A story about healing through Buddhism in Thailand, written with stillness and soul by Dave Hibbins.
Flight from Noise
The ambulance lights bounced off the mirrored high-rises of Martin Place as they wheeled him out of the lift. He wasn’t dying—but he didn’t know that yet.
His chest was tight, vision blurred, palms soaked with sweat. At thirty-six, Callum Wright thought he was having a heart attack. In truth, it was only a very public panic attack—brought on by stress, caffeine, and a half-snorted line of coke—all wrapped in a grey Hugo Boss suit on a Thursday morning.
The hospital tests came back clean. “Your heart’s fine,” the physician said, gently tapping his chart. “But your life probably isn’t.”
Callum gave a polite chuckle, but the doctor didn’t.
“You’ve got time to change,” the man said, “but not much of it, if you stay on this path.”
That night, Callum didn’t sleep. For the first time in years, he didn’t revise a pitch deck in bed, didn’t half-watch a streaming show while checking futures markets. He just lay there—awake. Staring at the ceiling. Letting the truth settle.
He left a week later.
He didn’t tell his firm, not properly. Just walked out of a twelve-year career with a two-line email and a signed NDA. He booked a one-way ticket to Thailand from his balcony, barefoot, still holding a protein smoothie.
Bangkok hit him like a nightclub speaker pressed to the chest. The moment he stepped off the plane, it was sweat, sound, and the sweet, soupy air of too many engines and street grills. But it wasn’t until the first night that he questioned what he’d done.
He wandered from Sukhumvit into Nana without meaning to. A beer turned into three. A fourth came with a smile and a hand on his arm from a woman with dark eyes and a tiger tattoo just above her hip. She asked nothing about who he was—just if he was alone. And that was enough.
Her apartment was small, cool, and lit by pink neon bleeding in from the window. They didn’t speak much. It was over quickly. She rolled over and slept easily, but Callum lay awake again, this time under a humming fan, staring at the ceiling, somehow more alone than he’d been the night before in Sydney.
“From the kettle into the fire,” he whispered to himself. And the fan hummed back.
The next morning, he flew north.
Chiang Mai descended slowly into view—green and misty. The domestic airport was smaller, calmer. No rush. No glassy ads for watches and watches and watches.
The tuk-tuk that carried him to his guesthouse moved like a dragonfly. There was no hurry. No one on the street even seemed to look up from their conversations or fruit carts or lives.
He checked into a simple room with a fan, no TV. The old man at the desk gave him a folded paper map. Callum held it like a relic from another century.
That evening, just before the sun dipped behind the mountains, he found a quiet noodle cart tucked beside a small temple wall. He sat alone on a low stool, the bowl of broth steaming gently before him.
A monk passed, barefoot, his alms bowl tucked against his side like a question never asked.
Callum didn’t reach for his phone. He didn’t even think about it.
For the first time in years, he just sat.
And the quiet didn’t scare him.
The Man in Orange
The rooster started first. Then the temple bells. Then the soft scrape of a broom on stone.
Callum blinked awake to the sound of morning moving slowly outside his shuttered guesthouse room. There were no alarms, no meetings. No phone calls. Just the weight of still being here.
He slipped into a t-shirt and cargo shorts, stepped into sandals, and picked up the bamboo walking stick the old man at reception had loaned him. “For soi dogs,” he’d said with a chuckle and a missing tooth. “They don’t bite often. Only when angry. Or bored.”
The sun was already building heat. The air had that Chiang Mai morning mix of cool shade and burning stone. He walked slowly, passing a row of potted orchids and scooters still asleep under blue tarps. The temple wall came into view just ahead—Wat Phra Singh, he’d learned from a hand-drawn map the owner had circled in red.
And there he was. The monk.
Young. Maybe mid-twenties. Bald. Barefoot. Wrapped in radiant orange that seemed to glow in the morning haze. He moved slowly along the outer wall, sweeping fallen frangipani petals into a loose pile with a handmade broom. Not for efficiency. Not for show. Just… doing.
Callum slowed, watched, didn’t approach.
The next morning, he saw him again. Same time. Same place. Another pile of petals, another quiet motion.
By the third morning, Callum had made it a point. Not a ritual, not yet. But a pattern. He walked the same route, stick in hand. Noticed the same painted naga heads at the temple gate. Passed the same two dogs that watched but didn’t bark. He liked that they tolerated him now.
