Things I regret

There are many things that I did as the manager of the monastery that I am not at all proud about. I think I have a lot of people to say sorry to for the way I treated them and the things I did as the manager throughout 2008. I know for a fact that I made some persons stay in the monastery less than pleasant in a lot of ways. I was stressed out, I was over-worked, and I was increasingly frustrated. My tolerance levels were at an all time low that year. Not an excuse, but at least an explanation.

Our management and leadership team often felt at odds with a specific member of the monastery. I don't think there was any specific reason for it, other than just a clash of personalities. But sometimes it did mean that our meetings together, including my meetings with my mentor, would be overshadowed by discussions about all the problems we perceived in this one monk. As you can probably tell by the nature of this blog, I am pretty good at verbalizing problems I perceive in myself and people around me, and the world in general. As a result I would often be asked to write letters to our monastery authorities explaining all the issues we had with this one particular person. It was a very awkward position for me to be in, especially because sometimes he and I would have a great friendship, and other times it seemed like we both needed to get as far away from each other as possible.

Having to think deeply and write about another persons problematic and chronic behaviour wasn't very pleasant. It made me feel awkward sometimes, knowing that I would be responsible for any trouble that came his way as a result. It was also difficult having to continue working alongside someone so closely who I felt I had betrayed. It only served to weaken our friendship at times. Throughout 2008 this was a back and forth issue. Sometimes things were going very smoothly, other times they weren't. I know that I caused him a lot of stress over the years, and when I left the monastery I sent him a text letting him know I was sorry for everything I had done that caused him suffering. In 2009 our relationship had improved, especially the last half of the year. And now we still catch up regularly.

We also had two younger monks staying with us in 2008, both of which I mistreated on a regular basis, mainly because I struggled to deal with their immaturity and lack of practical skills. I struggled because it felt like I was living with teenagers again, who expected me to do so much for them without any respect in return. It was a difficult thing for me to deal with, especially while I was already stressed out and frustrated.

One had been in the monastery since 2006. I pretty much started hassling him from the very beginning of his stay there. I remember I once told him off for wasting water once while brushing his teeth or something like that, and everything grew from there. I remember feeling angry at him because I felt like I was doing so much work to keep the monastery afloat. The vegetarian lunches I sold at UNITEC and AUT was our major source of income, and I was also looking after all management affairs, keeping bills paid and bellies full in that way. This one monk was suffering from ill health. He was also a rather intense character, very unique. And I couldn't really deal with it well.

I was always aware it was a problem, and I tried my hardest on a number of times to get over my nastiness. I remember once just getting so nasty and personal one weekend. It almost scared me that I could be so mean. I had just spent a week of madly running around with the university programs I had going. I had been completely frustrated by incompetent management meetings and morning five minutes meetings. And it was another hectic Sunday for me. I just wanted a little help filling up the water buckets, and he wasn't interested in helping, despite doing nothing much all week. Of course, he was suffering from health problems, like due in part to the way I treated him sometimes. I just lost it at him at that point, and felt very bitter towards him. That scared me a lot, and I promised myself to work harder to get over my intolerance towards the younger monks.

Eventually, the management decided that we were unable to cope with him anymore, that he would be more happy in his spiritual life if he were to leave the monastery altogether. We had a discussion with our overseeing authority, and the decision was made that he would return to Wellington, and prepare to consider married life. I think that my mistreatment of him served to push this result. After he left the monastery I think our relationship improved by a million. The times I did see him we acted like old friends. I would like the chance to say sorry to him again.

In early 2008 we also had another young monk join our monastery. He was the youngest who ever came to stay with us, and the most lacking in life experience. I felt sorry for him, in that he was so young and immature, yet he found himself in a very intense monastery where so much was expected of him. He struggled with pretty much everything practical, and the older monks all struggle to accommodate and tolerate his youthful energy and lack of experience. He was chastised and told off by pretty much everyone in the monastery over the course of his stay. When he would cook with us for the Thursday lunches we would always be complaining about how slow he was. Some days I tried to keep positive with him, and joke through the cooking, other days, when time was running out, and things needed to come together with the meals we were cooking, I just didn't have to tolerance to deal with him.

Then, one morning in December, during the book distribution marathon, when there were only three of us at the monastery, he woke up early, packed his bags and left without any of us noticing. I felt so bad when he left. I knew that part of the reason he left was because of the treatment he received from me. I did some investigative work, and discovered that he had arranged with a relative to stay at their house in Auckland for a few days before heading off to Wellington, and then eventually back to Australia. I felt bad that I didn't get a chance to say sorry for the way I treated him. And I felt bad that I had become the cause of someone feeling bullied in our monastery.

In 2008 a friend of mine left the monastery under a similar situation. I hope he doesn't mind me telling that story. One day, after he had come back from a trip to Whangarei to distribute books, everything just seemed to change for him. It just seemed like a totally different person had returned from the trip away. In the morning he had a back and forth argument with the young monk I described above, and it just seemed so out of character. At the end of the backing and forthing, I dealt with the situation like I deal with most uncomfortable situations I find myself in, I used humour. I made a joke reference to how that was like watching a tennis match, back and forth. He just replied with a "Yeah, well not for long."

So some reason when I heard those words I knew he was planning to leave the monastery for good. That was a Tuesday, I remember because I had to do a cooking class at MIT that day. That cooking class was mostly a failure, because the campus had failed to turn the power on for the kitchen we were using. So, instead I brought everyone back home to the monastery to cook instead. As usual, I made massive misjudgments in terms of the quantities I was cooking, and ended up with much to much food in the end. Which was lucky for my friend who was going to pick his mother up from the airport that evening before spending some time with her in Hamilton. I knew he was planning on leaving, so I figured he was going to need food, so I packed him up with what was very possibly something like 16 litres of food! He left that evening, with the car my parents had donated to the monastery, and left for good.

I'm not entirely certain about the circumstances of his leaving, nor exactly what happened once he left. He wasn't gone for long. He called me up at one point, as our Guru was visiting Auckland. He asked me for advice on the fastest way he could get up to Auckland from down south. There were no buses that would get him there fast, my only advice was to hitch hike up, which he did. I had to laugh about that situation, but also admire his enthusiasm.

When he left I felt very bad. I wished he would have told me first, so that I could have given him some money to help him out on his way, so that I would at least know that he was okay. It was the not knowing what had happened, or whether he had himself organised that worried me the most. His leaving was so abrupt, it seemed poorly planned, so I was worried that he would be struggling to get by, or to slot into whatever life he had planned. But he came back for a while, not to live in the monastery, but to try another style of Krishna consciousness. Then he left again. And now it looks like he's back. In fact, the very day before I left the monastery for good he contacted me over the internet to tell me he was planning on returning to Krishna consciousness. I didn't really know how to respond, whether to let him know I was leaving, or pretend to be enthusiastic that he was coming back.

The final part of 2008 I think I will talk about is a festival that he had at the end of October. That was a weekend of highs and lows for me, and a weekend during which I had a lot to think over and contemplate. I spent the entire weekend, from Thursday until I think Monday, serving my Guru 24 hours a day. That was a very unique, and exhausting, experience.

A weekend in the 'Tron

When I moved out of Hamilton at the beginning of 2003 I had put together a small zine with my then girlfriend, as a sort of reflection on the time I had spent in that small city. In my opening words of that zine I thanked a number of my friends who, I felt, had given me so much and helped me out at a time in my life when I most needed friends around me. Of course, since becoming a Hare Krishna I had pretty much zero contact with them whatsoever. In fact, when discussing my feelings of indebtedness to my friends who had helped me out over the years most devotees would kinda smirk about it, because the help they had given me had done little to nothing for my spiritual advancement. In fact, I was told that any help that was given by my friends and family was actually a spiritual poison, because it simply served to increase my material attachments and desires. I had a hard time swallowing such a cold analysis of life.

With Suzy's death I started feeling like I needed to get in touch with the people in my life who had helped me out so much over the years, especially those people who had gone the extra mile to make my life happy at times when I struggled to smile through the days. It was not a comfortable feeling knowing that I had neglected these relationships for so long. It made me feel genuinely awful, even made my stomach turn to think that I had turned my back on these people for so long, especially since I had not really developed any friendships within the community I was confined to at the time that really even came close to being as sincerely supportive as those.

In May myself and another monk were asked to help cover for some friends in Hamilton, who were running a restaurant there at the university. They needed to head down south for the weekend, returning on Monday, but they needed someone to cook and open up their little restaurant for them on Monday morning. We had to come down on Thursday night, help out with the evening program they had at their house, then get up early on Friday to learn the routine for the day. The weekend we had to ourselves for the most part.

