It was a memory Thích Giác Ngo could not get out of his head, a memory that changed his life. It caused him to leave his Southern Baptist roots and embrace Buddhism, not only as a believer but also as an ordained monk.
“I came to know the memories of reincarnation,” Thích Giác Ngo said. “I had experiences of a past life — vivid memories.”
Thích Giác Ngo had visions of a past life in college, but his most vivid didn’t come until decades later. As part of the Society of Creative Anachronisms, an international organization that recreates skills and arts of pre-17th-century Europe, Thích Giác Ngo was reenacting a unique Irish liturgy one day in the early 1990s with his group.
As he was speaking, it hit him — a waking dream that put him in a church in Ireland.
“All of a sudden, I wasn’t in the woods in Florida anymore,” he said.
He looked around at the congregation and realized he knew all of them. Thích Giác Ngo vividly remembers peering through the crowd to the back wall of the church.
Thích Giác Ngo believes the liturgy was a stimulus that awakened him to his past life, just like a smell or music can trigger a memory.
Born John Missing, he used to get into heated debates with his sister who was Buddhist long before Thích Giác Ngo. The two always argued about the tenant of reincarnation. But Buddhism seemed like the answer to him on that day in the woods.
“Buddhism made sense,” he said. “It was built to be logical. The Buddha said, ‘Don’t trust what I said. Test it.’”
It wasn’t until 2006 that Thích Giác Ngo went to his first Buddhist retreat and later converted.
While he was in the grocery store one day, another Buddhist saw him in his robes and asked if he would be willing to teach classes about the Buddha in English to children at a Vietnamese monastery in Tampa. He agreed and started to visit the monastery more frequently. There, he found a small house of communal living and a great teacher.
In 2008, Thích Giác Ngo was diagnosed with prostate cancer but was in remission by 2011.
“I had faced a lot of death in my life,” he said. “The best way I can live the rest of my life was to become a monk.”
True, Thích Giác Ngo is no stranger to death. He was born with a heart defect and collapsed many times as a child, but doctors could not diagnose him. In 1983, he was in a car accident in which he ripped open his aortic artery. Thích Giác Ngo should not have survived the injury. In the process, doctors finally were able to diagnose his heart defect. They told him he shouldn’t have grown up because the defect restricted organ growth.
Now an ordained monk, Thích Giác Ngo is temporarily moving out of his monastery and back to his hometown, Plant City, to make room for the founding nun and her attendants.
In January, Thích Giác Ngo started his own meditation classes at Unity Christ Church, with the permission of his teacher. He teaches the most basic fundamentals of meditation, such as the seven-point posture.
“It’s about getting your mind in the present moment and not letting it wander all around,” Thích Giác Ngo said.
He also teaches the dharma, or the teachings of the Buddha, which include reincarnation impermanence and karma.
Thích Giác Ngo encourages those who aren’t Buddhists to come. Meditation is linked to many health benefits. Furthermore, he said his classes won’t conflict with those who already subscribe to other faiths.
“In mainstream Christianity, there is no place for past lives,” Thích Giác Ngo said. “But you can still be Christian; you don’t have to accept all tenants of Buddhism.”
Contact Amber Jurgensen at ajurgensen@plantcityobserver.com.
IF YOU GO
Meditation Classes
WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursdays
WHERE: Unity Christ Church, 1911 N. Gordon St.
INFORMATION: Email to into.my.tablet@gmail.comWiHack Mobile