Wat Buddhamahamunee of Arlington

When I was growing up in Arlington, Texas, I would often drive past the Buddhist Meditation Center of Arlington, a local Buddhist temple called Wat Buddhamahamunee. Interestingly, it's a Thai temple! Long before I move to Thailand, had a Thai wife, or had even thought much about Thailand, I had seen this temple as I was driving around my own hometown!

Today, I had the chance to visit the temple for the very first time! My Thai fiancée and I are planning to get married this year. Our plan is to have a Buddhist wedding in the USA and a Christian wedding in Thailand. I know, it sounds kind of backwards. But we want to share our respective cultures with our partner's family and friends. Pinky's friends were really excited about attending a Christian wedding, and I know that my family and friends were really interested in seeing a Thai Buddhist wedding too.

We visited the temple in Arlington to chat with a monk so that we could try to arrange our wedding ceremony sometime in the next month or so!

The Thai temple, or Buddhist meditation center, is built in an old house in Arlington.

We entered the temple, not entirely sure what to expect. We were surprise by just how very Thai it was! It looked exactly like a Thai temple in Thailand, but if it was built inside an old Texas house, which, in fact, it was!

My fiancée even said that visiting the temple felt like home! There were a few American elements of course, like the US flag hanging outside as well as the "money tree" which looked odd to me draped with dollar bills rather than Thai baht notes.

The head monk welcomed us inside, and we stepped into the coziest Buddhist temple I had ever seen! The living room of the house had been converted into a carpeted prayer hall, complete with comfy couches for Americans who aren't used to kneeling for long periods of time. It was quiet. The windows and doors were open to allow the fresh air in, and it was surprisingly cool and comfortable, even without an air-conditioner running.

The monk welcomed us inside, and we stepped into the coziest Buddhist temple I had ever seen! The living room of the house had been converted into a carpeted prayer hall, complete with comfy couches for the poor Americans who aren't used to kneeling for long periods of time. The interesting thing was, it was still totally a Thai temple!

Luang Po, the head monk at the temple, sat us down at one of the sofas to chat with us. He told us he had been a monk in Chiang Mai for a few years before moving to Arlington as a Buddhist missionary in 1996. Since then, he told us, his purpose is to help people find their happiness and discover how to be grateful every day. He was a warm, friendly, jolly man with an easy laugh and a bright smile that even his COVID mask couldn't hide.

We had a nice chat, then the monks had to excuse themselves to go to eat lunch. Monks can eat only one meal per day, which must be eaten before noon. They invited us to explore the temple and relax for a while, which we did. Who would have ever thought there'd be a decent Thai population in Arlington, Texas, but apparently there is, and Wat Buddhamahamunee is not only the center of their religious lives, but also of their social and cultural lives!!