At the time my little brother had a friend who was coming sometimes to the evening events at the Krishna place there. He had a few friends in Hamilton, and would sometimes head down to visit and hang out and go to shows. He decided to come down that weekend as well. He came to the program on Thursday evening, and we hung out together on Friday and Saturday.

On Friday morning I was supposed to get up to learn how to cook and everything. But when morning came I didn't budge. I felt completely exhausted. I had just spent the previous three days cooking and serving out and cleaning for our university programs, and basically running around like mad in general for some time. My body just shut down. Plus, this was my first time away from the monastery in a good number of months. I hadn't had a break from the constant harassment I felt within the monastery, and had almost gotten used to the feeling of never being able to relax for a second. As soon as I was out of that environment I just felt all the anxiety flee from my muscles, and my body just collapsed in exhaustion. It was a bit of an eye opening experience really. It made me realise for the first time just how incredibly stressed out I was, and how dangerously close I was to burning out completely.

I showed up to the restaurant late, and in a rather dazed state. My brain felt like it had slowed right down, as if on holiday mode. I helped out a little bit, learned what I needed to know to assist in cooking and running the restaurant. Luckily my friend who had come down with me was a resilient guy, he pushed through the tiredness of the previous weeks activities and got done what needed doing in the kitchen. Afterwards I went into town with my little brother.

While there I ran into a number of my old friends around the place. Hamilton is a small town after all. Catching up with friends after a long absence can sometimes be a happy experience, and sometimes it can be rather depressing. Sometimes it's inspiring to see where people ended up, what they did with their lives, and how they had bettered themselves. Other times it can be a bit heartbreaking to see that people ended up in worse situations than before. This trip gave me a mixed bag of feelings like that. The odd part I noticed was that I felt everyone had considered that I was one of the sad cases, someone who had potential but let it sit unused.

Some friendships had suffered drastically over the years, to the point where it was just incredibly awkward being in the company of these friends. I felt guilty, and I think that they felt bitter. Others felt like they hadn't changed much at all over the years. I met up with one good friend of mine who had gotten married. I hadn't even really met his wife. I went to their house, bringing cookies as a gift. It was so refreshing to see him and how he interacted with his wife. Their house was awesome, especially their extra deep bathtub they showed off with pride. We sat and talked for a long time, and about a lot of different things, very candidly. I left feeling a little jealous about how his life turned out. I would rather have been in his place than my own. (As I typed this paragraph out I received a Facebook message from this friend, offering me a place to stay for the weekend while I visit Hamilton.)

I also met up with two other friends who had helped me out a lot during my last year in Hamilton. They both came, independently of each other, to the restaurant on Monday to hang out. It was so nice to see them both. I still have photos of both of them on my phone. Talking to them both it was like nothing had changed. They had never changed their opinion of me over the years, they still held me as a friend despite the separation of time and distance. They were both people who have always popped up in my mind on a regular basis, people I always cared deeply about.

As we returned home to the monastery I felt that I had a lot to think about. Firstly, I had to acknowledge the fact that the environment at the monastery was stressing me out beyond what I thought I could bear much longer. I realised that if things kept up like they were I would eventually completely snap. As a result I wrote a letter to my Guru explaining the situation, what was stressing me out, and how I was feeling in the situation. I said that if things continued like this I would have to make the decision to leave this setting altogether. His solution at the time was that I should take monthly retreat trips to Hamilton to recover, and in the meantime he would think up a solution to the general issues. When I explained this to the leadership and management team of the monastery, they monastery leader responded by making some of the most hurtful personal digs he had ever made towards me. It was like rubbing salt into my already agitated wounds. I had to struggle not to respond by yelling at him.

The other thing I had to acknowledge after my trip to Hamilton was that I was becoming more and more aware of my shifting desires. I was becoming less and less attracted to the monastic lifestyle, with its social limitations. I wanted a life like my friends, with his career, house and family. I discussed this also with my mentor. At the time it was dismissed as being a product of psycho-physical changes that were expected at my age, and that I should try and push past them to continue with my monastic career.

In the end, I felt like nothing much had changed in the monastery and in my life, except that internally I was going through more and more battles to reconcile my two different halves. Part of me still enjoyed and aspired to the monastic lifestyle and my spiritual focused life. But a growing part of me started to actually feel repelled by it all. I reconciled it all mostly by relying on basic philosophy for a while and by acknowledging that fact that the mind is never satisfied wherever it rests. The 'grass is always greener' is an effect which will always act on the mind, even when your life is running perfectly and fine. I knew that life away from the monastery wouldn't be as easy as my mind would sometime pretend it to be. When I brought up these feelings when discussing with my Guru this is one of the things he pointed out as well. He once said that yes there were problems, but there were going to be problems in any situation, and that leaving this situation wasn't truly going to get ride of the problems. On one level I thought that made sense. On another level I struggled to deal with it continually.

After writing the updates on Suzy I have felt kinda emotionally neutral. Those were tough to write out, and left me a bit exhausted. I was just getting texts from a friend who has been trying to read the one about Suzy's death for the past few days and just hasn't been able to make it through the whole thing yet. I've kinda gotten back on track today I think. I'm making a trip to Hamilton this weekend, so I'm not certain what will happen in terms of updates. Either I will find it an emotional experience and feel the need for an outlet for it all and end up writing loads, or else I will just have loads of fun, forget about everything else and start updating again when I get back. We'll see how things go.

The Kuli

My schedule in 2008 started to take on an even more hectic appearance than previous years. Along with the Tuesday, Wednesday and now Thursday cooking and serving food at universities, and the Thursday night classes at the yoga centre, we were also trying to push the sustainability network with different events during the week. This included late night movie screenings, weekend gardening workshops, cooking classes and more. Oh, and during this year I also managed to organise vegan cooking classes at MIT campus in Otara. All this on top of my personal studies, my management services (which were full-time on their own) and being involved in the yoga centre activities. It was a very busy year, and the most hectic of my life I think. And with the extreme busy-ness I started to find it increasing difficult to cope with the social dynamics around me, especially what I perceived as the incompetence of both the younger monks and the leadership, both of whom would constantly approach me, even after I had gone to be, with what I saw as simple questions that anyone should be able to answer. It was stressful. What friendships did exist during that time within the monastery were stretched to the limits. I did yell or snap a number of times, just frustrated that I couldn't walk through the house without being approached from all angles with people asking me where the salt was, why the computer was typing in ALL CAPITALS, or if I knew of a good remedy for their health ailments. At the same time my constant work was being ignored to the point where some people actually openly admitted that they thought I was wasting too much time because I wasn't distributing books.

In April 2008 our monastery received a some emotional softness in the form of a very kind and gentle monk. This young monk had grown up in the Hare Krishna movement, living from the age of about 4 or 5 in a Hare Krishna school in India. He always smiled, and his eyes almost always looked like he was about to cry because of compassion for other people. In fact, during his month-long stay with us I witnessed his eyes brim with tears on many occasions.

I had a short break in my university schedule during this monks visit, which meant that for about two weeks we were the only two at home in the monastery during the day. He was a very heart felt monk, who had seen EVERYTHING in his time as a devotee. He had a lot of insight into the dynamics of our monastery. All of the observations I have made in here were identified by him as well. He saw the harsh treatment, and the lack of respect, and the struggles of the management and leadership. He discussed how he worried about certain devotees because of their behaviour. One devotee was renowned for chanting so fast, though he actually seldom verbalised the entire mantra he was meant to chant. Many times he would just repeat the same word 9 times, moving his beads regardless. Our little visiting monk found this to be very worrisome.

If you have ever spent time with Indians, you will probably know that they are a bit more comfortable about issues surrounding their personal space than most westerners are. When you meet up with an Indian, they will often shake your hand and continue holding your hand while you discuss things. For the western mind this often creates an awkward moment. You want to pull your hand away, but you aren't sure what to do. It never bothered me much, but I used to watch a lot of westerners squirm their way through the situation. Our visiting monk was very reliant on physical contact while discussing issues. He and I developed a close friendship while he was staying with us, and as we talked we would often be holding hands, sometimes embracing and cuddling. That was how he operated. And sometimes, when we discussed difficult personal issues between the two of us, the physical contact helped calm the pain.

