Today is March 3, 2016 and it is the first time that I am writing in my blog.  I want to write today about my search for inner peace and more.  I suppose I've been on this quest from way back when but failed in my search until about twelve years ago.  Before then, I had experienced the kind of deep misery and hopelessness that kept gnawing at my soul.  Outwardly, I was a normal enough person and I could not let anyone know that I found life meaningless and painful.  I couldn't because everyone else around me seemed to be enjoying the life they had.  I just didn't understand why I couldn't be just like them.  One of my close friends once remarked to me, what is it that you are searching for?  I didn't answer her because I didn't really know then what I was searching for.  All I knew was that there had to be more to life than the life I had.

Sometime in August, 2004, I was visiting my family at the family home.  I heard my two younger sisters talk about going to make merit at Wat Phra Dhammakaya.  Wat is a Thai word and means temple.  Phra is the Thai word used to call a Buddhist monk, the letter h is silent.  Unlike my sisters, I had chosen to follow my father's faith which is Protestantism.  In my late teens, I converted to Catholicism.  Over the years I had spent going to school in the United States, I was a fundamental Christian.  I had read the Old Testament and the New Testament in its entirety.  But eventually, I no longer subscribed to the Christian Faith.  I began to read about New Age Philosophy and other works on spirituality.  By the time I returned to Thailand to live, I had no religion.  I was told by a Thai person that everyone who made a home in Thailand ought to make merit at a Buddhist temple.  Being an open-minded person, I listened.

As a child, whenever I passed by a Buddhist monk, I would pay him respect (Namaskar).  I enjoyed seeing people putting food into the monks' alms-bowls.  I just thought it was such an admirable act. But that was the extent of it.  Back to what this person told me about making merit at a Buddhist temple.  I asked him some questions about how a person went about doing it.  Having been equipped with some information, I began to buy many useful items including laundry detergent, soap bars, toothbrushes, toothpastes, non-perishable foods, some over the counter medicine for headaches, colds, coughs, etc., and went around different temples to donate these items.  I must admit that after the clean and quiet churches in the U.S. and the U.K., I could not get used to the Buddhist temples that I went to.  The main problems I had were the temple dogs and cats and the mess they made in the temple grounds.  Upon remarking the situation to a friend, she told me that there was one Buddhist temple that she was sure I would find to my enormous liking.  The name of the temple was Wat Phra Dhammakaya.

Back on that day when I was visiting my family, as soon as I heard my sisters talking about making merit at Wat Phra Dhammakaya Temple.  My ears perked up and I thought that if they invited me to come along, I would most certainly join them.  Just at that moment, my youngest sister turned to me and asked if I would like to join them.  My immediate answer was, "Yes!".