I see something in you was the general theme at the January 28 meeting of the Pattaya City Expats Club, as Marine-turned Buddhist Monk Ajarn (Teacher) Joey Davis shared how that led to his emotional and enlightening story of the life-changing moments that took him from a small town in Texas to being a Buddhist Monk in Thailand.
At age 17, Joey found himself in a jail cell. “I wasn’t afraid of the police, but I was afraid of my mother,” he said. She came to see him in jail, took hold of the bars, and cried tears of shame. His father said, “Don’t worry, you got that from your mother’s side. You need to work immediately.” The next day Joey started riding around with Sergeant Miles, a Marine recruiter, who said, “Joey I see something in you, but I’m not sure what.” “That was the first time someone had told me they saw something in me,” said Joey.
Joey recalled that Sergeant Miles had told him many stories about World War II. “He said, ‘Joey, the water was red, the froth from the waves was red, and the beach was red from the blood of men that day. That burned an image in my head that I still remember’.” At age 16 years old Joey had asked his dad, who had also been a Marine, to “tell us a good war story. You could have heard a pin drop,” said Joey. “Everyone’s eyes looked down at floor. I saw shame and fear in my father’s eyes, and he said ‘Son, there are no good war stories’.”
Nevertheless, Joey decided to join the U.S. Marines. “I had always wanted to find a way to prove myself,” he said. “I had visions of traveling around world, but Sergeant Miles convinced me it was better to see the world in the bottom of a ship.” But when he went to sign up, he was rejected because he was colorblind. Joey was so angry that he started yelling in the hall. Suddenly he heard a voice bellowing, “Come into my office, now.” Lt Colonel Gavin had heard him yelling in the hall, and said, “I see something in you, but I’m not sure what it is. I can give you a waiver to be in the infantry.” Joey ended up serving 17 years as a U.S. Marine, government employee and private military contractor. He served in Desert Storm, South America and Operation Iraqi Freedom.
One day in 2004 in Basra, Iraq, Joey was getting some food from his vehicle, when he heard gunfire. His men were already firing into a group of Iraqi protesters, so he joined in. “There were bodies everywhere,” he said. He reconned the area looking for weapons, but found none. He saw a little girl. “Our eyes locked, her hand moved, like a butterfly. I grabbed her hand, and watched her die. That night my commander said, ‘Davis, you look like you had a bad day.’ I said, ‘Yes it was a bad day. We killed a lot of innocent civilians.’ He said no, that was a good day. At that moment, I knew I was in the wrong place. I quit the Marines immediately.”
After that, Joey spent two years in Calcutta. “There was so much suffering, plus the suffering inside myself. I couldn’t connect to people laughing, having a good time,” he said. One day he walked by Sister Theresa’s Ministry of Mercy and ended up playing with the children there. “That brought my soul back,” said Joey. “It gave me a purpose.” One day while playing with the children, one of the Sisters said, “I see something in you. I don’t know what it is, but if you come and work with me I’ll help you find it.” Joey discovered that he loved teaching, and loved children. He became a teacher.
One day while teaching a group of girls in Thailand, it was karaoke day. He chose the song “You are My Sunshine,” and the first girl started crying because the words said, “I hung my head and cried.” He gave her a good grade and went on to the next girl, who also started crying. This continued with all the girls crying. He broke down, and cried uncontrollably for five hours. “I hadn’t cried in 26 years,” he said. “I didn’t realize how much I had been holding inside. All the violence, the anger, it all came out.”
After that, Joey decided to take a holiday at Koh Phangan in Southern Thailand. While there he took a job running a resort, but after three years he needed a break. “It was like having a glass of water in hell; you just can’t reach it,” he said. “Everyone else is on holiday.”
A friend suggested that he become a Buddhist monk, and one year ago, he did just that. “I realize that being in this monk’s robe I’m expected to stand up here and talk about Buddhism,” said Joey. “I don’t know anything about it. I still look at it from a Western point of view. I’m trying to get rid of my Western beliefs so I can understand. It’s like ladies cleaning your closet after years and years of accumulating clothes, throwing away old things, things you thought you would wear someday. The more I clear out my mind, the more I go deeper into what I thought I am, I realize it was based on what someone else thought I was. I’ve been broken, lost and broke. It took 27 little girls to beat me and put me back together so I would have the strength to look into myself and learn who I really was.”
After Joey answered several questions from the audience, MC Ren Lexander brought everyone up to date on club activities and was followed by the Open Forum portion of the meeting, where questions are asked and answered or comments made about Expat living in Pattaya.
For more information about the PCEC, visit their website at www.pcecclub.org.