My visiting monk friend had been through some very difficult times in his life. Hare Krishna schools do not have the best track record, at least not in the old model that ran the schools. There was a lot of nasty behaviour going on within those boarding schools, both carried out by the teachers, principles and by the students and residents. There was physical assault, sexual assault and extreme emotional bullying. My friend, being the runt of the school, felt the brunt of this misbehaviour. He was never once bitter about it, but nor was he willing to dismiss what had gone on within those school walls. Although I was well aware of this situation before meeting my friend, hearing him describe things, and seeing the reactions he was experiencing made it all the more real and heart wrenching for me.

We would also discuss difficult points of philosophy. There are occasional philosophical controversies which would arise in the Krishna consciousness community, and I made a point of studying the arguments and counter arguments when I had the chance to, so that I could understand what the official line was for our movement. But I seldom met a devotee who understood the implications of many of these arguments. My visiting friend was one such person, so we would discuss the ins and outs of these issues. In some areas we disagreed, and continued to disagree after discussing them, other times we both shed knew light on the subject, and coloured our previous standpoints with a bit more grey than we entered with. Even when in heated debates about the origin of the soul and the implications of that issue on the overall process and philosophy, we were still holding hands or cuddling on the floor.

I discussed with him my pains at losing Suzy, and how it made me feel. He talked about his dissatisfaction over the issue that his previous principle, who he had witnessed carry out so many deviant activities over the years was still held in high regard within the community. We would chant Gayatri together, and sign kirtan. For me, it was both a period of spiritual inspiration AND a time of deep reflection on issues within our community, as well as becoming more honest about our own personal lacks and strengths.

My monk friend told me he was planning on leaving the monastic life. We said that he had always wanted to head towards a family life situation, getting married and continuing on with life in that way. We discussed the issue many times. The real reason he was with us was because he had brought his wish up to his authorities, and it was decided that he just needed some time away to get his thoughts together, and then he would continue on as a monk. I can attest that it is not exactly as easy thing to leave the monastic life behind, primarily because of the social structures in place to keep monks there.

I discussed my own realisations with him. I acknowledged that I was feeling so many different desires for things in my life which I didn't think could be restrained much longer by the confines of the monastery walls. I wanted to make the world a better place, and I was having doubts that Krishna consciousness was able to do that. I told him that I loved to study the scriptures and learn the philosophy, and I loved the things I was doing at the universities, and that I wanted to stay a monk for those reasons, because having a simple life meant that I would be able to focus on reading the books, and putting all my effort into my cooking for university events, and organising dynamic sustainability projects. He pointed out to me, rather starkly, that I hadn't picked up a book for the past three days that we had chatted together, so he doubted my sincerity regarding my love for studying. I realised he was right. Actually, my taste for studying had started to decrease, primarily because of the fact I felt I struggled to have faith in the scriptures as a whole, something I may get around to discussing at a later time.

His visit solidified a number of things for me. It increased my realisation that I had been neglecting my emotional side for a very long time. It reminded me of the importance of being physically comforted when dealing with difficult emotions. It made me question more and more my motives for staying in the monastery, and for staying in Krishna consciousness in general. It made me view the overall philosophy less and less as a black and white issue, and instead with many shades of grey. For the first time I felt like I actually had a deep heart connection with someone within the Krishna community who I could talk to about whatever needed airing. His visit gave me such a mental relief for that one month.

When he left to go back to his home temple, I missed his association greatly. My stresses quickly overwhelmed me again, and I started to struggle even more when dealing with the perceived incompetence of those around me. The management team was starting to drive me nuts with the hour long meetings to make decisions which were overturned by a single member of the management team a few hours later. I was sick of telling devotees again and again not to ruin the accounting systems by spending money from book sales before accounting for it. There were so many stresses. I just felt tense at all times that I was in the monastery, because I knew it was only a matter of seconds before someone would approach me with a complaint or a question which anyone should have been able to answer for them, or they probably could have figured out on their own if they had actually bothered to think about it first. It was driving me nuts. Even now, as I type this and remember how I felt during that time I can feel my body heat up in frustration. I remember that feeling all the time, almost wincing whenever I heard someone call my name. Now that I remember, the reason my reading first started to suffer was because I couldn't get through half a page without someone approaching me and asking me some insane question about something. If I wanted to read I had to do it while everyone was out of the monastery, but that was also the only time I had to catch up on my management services uninterrupted. It was a mad time for me.

Because of this madness and extreme stress, when I did manage to get away from it all, during my trip to Hamilton sometime around May, I felt my body completely collapse like someone cutting the strings which held up a marionette. Only my strings were the strings of stress. Hamilton was also the home of several of friends who I felt very indebted to for their support in my pre-Krishna years. I would probably not be alive without them I don't think, and I wanted to touch base with them again, I didn't want to risk losing another friend to the cruel hands of death without at least letting them know that I was grateful for their friendship. My visit to Hamilton opened my eyes to a lot of things about myself and my situation, and my return from Hamilton was the time I tried hardest to be honest about them all,

Every action has a reaction.

As I wrote about in my last update, soon after Suzy's death I started focusing on building the Sustainability Network at Auckland University. The first steps towards this basically required me to go to the university during O Week and approach people to get them to sign up as members for the club. It was pretty simple. And it was heaps of fun. It gave me a sense of independance. Plus, I made a whole lot of friends in a real short span of time. A good number of people that I met on those few days I'm still in contact with today. At the same time a good friend of mine, who was a good friend of Suzy's, and a solid animal rights activist, was also on campus promoting Greenpeace during O Week as well. We would take lunches together, and chat and catch up. I had actually first met him while I was selling books on the streets while he was signing people up for Greenpeace many years before. Now I consider him and his partner Kali to be two of my best friends.

I needed some help with setting up the Sustainability Network, and at the time I could actually only think of one person who was coming along at our yoga centre who was involved in the university. I tried to recruit her help with the project. At first she was going to be the president, but I discovered that the president didn't need to be a student, that I could easily fill that role. So instead we had her act as the secretary. She took the minutes at our first AGM. It took her AGES to send them to me. And I never heard from her or saw her again. I always wondered what had happened to her, but I found out recently that she was told by some of the Krishna ladies not to talk to me anymore, as I was a monk. That advice didn't sit well with her for whatever reason and she stopped coming to the centre or talking to any Krishna devotees. Which was a pain for me, because we needed her signature on our accounts! Plus it was a shame that someone was scared away like that.

I liked promoting the Sustainability Network, and building it. I liked making friendships with lots of people, and being involved in eco projects, and discussing issues with people. I'm a people person by nature. I like to talk openly with people, and be able to have heart to heart chats with people. My best friend these days is someone I feel 100% comfortable just sitting with on a couch and talking to about whatever's on my mind without feeling like I'm boring them. I have two sides to me, there is a quiet side, and the side that likes to talk whenever given the chance. I think this blog represents that chatty side. The Sustainability Network really gave me an outlet to release that chatting and friend making side.

I was being encouraged to make a profile for myself again within the activist movements, which suited me fine. I felt like I had much more in common with most activists than I had with the devotees I was meant to restrict my socialising to. I helped out a small bit with organising some aspects of a protest, and attended a few meetings. I was asked once if I could help out with one small protest. Some activists were going to climb up on top of the roof of a building and hold a banner. I was supposed to meet up with other people attending the protest and bring them to the protest venue once the activists were up on the roof. It was simple, and in the end I found myself in a big argument about animal research with a group of about 20 or 30 med students. I LOVED debating, and this was such a fun experience for me.

One day, on a Sunday, when I was returning from the temple, I got an urgent call from a friend of mine, asking if I could help out with an urgent situation. Some activists were transporting a number of ex-factory farm animals, but their car had broken down south of Auckland. They needed someone to help them out. I told the monastery leaders I needed a car for the job, and they said it was fine. This was during a time where everyone assumed I could do no wrong, or so it seemed I guess. Everyone seemed to think that whatever I did was 'sanctioned' automatically. It was a weird situation to be in. So I grabbed the car that my parents had donated to the monastery, placed some tarpaulin in the back, and started riding down to meet them. The ironic thing about this day was that I was scheduled to give a talk at the yoga centre about spiritual sustainability.

When I met up with the broken down car, not far from Mercer, I saw that they had something like 30 chickens in the back of their car. To be honest, I had thought they had liberated these animals. I assumed straight away that these were animals that we 'stolen' from a factory farm, and that my transporting them was an illegal activity. Which kinda makes the story funny, but it turns out they weren't stolen, they were actually paid for. But, along the way to dropping the hens off at their new safe homes, I made a wrong turn and we found ourselves, with a car load of chickens in someone's driveway. Apparently they found the situation of three young kids, with a car full of chickens, to be a bit dodgy, because they called the police to report out behaviour. After dropping off half of the chickens at a nearby house we started driving to the next house. On the way down the road, we say the man from the random driveway waiting on the road with a police officer, pointing out our car as we drove past. They had also assumed that the chickens were stolen.

