Sam Bunthoeun (1957 - 2003) 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.
[1] During these years, Sam Bunthoeun may have been initiated to the traditional meditations techniques,[3] as studied by Francois Bizot, which included esoteric teachings and master and disciple transmission, before the Khmer Rouge wiped them out.
In 1995, the annual buddhist council formally validated the importance of vipassana meditation and called Sam Bunthoeun to propagate it from Phnom Penh.
The transfer of the relics of Buddha which had been kept in front of the Royal railway station in Phnom Penh to the top of the mountain in Oudong made his new center "one of the more cosmologically central locations in the country.
[6][5] 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.
[3] More conservative monks such as Daung Phang have criticized this proliferation of vipassana seminars in Cambodia as "foreign" and contrary to traditional Khmer praying techniques.