Most memoirs either depict a a tragic childhood or a spiritual enlightenment.  If you are looking for a way to find enlightenment, “A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants” is probably not the spiritual guide book you are looking for to lead the way. This memoir details the life of Jaed Mucharoen Coffin, who travels back to his mother’s homeland of Thailand in order to satisfy a promise he made to his family there to return as a Buddhist monk.

Instead of the spiritual journey you might expect the author to live in his temporary role as a Buddhist monk, Jaed seems lost much of the time because of a lack of language and his natural confusion about the Buddhist rituals he is performing that he does not fully understand. For example, before his initiation as a monk, he worries that his chanting won’t be up the standards of the other monks because he can’t quite position his larger frame in quite the right way. Surprisingly, he somehow makes it through, but is somewhat disappointed that he failed to have the epiphany or magic moment that he yearned for.

One of the best parts of the book focuses his conversations with a forest monk who doesn’t quite understand Jaed’s thirst for adventure and travel as a way to find himself. At one point, Narong (the forest monk) tells the young American that, “I am having many idea inside my head. Maybe am to talking to Buddha in god language to speak about living in the cave.” Lines like this really give you a sense that maybe Jaed had more than a language barrier in understanding his environment. Also, as someone who has traveled to Asia on more than one occasion, I appreciated the writer’s phrasing of the monk’s speech. In case you are eager to call Xenophobia, remember that the author is also shy about his own grasp of Thai and depicts his conversations in Thai in an equally grammatically-challenged manner.

The writer keeps a pretty quirky and humble perspective throughout the book. He doesn’t seem to have the belief that he reached any spiritual heights through his journey, but was genuinely thrilled to have had the opportunity to come closer to his homeland and to visit his extended family, who greeted him with warmth and treated him with kindness throughout his stay.

I won’t give the end of his stay away, but he does eventually agree with another monk about where the best place is to find the Buddha. Here’s a hint: it’s not a cave.