We were pulled over, and questioned by the police for a while. I assumed that we were about to be arrested, because I still thought these chickens were stolen. But my friends in the car told him that the chickens were paid for, and they gave him a phone number to verify this story. I thought they were just being very clever, and had lied to him. Either way, the number they gave him didn't answer. I said to the officer "Look, I've gotta go and give a presentation at a yoga centre, no one has reported that any chickens have been stolen, and you have our contacts to track us down if you find out they were stolen, so just let us carry on." He accepted that, and we went on our way. We dropped off the rest of the chickens and I made it JUST in time to give the presentation at the yoga centre. Since the presentation was on sustainability, I was going to include a photo of me holding one of the hens, but the photo didn't work out. Plus, one of the monks suggested that it wasn't the best story to tell publicly. The next day the police called me to say that our story checked out, and that what we were doing for the chickens was a great thing. I was still convinced at the time that the chickens were stolen, so I couldn't help but laugh. I only found out the following Wednesday that the chickens actually WERE purchased as retired layer hens. I laughed so much, a laugh of relief to find out. I was so worried about what would happen had I been arrested for that. The real ironic thing is that I found out the very next weekend what it would be like to get arrested as a monk.

The next weekend there was a number of events relating to an animal research conference that was visiting the city. First, there was a fund raising concert, with hardcore and punk rock bands. We were asked to have a bake stall at the show. We baked for two days to make a whole selection of awesome and amazing vegan baked goods for the show. It was an awesome event. It was the first hardcore show I had been to since 2004. It really brought back some memories of old days at shows. We also dropped some of the baked goods off at a public meeting. When dropping the cookies and cakes and things off there I met up with another old animal rights friend of mine from Wellington. It was so nice to catch up with him again for the first time since Suzy's funeral. Funerals aren't the best place to catch up with people.

There were protests throughout the weekend which I didn't attend. On Monday I promised I would come down to see how things were going. I arrived near the end of the protest, as we were going to go and have lunch together afterwards to celebrate their successes. At the time I was also planning to help out with a public meeting on vivisection, so we were planning to discuss that after the protests. I've actually never been much of a protest person, which may be hard for some people to believe. My preference is debating with people, or sneaking around being a trouble maker. At this protest I mostly just wandered around the perimeter of the conference centre, testing the security and things. It brought back a lot of old feelings, and was just generally fun to do.

After the protest ended we started making our way back into town for lunch and meetings. But on the way it was decided that we would visit the office of a company that carried out animal research. The offices were at the Tamaki campus of Auckland University. I didn't want to risk getting arrested, so I didn't take part in the protest. Instead, I just walked onto the campus as the protest was going on, partly to see if the Sustainability Network could do anything at this satellite campus. There was talk about letting us have some land there to set up a community garden. I then walked around the back of the building the protest was targeting and overheard that things hadn't quite gone as planned for the protest. Somehow the staff had locked the activists in a courtyard. I went back around the front to see that some had climbed a fence. Eventually the rest climbed the fence to escape. As we were about to leave, however, the police arrived. After rounding everyone up, and arresting a few people, they decided to arrest almost everyone who was there, including myself. Not everyone was arrested, there were others who also hadn't taken part in the protest, but for some reason they didn't accept my story of events, and arrested me despite the fact I hadn't done anything.

I had been arrested many times before this, it wasn't an unfamiliar event for me, so I just argued my way through the whole process. They demanded that I remove my neck beads and my sacred thread that I was wearing. I said that I would not. I managed to keep them on until the police station. Despite the fact that I KNOW the police codes of conduct say that they are not allowed to remove a Hindu's or Hare Krishna's sacred thread, they forced me to take mine off. I argued with them, and told them I would lay a complaint against their station for this behaviour. I also explained to them that there was nothing they could actually charge me with, because I hadn't broken any laws. They said they were looking forward to seeing me on the stand with a guilty verdict being read out. But the funniest/most insulting part was then they realised I was wearing kaupins instead of tradition underwear. They called all the police around, including the female officers, to inspect the situation and decide whether it was a safety risk of all things! I was put in a cell with the other men who had been arrested and we waiting the hours it took to be processed. In the end we were charged with being unlawfully in an enclosed space.

It was late when we were released. I didn't get home until after 9pm, which for the monastery was rare. Although the monks were worried about my whereabouts, they accepted my story that I was just at a late night, unexpected meeting. It was weird, because I knew no one else would have gotten away with such a long and late absence. But for some reason I felt like I could get away with anything and everyone would still think I was just doing something dynamic in line with my 'outreach' work. It was a weird feeling. I was pretty stressed out by the event, for sure. I struggled with the question of whether to admit the story to the monks. I don't think I kept anything a secret before this point. But I felt so embarrassed for having been arrested as a monk that I just couldn't think of how to explain it. Before I could decide whether to tell them the story or not my charges were dropped, as the police reviewed the footage of the protest and realised that my story was the truth, I hadn't been involved in it at all.

Thinking about the events of 2008 feels so different from the previous events that I've talked about. For me, it was a totally different world. After my arrest I realised that I had let the balance slide a little too far. I was still a monk, a leader and a manager at that, and I shouldn't have put myself in that situation. I pulled back from my involvement in any protest activities, and just helped out with other things. Ironically, just after my arrest my Guru sent me an e-mail suggesting that I don't attend protests, and instead get involved in activism in other ways, which I did from that point on.

I think the arrest was part of my reaction to Suzy's death, and some of the emotions it brought up for me. There were several times between early 2008 and the time that I left the community altogether where I actually found myself feeling angry at the restrictions I had to live under, and I would almost despise my practices and limitations at times. I think this was one of those times, and the result was that I pushed the boundaries and got arrested. I also think that I was getting annoyed at the way I had started being treated in the monastery. The management and leadership team was driving me insane at times, but at the same time I felt like I was being held up as an advanced person just because of my abilities on a material level, and my steady character. I almost feel like my arrest was a result of feeling like a rebel who wasn't getting the attention from his parents his needed (in this case not my parents, but the leadership of the monastery). Plus, I just wanted to have some fun, and from my background getting arrested at a protest is kinda fun. Not fun that I would recommend to anyone, but fun none-the-less.

There are two other events I would like to talk about that occurred in the first half of 2008 which I think are important to this narrative, and I'll discuss them over the next two updates I think. The first is a visit from an indian monk to our monastery. Some people have said, I am hoping jokingly, that they wish this whole story involved some real dirt, like me falling in love with someone from the yoga centre, or discovering that some sort of love affair within the monastery. This story doesn't include anything like that, but I guess the following update is the closest things get to that sort of thing. The second event I would like to talk about from the first half of 2008 is a trip I took to Hamilton, and how it made me realise I had become so completely burnt out by my having to deal with the leaders of the monastery and the younger, less experienced monks. Both of these events seem significant in this story, as they both brought up feelings that I hadn't expected, and they both had carry on effects in terms of how I viewed the people who's authority I was under.

There are a lot of things that I wish I could write about in this blog, and as more and more people write to me about this blog the more I feel the need to answer their questions and thoughts through these updates. I think I have enough to keep my mind busy for months, hopefully once I get through the main parts of this story I can discuss more details and themes to answer these questions and thoughts that people have brought up. I don't think this will get boring for anyone anytime soon.

Also, Thanks to Jasmine for lending me a computer, which will help me spend more time working on this stuff without having to walk to other people's houses to use their computers. Assuming, of course, that I can figure out how to get this computer to connect to our wireless network...

The aftermath

Often times when discussing the philosophy of Krishna consciousness devotees would throw around a few maxims. "Krishna consciousness combines the head and the heart" and "All emotions can be dovetailed in Krishna consciousness". And another is that "No man is an island". During the period after Suzy's death I thought deeply about these maxims, trying to figure out how to best reconcile them within my practical realities. At the time I did still hold hope for Krishna consciousness, but I started to realise that there were so many things going on in my head and my heart which were not being taken care of.

One major issue for me, which was brought up by Suzy's death, was my rebellious nature. Suzy was a very rebellious personality, and she had now fear of getting arrested, or going through the court systems if it meant furthering the cause of justice for animals. I liked that, and I found I was drawn to a similar way of acting. After Suzy's death I started desiring to protest again, I realised that I needed some way to 'dovetail' my rebelliousness into my Krishna conscious practice.

