golden spirit woman who appeared half-hidden in jungle shadow. Gifted with a mystical sensitivity, Ona lived an ordinary life, safe in the warm circle of a large extended family. She married a man who loved her deeply and had three children. Then Pol Pot and the Khymer Rouge took power in Cambodia, and the venerable statue of Buddha in their village began, prophetically, to weep. The population—among them, Ona and her family–were herded into “reeducation” camps, and systematically starved, tortured, and murdered. In four years, three million of Cambodia’s seven million citizens were exterminated—the “Killing Fields.” Like the poet of Ecclesiastes, the light of the irrepressible life force preserves and sustains Ona. All possessions lost, most of her family wantonly destroyed, yet Ona’s soul, and her ability to love, endures. Buddha Wept is a powerful meditation upon the nature of evil and human suffering. Ona Ny’s story, by any standard, Christian or Buddhist, is that of a saint.