The Monk

You know the old cliché of every cloud has a silver lining? My cliché began in the Grand Palace in Bangkok, Thailand’s greatest and most sacred religious temple complex, when the police accosted me. They mistakenly thought I was photographing the monks in this most holy place, which is forbidden. I fled and reached the main road. A monk had witnessed the incident and had followed. He called to me and sympathetically suggested we could chat when others were not near us and he invited me to visit his temple. I worried about my safety as we travelled on river boats. This meeting resulted in four days of the monk’s companionship, as he bestowed a rare glimpse into the Buddhist way of life. He thrilled to practice his english. We visited glorious temples and Thailand’s ancient city of Ayutthaya dating from 1350. We never touched as the monk could loose his reincarnation by contact with a female. Our platonic friendship, a man in his 20s and a woman over 40, began because of a difficult situation and resulted in a beneficial outcome. More details are included in a chapter of my book, Getting the Story, that will be released by John Koehler Books in September this year.