I also started to realise that along with being very rebellious, I couldn't shake my attraction for radical social theories. I had read so many books on social change, radical feminism, the social politics of sexuality, anarchism and autonomous social organising, yet now I was functioning in a society and community which was sexist, homophobic, hierarchical, authoritarian and not very radical. After this point I started looking through the scriptures and books with the vision of extracting information about the radical social restructuring which they described. From an academic point of view it was very interesting. From the point of view of a radical theorist, however, it wasn't very satisfying.

Suzy's death made me aware that I was ignoring a whole lot of emotional experiences which were actually taking place in my heart. There were so many feelings and emotions which were going on, but which I put out of my mind and ignored, thinking that they weren't befitting a monk. I realised that if I wanted to continue on within my monastic lifestyle I was going to have to start expressing my emotions more directly with my mentor and the other monks I was living with. I realised that if I didn't directly deal with these things I would simply grow more and more bitter. I also realised that I had spent so long focusing on the philosophy side of Krishna consciousness that I had completely ignored the emotional requirements. From that point on my classes become more focused on emotional experiences of life, and encouraging an open acceptance of one's own personal struggles. As one senior teacher once said at our temple, everyone else you live with knows all about your problems, so there is no point hiding them.

In terms of opening up about my emotions at the monastery, I found I hit against a definite brick wall when trying to do so. For starters, my mentor at the time, the leader of the monastery, would still sometimes use my revelations against me at future times. Our relationship was going through another rough patch as it was. Since I was now the manager, and had pretty much taken over all responsibility for all practical matters, sometimes I would have to write to our authorities to explain situations where our leader's behaviour was less than exemplary. He never liked this much. He especially disliked it when he would get in trouble for constantly falling asleep while driving. When I tried discussing Suzy's death with him, and the effects it was having on me, he struggled to stay awake.

I tried discussing Suzy's death with the other leaders. One seemed unable to process emotional issues anyway. He immediately turned everything into a dry philosophical discussion, whereas I just wanted to talk about how things were hurting, or how things were making me feel, and where to go from there. Another leader turned everything into an extreme situation. Or would ask questions about whether I took the chance of Suzy's funeral to think about the temporary nature of life. It seemed as if there was no outlet for emotions in our monastery, there seemed to be no mature guide to help out in these situations.

The fact that Suzy's death made me realise how awful I felt for ignoring my good friends combined with the fact that I found myself surrounded by people who struggled to act on the platform of friendship when I needed it, I started to realise that if I was going to stay sane and tackle my emotions, and deal with the things I needed to deal with I was going to have to seek that from outside the tight community I was living in. We were told to make strong friendships with the other monks, and that should be our support. But there was no support within that framework at all, not for those willing to acknowledge openly the emotions they were dealing with. If we did want to attend funerals of friends or family, we almost had to lie that our primary motives for attending were social obligations, lest we be labelled as being fallen for having family or social attractions.

Before Suzy's death my Guru asked me to expand my projects at the universities in the city to include Auckland University. At first he suggested setting up a Vegan club on campus, which was an idea I thought was ideal. At the time of Suzy's death I was in the middle of a lull in my veganism, something I knew that Suzy was not very happy about. Suzy's death made me feel more guilty for consuming dairy, and I went vegan again soon after. Less than a week after Suzy's funeral I received an e-mail from my Guru encouraging me to do something radical and revolutionary on Auckland University campus, something more dynamic than just a vegan club. I sent an e-mail back thanking him, and told him that I felt that I needed something like this at the moment, as Suzy's death brought to the surface the feeling of urgency for me to deal with my radical and revolutionary tendencies. It was at that point that the Sustainability Network started to form in my mind.

The next day, with Suzy's death still pricking at my heart, and the suggestion of my Guru in my mind, I set out to the O Week madness at Auckland University to get people to sign up for my new club. I had next to little concrete concepts to go on with the club, other than it was going to be AWESOME! But somehow so many people joined up. Most new groups struggle to get 10 members sign up at O Week. In the two days I had left to make the most of O Week I managed to get 6o sign ups. It was awesome. And my mind dedicated half of it all to Suzy.

I increased my friendships with the animal rights scene, and I started to attend Critical Mass. What I tried to do was find a way to bring my Krishna conscious culture and resources into contact with networks that I actually wished I was part of. In this way I tried to have the best of both worlds. The problem that increased for me, however, was when I started noticing that the qualities, maturity, and life skills of the people outside our little monastery appeared significantly more developed than inside.

Another thing that Suzy's death brought up for me was the question of effective social change. I had serious doubts developing in my mind about the philosophy and practice of Krishna consciousness. Now I was also having doubts about whether I was wasting my time trying to promote Krishna consciousness as the solution to all the worlds problems, when it seemed that people outside the Krishna community were being significantly more effective at dealing with these problems. The monastery leadership struggled just to decide whether to buy uniform jackets or hoodies, let alone actually tackle issues of massive importance like peak oil, the food crisis or climate change, issues which I consider to be fundamental issues in our current day and age. Was Krishna consciousness the solution to all problems? I was starting to have a very hard time believing that it was.

I know that within the Krishna community, whenever someone leaves their fol they try to reconcile that within their own philosophy system. I think this is a rational reaction in a lot of ways. I know that I do it sometimes as a vegan, complaining about the reasons ex-vegans really started eating meat again. I also do the same often thinking about straightedge kids who are no longer straightedge. I don't blame them for it. Still, it is something that feels uncomfortable, knowing that behind your back there is discussion about the 'real' reasons that one leaves their community. When I left, someone wrote to me to suggest that the reason I left was because of struggling with sexual desire, which was something I literally laughed out loud about, considering I had never even remotely compromised the vows that I took as a monk during my time in the monastery.

I imagine that the complaint made against me would be that I didn't try hard enough to express my emotions, feelings and doubts within the living situation I was in at the time. I imagine they would probably use phrases like "no man is an island" when discussing my fall from grace. I think it is very sad that I tried very hard within that community to express my emotions, to reveal my mind in confidence, and to hash out my doubts. Doubts are never dealt with well within the community. I will discuss this all at a later time. I hope that, instead of being taken as a point blank criticism of the community I have recently come out of, my blog will be embraced by that community as a telling sign pointing to things which must change if they are to continue on as a functioning society. I hope for the sake of future monks that mature leadership develops in their monastery, otherwise I foresee the same problems occurring again and again.

Of course, as I will describe later on, my reasons for leaving were multiple, and had more to do with my developing philosophical doubts as much as it had to do with any social issues. I would happily stay within a dysfunctional social movement IF I had firm conviction in the goals and precepts of that community.

This entry today is more of a thought process than a structured part of the narrative I have been sharing. The last update was a very heavy one for me to write. It actually has taken me over a day to recover mentally after writing that one because I felt confident to continue telling this story. After the last update I partly felt afraid to start writing again, my mind went blank when thinking about the story and how it developed from that point on. Suzy's death was so pivotal in my life that it took me a little while longer than usual to start thinking about what comes next. I guess next is when I become a rebel who functions under the radar of the monastery, and manages to get arrested without anyone noticing or question his long absence, all in the name of 'outreach'.

Busy day

Sorry for those waiting for an update today. I've had a busy day, and haven't had the time to write an update. I have a meeting tonight, and a few people I need to catch up with this evening. I don't have regular computer access at the moment, and Skeeter, who's computer I've used to do updates on over this weekend is back from Oz tonight. But I'll see what I can do.

Because of the previous two entries, and thinking about the next entry, today I wore an old Auckland Animal Action t-shirt that I helped design with Suzy years ago. And, as fate would have it, a good friend of mine also gave me one of Suzy's old t-shirts as well. The anniversary of Suzy's death is on the 24th, which is just a few days away, so this is all very timely.

I'm very happy with the way this project has unfolded, and with the fact that it seems to be making so many people think critically about their own lives. I don't think I could have asked for a better outcome from all of this.

This has been an amazing week. I'll keep writing as often as I get the chance to.

Thanks!

You might want to grab a tissue for this one.

I've been preparing for this post since I started this project. Here goes nothing.

Already started crying.

One morning, in the last week of February, I received a text from the manager at the yoga centre in town. It read, "PAMHO, I just got a call from Simon from AAA. He said he had some really bad news he wanted to talk to me about. *number included*."

