Sink Or Swim

After sometime of visiting the monastery every day multiple times a day, Yohan and I became more and more comfortable with each other. There was no denying it, we were friends! Before long Yohan confided in me something that he needed help with. I had just finished telling him about a near death experience that I had a few days earlier. I tried to swim to an island just off the coast. In the midst of my crossing a storm came out of nowhere and over took me. I managed to cross safely, but it...was...sketchy. Anyways. In response to my story, with an air of embarrassment he asked, "Can you teach me how to swim?" Of course I said, "Yes". How hard could it be?

It turns out that giving swimming lessons to a Buddhist monk is more complicated than you'd imagine. There were two cultural "rules" in place that made this task a bit tricky. Rule #1 - Yohan wasn't allowed to take off his robe in front of anyone. For whatever reason, since he was a monk, this wasn't allowed or condoned....but obviously swimming in his robe wasn't really a valid option. This meant that we had to go to a "secret" location that was out of the eyes of the towns people. I was surprised in the best of ways when we arrived at the "secret" location by Yohans personal driver (perk of being a monk). We were dropped off at a seemingly normal pull off on the side of the road. After a small walk with some twists and turns, we emerged into a clearing that a river ran through. To my disbelief, this "secret" location wasn't a secret at all. At least not to all of the monks. It turned out that all of the cities monks knew about this place. It was the place to let go and play out of the eyes of the others. It was such a pleasure to witness. One by one the monks would arrive, toss off their robes, and enjoy the simplicty of playing in the water. It seemed that as they cast aside their robes they were also casting aside their worries and the expectations that came along with being a monk. Or atleast that's my assumption.

Cultural complication #2 was the fact that Yohan kindly asked me that I don't touch him when he didn't have his robe on. Which would be no problem if I wasn't attempting to teach him how to swim, but I was. I tried my best. Over and over again I demonstrated the movements of how I swam hoping he would gleam something from them. I had no idea what I was doing and I certainly was underqulaified for this task. Like a stone he sank every time, over and over again. We lasted an hour until we both gave up. In the end we made zero progress.

I learned two things from this experience:

1) I'm not qualified in anyway to give swimming lessons.

2) Even Buddhist monks break the "rules"

--- Corey