A Buddhing Friendship

Since I'm in a Buddhist country, I thought this would be a great time for me to learn about a religion other than Christianity. I've read a bit about Buddhism, but almost always through Christian sources. I wouldn't want Christianity to be explained by someone who doesn't believe in Jesus, so I thought I should do unto others as I would have them do unto me, and learn about Buddhism from a primary source. A monk would be perfect. There are lots of monks running around the city in orange robes, so its not hard to meet a monk. However, its a little bit harder to find one who speaks English, and even harder to find one who speaks fluently enough to explain abstract religious beliefs.
I remembered that Kelly had mentioned that she met a monk who spoke perfect English. That was like 2 months ago. The odds of finding the same monk again were slim. But it was worth a shot; maybe she would remember where she met him and I could hang out there for a day and hope he'd came back. I mentioned it to her the other day.
“Oh yeah! He's at the temple right by Magdalene's shop. His name's John and I have his phone number!” I was momentarily dumb founded. Magdalene is one of our key church members and kind of a Thai mom to all of us. We frequently hang out with her at her sewing stand, its not more than a 15 minute walk or a 10 baht motorcycle taxi ride. This was too easy, I was just hoping she remembered where she met him, but she's got his phone number and he lived right by us. So it was settled. We would just waltz on by whenever convenient and give him a quick call. I went to bed that night and thought, “Monks have cell phones?!”
The next day around 5:00pm found Kelly and I at Wat Po temple with John the Monk. He looks like your run of the mill monk—bright orange robe, shaved head, dark eyes—but he speaks English with a slight New York accent. He says he's out of practice and his English isn't good, but anybody who uses the rather colloquial term of “whachamacallit” is fluent in my book. He took Kelly and I on a tour of the temple grounds, and during that time I learned that he was born in Thailand and raised there until he was fifteen. He then moved to New York with his parents and spent about fifteen years there. He went to a Catholic school for two years, a public school for high school, and graduated from university with a degree in electrical engineering. He worked for about 9 years, in either or Thailand or America, I can't remember, but he's going on his sixth year as a monk. Kelly had to leave, but I stuck around as he finished the little tour. I told him about my desire to learn about Buddhism from a Buddhist, how I thought it was unfair that all my information about them had come from Christian sources, and that I couldn't help wonder if I had been born into a Buddhist family and culture, would I be a Buddhist now? John agreed that you need to have information about both and then choose to have any objective merit to your decision.
We walked back through the temple grounds and met one of his fellow monks (or maybe his superior, I'm not really sure). He said that he might have some Buddhist writings in English for me to look at. I was led me to a small room where we sat down and they served me orange juice (I don't know what the deal is with monks and the color orange.) He didn't have anything in English, but he did have a Christian Bible in Thai. He said he's read it, pointing out that monks study all religions.
We ended up having a conversation for about two more hours. It moved from reincarnation, to the distinction between humans and animals, to how a tiger who inherited bad karma earns merit, to how Christians talk to God, to how God talks back to us, to me trying to explain the Trinity. From there, somehow we jumped into whether or not I have a girlfriend, do I like being single, the differences between Thai and American culture in regards to family, to why everyone at my church plant thinks I'm their IT tech support, to why there are so many dogs and cats hanging around Buddhist temples all the time... yeah that's pretty much my summary of it all. Every now and then I would think how weird it was to be chilling with two monks, but for the most part it felt pretty normal.
They invited me to come back anytime. I'm not hoping or trying to convert either of these monks; I came to the monks to learn from them--to add credence to my belief in God and broaden my understanding of him. So for that reason I plan to go back and hang out with them as often as possible--that and its just fun to talk with them.