Immediately my heart stopped beating. I hadn't been involved in Auckland Animal Action since 2003. There were only two things I could think of that would count as really bad news which would be related to Auckland Animal Action. One thing I thought was perhaps the police had done an investigation into some of the illegal activities that we were involved in over the years, like animal liberations, and through their investigations they had finally decided to come after some of us. But that wasn't actually THAT bad. I really knew there was only one thing that could happen in relation to Auckland Animal Action which could possibly be really bad. Something must have happened to Suzy.

I quickly sent a text back thanking the manager of the yoga centre, and then sent a text to Simon asking him to call me when he could. My mind was racing. There were so many things going through my head. It was breakfast time at the monastery, but I was hardly present at all. I was anxious for so many reasons.

Soon after breakfast Simon called my cellphone. My voice broke as I spoke to him. He was straightforward but caring as be broke the news. Suzy had died. The funeral was on Friday. I struggled to maintain my composure. I told him that I knew, as soon as I heard that something bad had happened in relation to AAA that something must have happened to Suzy. He asked if I was okay, and I said I was, and that I would see him at the funeral.

I wanted to run somewhere, curl in a ball and cry. But I was a monk. And such extreme emotional responses was not expected of a monk. I walked back into the kitchen, suppressing all my emotions. There were two monks cleaning the kitchen, and they asked who was on the phone. I told them that a friend of mine had died, and that was someone inviting me to the funeral. They responded coldly, asking if I was seriously considering going to the funeral, as it's not a normal thing for monks to go to funerals. They made comments about how life was temporary, and we would all die soon. No one asked how I was feeling about the situation. No one comforted me at all.

I was staying back home that day, and everyone else was heading out to sell books. As soon as I heard the car leave the driveway I broke down. I started crying hysterically. I curled up in a ball in my room and cried for possibly over an hour. I didn't know what to do. I felt I had no one I could talk to about this. No one at the monastery seemed to be possess the maturity to deal with these kinds of emotions. The fact that I was crying about the death of a female friend of mine would have simply illicited concern from the monks that perhaps I wasn't a very good monk. And I was almost entirely cut off from any friends outside the monastery who knew Suzy at all. I felt to alone, and so completely shattered by this. I sent my mother a text asking if she could call me when she had a spare moment. When she called I just broke down in tears again, sobbing. She didn't know what was wrong. I finally managed to get myself together to tell her that Suzy had died. She stayed on the phone with me until I managed to get myself together. She called again in the evening to make sure I was okay. She also told all my brothers to call me to let me know they were thinking about me. My dad also called soon after my mom hung up the phone. She had also called him.

I went online to see if there was any news about Suzy's death. Indymedia had an article up, which you can see at http://www.indymedia.org.nz/article/75005/suzanne-carey-september-10-1973-–-februa. I left a comment on the page, which was as follows:

This is potentially the worst news I have ever received. This is a major loss for the animals. I think it may be fair to say that she directly saved more animals from conditions of suffering than anyone else in New Zealand thus far. I have many found memories of late night missions into factory farms with Suzy, leaving many cages empty. Who can ever take her place? I'm incredibly saddened by this news.

I also posted a thread on an internet forum which I had been frequenting over the past nine years. What I posted is as follows:

It is with great sadness that I report the death of one of my very closest friends and long time animal liberationist, Susan Carey.

I knew Susan for about 10 years, and I know for a fact that she has liberated more animals than anyone else in New Zealand, from conditions of suffering and placed them into caring, safe homes to live out the rest of their lives in peace, free from the abusive meat, egg, fur and animal research industries.

Now that she has passed away, I think it is safe to mention a few things that Susan did for the animals, which would not be safe to mention if she were still alive, given the nature of these acts. One night, at about 2 am, during a very heavy rainstorm, Susan and one other activist gained entry to a very dark battery hen farm. After documenting the horrific conditions in which these battery hens were living, Susan took 9 hens out of their cages, placing them safely into animal carrying boxes, and took them out of the hellish factory farm death they were sentenced to. She stayed up all night looking after the birds, in the morning she took them to a vet friend of hers, and then drove an hour to drop them off at a farm owned by some caring vegan friends.
This was not an isolated incident. One time she helped several other activists to liberate 38 chickens from a factory farm. I am willing to say that over the +15 years that she was involved in animal liberation activities, well more than 1000 animals would have been save by her.

Aside from this, she inspired so many people to take up an active role in the animal rights movement, risking their own freedom and comforts to save the lives of as many animals as possible.

She was a very humble person, she never wanted to take any credit for anything. She lived a very simple life, dedicate not to attaining material success, material comforts or possessions. Instead she spent all her time and all her money on helping the animals. Her pleasures were simple; chinese vegetarian food, french fries, humus and chip sandwiches and late night movies.

I think a lot of people will miss Suzy, and I am certain that the animals will be mourning her death. She was always there for me in the tuff times of my life, and I owe a lot to her. I would not be where I am today if it were not for her.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I wanted to let as many people as possible know about this great loss.

RIP
Susan Carey - September 10 1973 – February 24 2008

I pretty much spent the whole day crying. My heart was broken thinking about the fact that I never had the chance to say sorry for ignoring her for all those years, and for turning my back on our friendship without any explanation. What I was most surprised about was that I felt guilty for being so incredibly sad about it. Monastic life was such a sterile existence, and extreme emotional responses were looked down upon. From some of the comments from the monks in the morning I felt like I was fallen just for being so emotionally destroyed by this news.

At the same time, the emotional release felt empowering for some reason. I felt as if it was the first time in several years that I actually experienced serious emotions. As I lay in my room crying I realised that I had nothing to be ashamed about, and these emotions were so important for dealing with this loss that I should never consider repressing them. None the less, before the monks arrived home from the day, I had a long shower, washing my face all of signs of crying. I was exhausted.

I knew I needed to talk to someone about this. I had one friend at the monastery at the time who I felt I could approach about this. I called him into a room, and told him what had happened, and how I had responded. He was very supportive, but he was also understanding that the other monks, especially the senior monks, would not really understand. I was very grateful for the chance to talk to someone face to face about this. I was and still am very grateful for his friendship over these years. He even called me this morning, as he is also following this blog religiously.

I cried everyday until the funeral. I had to go to the funeral, even though I knew it was looked down upon by the other older monks. I told them that it was a family friend who had died, that my parents expected me to attend. They still protested but I insisted it would be okay. I knew that if I did not go to the funeral I would be bitter for the rest of my life about it. I was already bitter about the fact that I hadn't spoken to Suzy in years, or had the chance to say sorry before she died.

I was dropped off at the funeral by the same friend I talked to about Suzy's death. He was very comforting and understanding, and said I could call at anytime if I couldn't deal with the funeral, and if I wanted to leave. In the end, I sent him a text saying I would find my own way home.

As funerals are, this was an unfortunate opportunity for a reunion with so many people I hadn't seen or spoken to for years. That alone was a massive emotional experience for me. I felt so guilty talking to each and every person for having ignored their friendship for so long. These were all people who had helped me out in the past, with whom I had so many intense experiences. Just meeting up with many of them made me feel like crying, let alone thinking about the circumstances of our meetings.

The funeral was sterile. I think it was mostly designed for family. On one side of the chapel sat Suzy's family, dressed in respectable clothes. The other half of the chapel was full of activists, punks and hippies. Both sides were crying. Aside from the funeral director, Suzy's sister also spoke, as did many of her friends. My eyes were full of tears the whole time.

At the end of the funeral we were all invited to come up to the closed casket, place any items we had brought with us, or some flowers that they had available on it, and to say our last words to Suzy before she was cremated. I had brought some flowers from home, so I went up and placed them on her casket. I touched the casket, and whispered to her that I was so sorry for turning my back on our friendship. As per Suzy's wish, the song Cow's with Guns played in the background.

We then all left the inside of the chapel and congregated outside. We all felt like we needed more time for closure so many of Suzy's friends decided to meet together at a near by park. We visited a supermarket that was close by and picked up a few things to eat and went to the park where we sat and talked about Suzy and shared hilarious stories of protests and things.

It felt so nice to talk to my friends again about Suzy, and to share these emotions together. I knew this was unconventional for a monk, but I didn't care anymore. By ignoring my friendship with Suzy over all those years I felt I had suffered such a great loss, I didn't want to risk anything else.

After that I made up a list of friends who I had to contact before they were dead. One was easy to find, she was always on MSN anyway. I signed into MSN, and my first words were "Do you have a system in place to make sure that I would find out if you died?" Her response was "Are you dying or something Mikey?"