That morning was hotter. Sticky even before breakfast. He wiped sweat from his forehead and adjusted the strap on his shoulder bag. As he turned the corner past a monk’s dormitory wall, the orange-robed figure appeared again—this time, carrying a silver alms bowl in one hand and a carton in the other.
The monk looked at him, paused, and held out the carton.
Almond milk. Cold.
Callum blinked, confused for a beat. Then he reached out and took it.
“Thank you,” he said softly.
The monk nodded once. No words. Just stood for a moment. Then pulled another small carton from his satchel and handed it over, too.
This one he placed directly into Callum’s hand.
Still no words. Just a brief eye contact—serene, unreadable—and the monk turned to continue his alms round.
Callum stood still for a long time, both cartons in hand, surrounded by the sound of morning birds, brooms, bells, and nothing else.
Later, sitting outside the guesthouse sipping the almond milk, Callum couldn’t stop thinking about that moment. How strange it was that no one had ever given him something without asking for anything in return. Not a deal. Not a pitch. Not even a conversation.
He realized he hadn’t looked at his phone in two days.
He didn’t miss it.
The monk hadn’t needed to say a thing. And Callum had heard something anyway.
Not a message. Not advice. Just… stillness.
Maybe this was what healing through Buddhism in Thailand looked like—not a book or a retreat, but a man in orange, offering a stranger a second carton.
The Wat and the Question
Callum stood at the edge of Wat Phra Singh’s grounds, just past the low white boundary wall. He wasn’t sure if he should go further in—this wasn’t a tourist attraction, not really. It was too alive for that. A place where people bowed and lit incense and whispered things not meant to be shared.
But no one stopped him.
The gates were open, and the morning sun angled through the tamarind trees like gold filtered through lace. So he stepped forward, slowly, quietly, sticking to the paved path.
The temple grounds were nothing like the glossy images in guidebooks. They were more. Older, deeper, softer in the corners. Monks moved barefoot between buildings with unhurried grace, and each roof beam and gilded carving seemed to hum with age and breath.
He passed a towering chedi, its base wrapped in saffron cloth and soft offerings—lotus petals, folded leaves, marigolds fading in the heat. A breeze caught a line of triangular flags and made them flutter like prayerful birds.
A bell chimed somewhere deeper in the compound, followed by the faint rhythm of chanting—low, steady, round like a drum rolled in honey.
To his right was the ubosot, its red-tiled roof lifted in tiers like wings, gold serpent heads coiled protectively at the corners. He didn’t go in, didn’t even approach the steps. He just watched it from beneath the shade of a banyan tree.
It was enough to be near.
He came back the next day. And the one after that.
By now, the tuk-tuk drivers didn’t call to him. The mango seller outside the temple gate nodded in quiet recognition. The rhythm of the wat was beginning to sync with something inside him he’d forgotten how to hear.
That morning, the monk was already sitting under the eaves of one of the library buildings. He wasn’t sweeping this time. Just sitting. Spine straight. Eyes half-closed. Hands resting in his lap like a quiet pool.
Callum felt hesitant, even awkward. But he walked to a nearby bench—not too close—and sat down.
He didn’t try to meditate. He didn’t close his eyes. He just breathed. Watched the monk. Watched the way a bird landed on the balustrade, then took off again. Listened to the gentle clicking of wind chimes. Smelled jasmine, and dust, and burnt incense.
Time moved, but didn’t press.
When the monk eventually stood and turned to leave, Callum raised his hand slightly—more instinct than decision.
The monk paused.
“I keep thinking I should be doing something,” Callum said quietly. “Like… more.”
The monk regarded him with calm eyes, not unkind. “You are sitting.”
“I mean something that matters.”
A small smile formed on the monk’s lips. “What is more than sitting?”
Callum laughed under his breath, not out of mockery but recognition. He looked at the space between them, then back up. “How do you know you’re doing it right?”
The monk tilted his head. “What is ‘right’ for a cloud?”
Then he bowed. Just slightly. And walked on.
That evening, Callum didn’t go to the noodle cart. He didn’t open his laptop or journal.
He returned to the bench near the library building and sat. No phone. No plan. Just a bottle of water and the bench.
He didn’t try to breathe deeply. He didn’t count anything. He just let the stillness happen around him—and slowly, inside him too.
Maybe this was what healing through Buddhism in Thailand really looked like. Not enlightenment. Not rules. Just a man sitting quietly beside a question—and finally not needing to answer it.
The Bowl and the Bell
The days had begun to fold into one another like clean sheets—soft, undramatic, uncreased. Callum no longer counted them. He only noticed the way the sun shifted when it rose, and how the light pooled differently in the temple courtyard as the rains edged closer.
