In December 2006, my son Ethan was home for his winter break from college. He got a call at 3 or 4 in the morning from his best friend from the neighborhood, who was very drunk.

Ethan ran downstairs and found his friend with a Korean Buddhist monk who happened by—like Lenny Bruce's Lone Ranger, but in this case a spiritual Lone Ranger.

The monk was trying to help him, and invited them to his loft around the corner. He gave them a meditation lesson, made a tea ceremony for them, had them stretch and sent them on their way at dawn.

My son liked him so much he went back to the monk's loft every day for a week for meditation lessons. Then he invited the monk to our house for dinner. The monk came, saw my paintings and the rope, and started climbing and swinging on it.

He also tried on the spandex jackets from my paintings and asked if I had "shades," which he wore.

He then invited us to his loft for dinner and numerous tea ceremonies. He taught my younger son Jed the nuances of making different teas. He's a great cook. He would come often to our house, sometimes with other monks and groups of other mostly Korean people, very few of whom spoke much English. Sometimes they would cook elaborate dinners for us, and even brought the food. Some of the guests were people Sunim had met in the street, sometimes very unusual people. A month or so after I met Sunim, I asked my son if he thought Sunim would let me paint him. My son thought there was no chance, but I asked him anyway, and he agreed right away.

There was never any sense of direct competition on my part or the monk's part about rope climbing, although he was much better at it than I was.

I just understood "Sunim" to mean monk. I wasn't sure about teacher, although he calls people he meets and spends a lot of time with his "students."

—Arthur Cohen