I still sometimes cry when thinking about Suzy's death. I definitely cried while writing this update. Suzy's death brought up so many emotions for me, and it made me realise so many things about my life, what I really needed to do with my life, and it made me see so many aspects of the way I was living my life at the time which were not at all healthy emotionally, nor sustainable psychologically.

This single event led to so many carry one events throughout 2008 and 2009, which culminated in me leaving the Krishna community altogether. 2008 was a turbulent year.

In the coming updates I'll discuss a bit more about the ripples that Suzy's death had on my life, and how it shaped the rest of my year in amazing ways. There were a few other unrelated events that year which shock my perceptions of myself and the community I was a part of. Also, I got arrested that year, which is probably a surprise for a lot of people to hear about.

RIP

Susan Carey - September 10 1973 – February 24 2008

Cows with guns

After thinking it through, I think this part of the story requires me to provide a bit more background in order to make I clear why I found it such a big issue to deal with. With my dramatic suspense building writing skills displayed in my last update, I had a friend actually call me up to ask what the big event was that I found so defining and dramatic. I almost think he was a bit disappointed that it wasn't something extremely controversial, though I could be misreading the situation. So, this update will provide the background information for this, which I hope will make it clear why the event weighed so heavily on my mind, and really made me lose my motivation to continue in my spiritual practices.

When I was 18 years old, having just finished high school, I moved to Hamilton and took six months off of everything just to travel, and get used to living independently from my parents. I spent a lot of time in Auckland over those six months, going to shows, and anti-GE protests, and making lots of new friends. Once I hitched up to a show in Auckland with a friend, and at the show there was an animal rights group that had an info stall. I was really interested in getting involved in animal rights activism at the time, so I picked up a few flyers, with the intention of contacting the group about becoming active. A few weeks later the circus was visiting Hamilton, with it's captive elephant attraction. I organised along with a couple of other friends to have a protest outside the circus, and I wrote an e-mail to the animal rights group in Auckland to see if they wanted to come down. From memory they just weren't able to come down for some reason.

Sometime in the second half of 2000, I was attending an anti-GE rally outside the animal research facility in Hamilton, with a large group of people. I was there with some of my vegan friends. As we were standing there one woman came up to us and asked if we knew Mikey Brenndorfer. I was kinda surprised, but said that actually that was me. She said, "Oh good, my friends just over there have come down and want to meet up with you." That, of course made me feel pretty special, like I was some sort of important person at the protest.

These two people I met that day were from Auckland Animal Action, and they had wanted to meet me because of my previous e-mail to them. One of them was named Suzy. After the protest we invited them around to my flat, where myself, my girlfriend and my flatmate sat around with them hearing all sorts of amazing stories about animal rights activism. We were all completely inspired to hear about the protests, and the liberations, and the movement in general. We sat for hours hearing about it all, mesmerized by their tales. This day started my increased interest in animal rights activism.

From that point on, I was hooked. Anytime my girlfriend and I visited Auckland after that we would stay with Suzy. We would go to protests, and punkrawk shows, and do information stalls. We started attending animal rights conferences, and meeting up with other grassroots animal rights activists from around the country for big protests. In Hamilton we organised a protest all on our own for a three day animal research conference, where we managed to have three hundred people yelling and screaming and banging drums for the whole three day conference. During this time my friendship with Suzy grew and grew.

After that three day protest in Hamilton a few of us, including my girlfriend, traveled up to Auckland for a punk festival. When we arrived we were still buzzing from the protests, so we decided to carry the enthusiasm and have an impromptu protest outside a shop that sold fur. As fate would have it, five of us ended up arrested for disorderly behaviour.

We started an animal rights group in Hamilton, and Suzy always considered me the point of contact for the group. She would call regularly, often at 10 am in the morning, often catching me at the most inappropriate moments with my girlfriend. For me it almost seemed like a running joke that Suzy would always know to call at those times. I'm not 100% certain, but I think my girlfriend started wondering about my relationship with Suzy, at times she would make comments about me and Suzy. After my girlfriend and I broke up she regularly suggested that I should consider going out with Suzy.

And up until the time that I moved to Wellington I spent pretty much most weekends up in Auckland staying at Suzy's house. We would plot protests, liberate animals, do information stalls, have meetings, and meet up with and encourage other activists. We would also eat a whole lot of junk foods, and watch lame movies from the rental place until late at night. Once, when we were on Queen Street together I met a Hare Krishna and tried to buy the Gita, but didn't have enough money on my EFTPOS card. On the ride home she told me why she didn't like the Krishnas. Her main complaint was the philosophy of karma, which she said meant that if you were raped it meant that you deserved to be raped, and she couldn't accept that. Also, at the time, and even recently, some Hare Krishnas have been known to lie to vegans about their foods, which has always made vegans doubtful. Of course, for the most part, that has changed as a number of Krishna places are now fully vegan.

The thing with my friendship with Suzy was that it was 100% platonic. When watching movies, even though it was just the two of us in the house for most weekends, we always sat on separate couches. I don't think we so much as hugged even once. I slept in the spare room at all times. Often during the days we would hang out in her room, she would sit on her bed, and I would sit on her computer. We would listen to straightedge vegan songs while I posted on internet forums, or designed animal rights leaflets.

Eventually I ended up with another girlfriend. Suzy never liked my girlfriends, and my girlfriends never seemed to trust my relationship with Suzy. Even years later people still ask me if there was anything going on between myself and Suzy, but in all honesty it never even remotely crossed my mind. She was my best friend and that was all.

Once I moved to Wellington we would still regularly hang out together. She would often come down for visits, for animal rights conferences, and protests and just because at the time most of the experienced animal rights activists were living in Wellington. And when I was taking trips up north to escape my girlfriend I would spend time in Auckland hanging out with Suzy.

Suzy was aware that my girlfriend and I were hanging out with the Hare Krishnas. She even came with us to a few Sunday feasts at the yoga centre in Wellington. She didn't like it much, and would often do research on the internet and show me all the reasons I should consider the Krishnas a cult. She had seen three other animal rights activists become Krishna devotees in the past, and I knew she was worried about losing her friend.

I wrote Suzy an e-mail when I was moving up to Hamilton to live with the Krishnas. At first I had planned to come and visit her from time to time, being closer to Auckland in Hamilton than when I was in Wellington. But the lifestyle took over, and I never went up to Auckland to visit her. I never even contacted her again, as the Krishna philosophy does suggest maintaining friendships only with other devotees, and that men should always be wary of their contact with females, especially if they were considering taking up a monastic lifestyle. Suzy sent me an e-mail once before I moved back down to Wellington. She wanted to know why I hadn't contacted her or visited. She hoped that I wasn't put off the animal rights movement by my time in Wellington, and she hoped that I wasn't giving up her friendship for the Krishnas. The e-mail was a little out of the ordinary for Suzy, it was a little bit wussy, whereas Suzy usually never let any of her emotions show through. Because of my focus on the Krishna lifestyle at the time I never wrote back to her.

I only saw Suzy one more time after that. It was in 2005, after I had moved up to become a monk in Auckland. I was selling books on Queen Street, and she just happened to be walking down. We chatted for a bit, and a few other animal rights activists showed up as well. Talking to her, it was like old times again, our friendship hadn't changed. After that, I would always keep an eye out for her car in the city, always trying hoping that we would randomly meet up again. But we never did.

In late 2007 I had flown down to Wellington for another visit with the 'doctor'. After getting off the plane, and catching the bus into the city, I saw another old animal rights friend of mine. She was also a good friend of Suzy's, so I asked how Suzy was doing. She gave me Suzy's cellphone number before she got off the bus. I always wanted to send Suzy a text, just to say hi, but I was scared as it wasn't the thing a monk should do at all, even though my friendship with Suzy had nothing to do with sex on any level. In fact, one day, in mid-February 2008 I wrote out a text message to send to Suzy, saying sorry that I had completely ignored her friendship for so many years. I sat there with the text typed out on my phone, staring at it for a few minutes, debating in my mind whether it would be a fall down from my monastic standard to send the text to her or not. I played out all the possible results of sending the text in my head, feeling guilty just for even thinking of sending her the text, but feeling equally guilty for turning my back on her friendship all these years.

In the end, I never sent that text. And there is nothing in my life which I regret more than that. It haunts me to this day.

Suzy getting arrested at a protest

Preface for 2008

I decided to quickly skip through 2007, primarily because the themes that occurred in 2007 have mostly already been brought up in my previous updates already. It was more of the same, but with a few different colourings here and there. After I have given this general overview of things I will probably go back and fill in some gaps, provide other details and tell other interesting stories of different things that occurred which I think are of relevance.