He had a rhythm now. He woke before dawn. Not because he set an alarm, but because something in him had reset. The stillness before the city stirred had become his favorite part of the day.
Some mornings he’d sit on the edge of the wat, watching the monks begin their alms round. They moved like water—no chatter, no jostling, only footsteps and the creak of the gate opening. He never followed. Never intruded. He simply sat near the frangipani tree, nodding respectfully as they passed. The young monk always acknowledged him with a subtle glance—never an invitation, never dismissal. Just a thread of silent recognition.
It had been weeks.
He wasn’t sure what changed that morning. Perhaps nothing did.
He had just tied his sandals and stepped into the thin light before dawn when he noticed the young monk waiting near the gate. He wasn’t alone—two other monks stood behind him, already barefoot, bowls in hand.
The monk stepped forward and held something out to Callum.
It wasn’t a bowl. It was a folded white cloth—simple, clean, and plain.
Callum took it without speaking. The monk nodded, turned, and began to walk.
Without fully understanding why, Callum felt drawn forward—and he followed.
Chiang Mai at 5 a.m. was a different city. The streets were quiet but not asleep. There were old women sweeping the pavement in front of closed shops. Roosters calling from behind wooden gates. Steam rising from a lone street cart boiling soy milk.
The alms round was not a procession. It was a practice. A loop of reverence. Monks walked in single file, slow and barefoot. Locals waited barefoot on low stools, or on mats in front of their homes, heads bowed, eyes lowered. They didn’t talk. They placed food—mostly sticky rice, bananas, or packets of curry—gently into the open bowls. A gift, not an offering. Gratitude, not charity.
Callum stayed a half-step behind the monk, walking where the monk walked, stopping when he stopped. His cloth was folded and tucked into his hands, just as he’d seen laypeople do.
He didn’t try to understand it. He just honored it.
They turned down a quiet soi near the edge of the old moat. A Thai couple knelt together in front of their home, their daughter between them. She couldn’t have been more than six, still dressed in her school uniform, hair tied in pink ribbons. She held a small packet of rice wrapped in banana leaf and waited with the kind of stillness only Thai children seemed to understand.
As the monk bowed slightly to receive the rice, the girl looked up at Callum. Her eyes didn’t judge or question. They just… accepted.
She offered him a smile.
It undid him.
He didn’t expect it—the way his chest caved in. The sudden, slow wash of warmth rising up through his throat and behind his eyes. He smiled back, blinked quickly, but the tears came anyway. Softly, silently, in the quiet morning, barefoot and unworthy and filled with something he hadn’t felt in years.
Something gentle. Something he couldn’t name.
The monk glanced back, saw the tears, and said nothing.
They continued walking.
When they returned to the temple, the sun had climbed just enough to cast gold across the roof tiles. Callum stepped out of his sandals and followed the monk back to the banyan tree.
He expected the morning to simply end. That the ritual would close with a nod or a quiet dispersal. But the monk paused.
He reached into a cloth satchel slung over his shoulder and drew out a small brass bowl.
It was worn smooth by time. Dull, but beautiful in its simplicity.
He held it out with both hands and waited until Callum mirrored the gesture.
“For you,” he said, softly, in English.
No one had ever trusted him like this. Without words, without expectations.
Callum didn’t know what to say. He looked down at the bowl, then up again.
“To remember to empty it often,” the monk said.
And then he turned and walked away.
He didn’t return to his room right away.
The brass bowl felt heavier than it looked—not just in weight, but in meaning. It wasn’t ornamental. It wasn’t symbolic. It was something else entirely: a gesture of trust, perhaps. Or of silence understood.
He sat on the edge of the stone platform near the chedi, bowl in lap, unsure what to do with it. He didn’t pray. He didn’t pretend to. He simply stayed there until the shadows changed and a breeze kicked up the dry leaves at his feet.
Eventually, he rose, bowed his head toward the monks as they passed, and walked back through the temple gates with the bowl tucked under his arm.
Back at the guesthouse, he placed it gently on the bedside table. Not on display, not surrounded by incense or candles or any makeshift altar. Just… there. Beside his watch, which he hadn’t worn in weeks.
He sat cross-legged on the floor, eyes fixed on it. He didn’t feel enlightened. He didn’t feel changed. He felt… awake. Tired, yes, but alert in a new way—like a fever had broken or a constant buzzing had gone quiet.
He thought about that little girl’s smile. About the way she’d knelt beside her parents without fidgeting or needing attention. About how she gave something away with grace, without performance or pride.
