Bhante as Healer, is the third blog in my three part series. This Cambodian Buddhist monk was instrumental in healing my son.
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As a healer, Bhante held four year old Chris on his lap. He directed golden yellow light from a high-intensity lamp, onto Chris’s swollen knee and gently massaged it using “colored” oil.
Bhante had developed his color treatments using high density flood lights, oil, and water. He would fill colored glass bottles with sunflower oil or water, exposing them to sunlight for at least twenty-four hours. He believed that light rays refracting through colored glass infused specific healing characteristics. Using colored oil to massage the area to be treated, he would also prescribe a tablespoon of colored water as medicine.
I started taking Chris to see Bhante on a weekly basis. He taught me to treat Chris at home. Showing me how to use colored lights and oils, as well as healing thought forms. Chris and I would imagine little men with buckets scooping up his owie’s and carrying them away.
Six weeks later, Jack and I took Chris back to Children’s Hospital. He needed Z-Plasty surgery to lengthen a contracted ankle tendon. The swelling in his knee had affected the flexibility in his ankle, resulting in a shortened tendon. The surgery went well. We brought Chris home with a cast up to his knee. I noticed that the official diagnosis on his medical papers had been changed. It now read, “a-typical” Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis.
The swelling and pain in Chris’s knee had subsided with Bhante’s treatment. In the end, we never had to give him drugs. Chris had a normally active childhood, becoming a bit of a star on his first soccer team at age seven.
Bhante Traveled as a Healer
Bhante continued to live a mendicant life, never staying in one place too long. He would go back to India to check on his Mission there. He also travelled to places like France and Thailand, treating dignitaries. Wherever he went, he conducted Vipassana silent retreats, taught color meditation, and healed people.
In 1999, Bhante died in Stockton, California. He was one hundred and ten years old. It was here that he founded the first Cambodian Buddhist temple in America. Consequently, he became the spiritual leader of this refugee community. In 1989, he was instrumental in healing emotional wounds caused by the first mass shooting of children in an elementary school.
He is buried at his Asoka Mission in India. Founded in 1948, he built the mission on land granted to him by the first Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharalal Nehru, in recognition of his capabilities as a healer.