The family behind it.

A short, honest account of who writes this, and why the name is exactly what it says.

Ben Cunningham with his wife Ploy and their two sons

Ben Cunningham.

Ben is an American, originally from the Pacific Northwest, who has spent years building a life in Isan and Chiang Mai, Thailand alongside his wife Ploy and their three sons. He's trained in logotherapy as a daily, lived practice rather than a purely clinical one — which is most visible in the year-long program he leads at Transcendent.com.

His own family calls him "the Baptized Buddhist" — a nickname that started as a joke about how often he was in two places at once, a Christian church on one morning and a Buddhist temple the next, and became the truest short description anyone in the family has found for how he actually thinks.

A traditional house-blessing ceremony for the Cunningham family, monk presiding

A house blessing for the Cunningham family — a Buddhist monk presiding, in a ceremony the whole family took part in. Rooted in both, in practice, not just in name.

Why the name fits the whole family.

Ploy grew up in a small village outside Surin and taught herself English from cassette tapes at age nine — a discipline she later built into USAEnglish.com's Isan Storytelling Championship. Their three sons are being raised fluent in both the family's traditions and both of its languages, without ever being asked to choose one over the other.

"Baptized Buddhist" isn't a brand built around a clever contradiction. It's just the plainest possible description of a household that draws on a baptism and a temple in the same week, and has stopped apologizing for it.

Where to go next

Read the writing, or see the practice.

Finding Your Why is the best starting point. Practice lays out where the ideas actually get lived.

Read Finding Your Why → See the practice →