He thought about all the things he’d held on to over the years.
Careers and expectations. Proving things to people who weren’t looking. The constant fear of being unremarkable. The phone that pinged every ten minutes. The grind. The chase.
He had filled his bowl with all of it, every day. Piled it high. Called it success.
No one ever told him it was okay to set it down.
That night, the old man at reception nodded toward the bowl when Callum passed through the lobby.
“You keep?” he asked, smiling.
Callum smiled back. “I think it keeps me.”
The old man chuckled. “Many farang come here,” he said, patting the counter. “They want peace fast. Like fast food. But not this kind. This kind…” He gestured to his chest. “This is slow soup.”
Callum laughed, not because it was funny, but because it was perfect.
The days that followed were quieter, but not still. The world continued. The city pulsed. Tuk-tuks honked, and cafes filled with students and digital nomads. Rain clouds rolled over the hills by afternoon.
But something had shifted.
He no longer felt the need to name what he was doing.
He no longer asked if it was working.
He walked more. Sometimes to nowhere. He sat at the temple most days but not every day. He watched how the monks carried themselves. Not as men separate from life, but as men moving gently within it.
He noticed things he would have missed before: the way a flower closed just before rain, or how even the most worn stone paths gleamed after a shower.
He ate slowly. He chewed. He stopped checking the time while he was eating.
He started breathing with intention—not to meditate, not to reach some Zen goal—but because it made his body feel kind.
He stopped asking what came next.
One morning, he passed by the girl and her family again. They were walking to school, the daughter trailing behind with a small satchel bouncing at her side.
When she saw him, she paused, smiled again, then skipped forward to catch up with her mother.
Callum stood there for a long time.
The street smelled of wet pavement and grilled pork. The sky was the color of early apricot. There were errands he could run, cafés he could sit in, things he could fill his time with.
Instead, he returned to the temple.
He sat in the shadow of the chedi, next to his bowl.
Empty.
And full.
The Path to Nowhere
Chiang Mai had softened him—not in a visible way, but quietly inside. Not in a way that could be documented or explained. But the city no longer felt like a destination or a place he was passing through. It felt like part of him now. A rhythm he had started keeping without realizing.
The early mornings still drew him out of bed, but no longer out of obligation or habit. He didn’t check the time. He didn’t prepare. Some days he walked to the temple. Other days he just wandered the sois near the moat, sipping soy milk from a plastic bag, nodding at the same people who no longer treated him like a foreigner, just someone familiar.
This morning was quiet. The kind of quiet that settles in you, not just around you.
He walked the long route—past the corner market, past the tree with the wind chimes, past the little dog that no longer barked at him.
There was no plan to meet the monk. He hadn’t seen him for a few days. Maybe he’d traveled. Maybe he was inside, studying or sweeping or sleeping. Callum didn’t wonder too hard. The need to seek had softened too.
When he arrived at the temple, the courtyard was empty except for a squirrel darting across a low roof and a cat sleeping in a sunbeam near the library wall.
He took his usual seat under the banyan tree. The bench was warm from the morning sun.
He set the bowl beside him.
Not on display. Not as a gesture. Just there.
He breathed in slowly, the scent of incense from somewhere nearby, the sharpness of fresh-cut grass, the faint smoke of cooking rice rising from a home outside the wall.
His hands rested on his knees. His spine found its own balance.
He didn’t think about Sydney.
He didn’t think about what would come next.
He didn’t need to.
At some point, a single frangipani petal drifted from above and landed softly in the brass bowl beside him.
He watched it spiral and settle at the bottom, weightless.
He didn’t reach for it. Didn’t remove it. He just let it be.
Some days the bowl was empty.
Some days he was.
The breeze picked up a little as he stood. The cat stretched and rolled onto its side. A chime rang from a shrine deeper in the grounds.
He placed the bowl back in his bag—not reverently, just carefully—and began the slow walk out through the temple gate.
There were no tourists today. No urgency. Just the sound of his sandals on stone and a soft clink of the bowl as he adjusted the strap.
He stepped back onto the street, past the same gate he’d entered weeks ago as someone else.
A tuk-tuk buzzed in the distance.
The morning was open, undefined. He could walk. He could eat. He could sit all day, and the world would not ask him to prove anything.
He turned left instead of right, following no path in particular.
Behind him, a bell rang once.
Clear. Hollow. Whole.
He hadn’t come here to find anything.
And he hadn’t.
But he did stay.
Looking for more quiet places between the lines?
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