2008, to me, was such a vital year, and the themes that will be coming up in the following updates are a bit different from those already covered. 2007 I think was my peak in terms of my time with the Krishnas. From early 2008, or maybe even late 2007, everything started going downhill. It really did all start falling apart. The floodgates started showing their cracks and it was only a matter of time before they burst altogether.

In particular a certain event which occurred late in February of 2008 (actually, the two year anniversary of this event is only a few days away) set off a nuclear bomb in my mind, the effects of which I know I am still struggling to come to grips with. It is the part of this story I have most dreaded writing about, and I may be something that I will split into two updates.

Some people have written to me to tell me that they are reading this blog at the edge of their seats, checking every couple hours to see if I have written another update. For those of you who have become addicted to this story, prepare for a bit of an emotional rollercoaster ride. You may want to keep some tissues on hand as I talk about February 2008 in particular. And Jasmine, you may not want to read that update at work, just saying.

I wish I were exhausted tonight.

I wrote the final paragraph of this update before writing the rest. I think I wrote it first because I needed to get that out before I could focus on telling this story. It's funny because as I was thinking of how to relay this segment of the chronology I didn't consider it a very emotional segment. But the more I think about my motivations during this time, the more I realised it is an emotional thing for me. So I changed the title to reflect that. I wonder how many people will skip to the concluding paragraph now.

When I returned to Auckland after my recovery time in Wellington, I had to immediately assume again my role as on the ground manager. The first task was to get rid of a nasty dialer virus that had infected the computer. The next task was to find a new house for us to live. The monastery was about to head for a new stage of growth and maturity, and the first step was to find a new location.

Because of a growing community of Hare Krishnas living in Otahuhu we were told to find an inexpensive place to live there. After checking out a few horror houses, one which actually had a dead mouse in the living room when we went to inspect it, we found our little home on Church Street. This house had immediate appeal, primarily due to its new carpets and paint job, the fact it didn't smell like death, and there were no dead rodents visible.

The next change was an expansion of my services. On day in January my Guru was visiting, and he called me to visit him. I sat with him for a few hours, chatted with him about various management issues in our monastery, showed him graphs displaying expenses, income and book sales. He then called for the monastery leaders, which now consisted of three different monks. When they arrived, I was told I could leave. I started walking home, but about half way I received a call to return, so I turned around. The hot sun was making it's presence known on my bald head. When I arrived back, my Guru said, in front of all the leaders present, that he wanted me to start preparing activities at all the universities in the city, aside from Auckland university. I was to expand our presence onto the university campuses. Then I was told I could carry on back home.

On my walk back home I started thinking up all the excuses I could give as to why I shouldn't or couldn't carry out the mission of setting up university programs. I was scared. But as I walked I realised I doubted myself because I had started buying into all the negative things I had heard said to me over the years. I realised that if I could get the programs running I could show prove those statements and attitudes wrong. I could show that I was as effective as anyone else in our monastery.

I set to work straight away, researching what I could about each different university or polytech in the city. I attempted to set up clubs, food stalls or cooking classes on four different campuses. My first success was at UNITEC. Later I also managed to get a food stall at AUT. For the first year we let Auckland University continue to be 'targeted' by another Hare Krishna without the presence of our team.


(Our vegetarian food stall at Unitec)

Adding this on top of my already heavy workload was tough, especially as my body was still having it's ups and downs, and fatigue was something I had to deal with regularly. And running vegetarian food stalls was a big task. It meant waking up at 3 am, chanting my rounds, then starting to cook, attending our morning prayers, cooking more, eating breakfast, finishing cooking, packing the van, going to the campus, setting up, selling food, packing up, coming home, cleaning everything, doing my management jobs, reading 2 hours a day and preparing to do it all again the next day.

My entire week started looking busy. Sunday was temple day, which meant waking at 3 am. On Sundays I also filled 10 20 Litre buckets with milk at a near by farm that para-legally sold raw milk (this was before the vegan wave hit the Krishnas in 08). So, after the morning prayers and class at the temple I would drive 15 minutes, clean all the buckets, fill them up, put them in the car then drive back to the temple, give half to the ladies from the yoga centre. Then fill up our 3 25L water bottles (the temple had filtered water, which was infinitely better than the tap water in Otahuhu). Then drive back to Otahuhu, arriving at noon, cooking breakfast, then usually reading or sleeping until it was time to get ready to go to the Krishna Fest at the yoga centre. I would be out there till after nine, come home, likely in bed late that night, late me for me.

Monday I would sleep in. But Monday was chaos day. Things that needed doing included banking, book scores, shopping for the university cooking days, a large feast where we would invite guests to the monastery, weekly reports, management meetings (which were massive headaches in themselves), general monastery meetings, correspondence, and then getting set up to cook the next day.

Tuesdays and Wednesdays were cooking days in 2007, at UNITEC at the time, the schedule for which I already described. Tuesday night also ended up being the night we would give philosophy classes at the yoga centre, which meant late nights.

Thursday was the day my body crashed, it was my physical recovery day. Friday and Saturday were days where I caught up on my management, reading, e-mails, communications and sleeping, as most days of the week I was functioning on close to 5 hours of sleep.

I was moving non-stop. I was enlivened and stressed-out at the same time. It was awesome having so much to do, and feeling the weight of responsibility on my shoulders. But I was definitely stressed, and my shortened temper meant that I was less able to deal with other peoples lackings very well. If younger monks, or even older monks, displayed any level of ignorance I would snap at them, mock them, or let them know of my superior knowledge, intellect and skills. My bullying continued, but it also expanded to include attempts to raise myself above the senior monks by pointing out my efficiencies.

I was also communicating a lot with the manager of the yoga centre, discussing aspects of our services at the yoga centre there, and how to improve things. I was ordering large amounts of books as well. We had an order of something like 50,000 copies of one type of book. That meant I became responsible for $250,000 worth of debt to our book suppliers. That was a heavy burden to feel.

I noticed an interesting tendency in myself at the time. It was the tendency to always want to communicate. I would sent out e-mails so that I would have more e-mails to read and reply to. Same with texts. It was an extra distraction.

Sometimes, when I get a moment of stillness in my life, I realise that the reason I often try to stay busy is because when I stop moving all the emotions catch up with me. But if I can fill my day up with constant activities and distractions then I never have to deal with myself. If I can make sure I get to bed exhausted at night the emotions won't catch up with me. 2007 was the year I tried this approach. 2008 was the year it came crashing down.

Feverish and moving

With my change in focus in 2006 came a change in schedule. As the manager I was responsible for drawing up the service rosters for the monastery, so I had control over what I did during the day. This was a blessing and a curse. It was a curse in the sense that I was still one of the youngest members of the monastery, and I had to decide and draw out the service engagements around the place for everyone who was senior to me. That didn't make me a lot of friends. But it was a blessing in that I could keep myself busy, give myself lots to do, but schedule it so that it all fit together well.

My program for most of the year was simple. I would rise at 3:30, shower, get dressed, put tilaka (sacred clay) on my body, and memorise verses for ten minutes while it dried. I'd then finish getting dressed and go on chant my rounds. I would usually finish a little after 6 when I would return to my room, finish my learning of verses for the day, read until 6:30 and then do into the garage to do yoga. At 7 I would go back upstairs to attend the morning prayers and class. Then breakfast. Then we would all get ready and head out the door to distribute books. I would normally stay close to the monastery, mostly going to New Lynn, Henderson, or onto Queen Street. At the time I was living just one street over from where I currently live, close enough to walk to town, and close to the train line heading west.


(A photo of a friend I made while selling books in New Lynn. We're still in contact, and he's reading this blog.)

I would go out on books for a couple hours, then return home for lunch. Usually I would have to cook something simple for myself at lunch time. Then, I would sit down at the computer and read the rest of my allotted two hours, which was the minimum expectation at our monastery. Sometimes I would even sign into a voice chat and read to my friend while he was at work in Wellington. I would then do some of my management chores, which grew month by month as I was the manager. At the time I would also usually update the blog I was running, and contact some blog friends through MSN. Then almost every night I had rostered myself to cook dinner for everyone. Except for Friday and Sunday nights, when I was at the yoga centre in town.


(This is a photo of me coming back from a bush walk in Piha. Guests at our yoga centre who were interested in Krishna consciousness would sometimes be invited out on bush walks with us. On this day we ate samosas. They were awesome. We had them with a tamarind chutney, the remains of which ended up sitting in our fridge for close to six months.)

I liked my new schedule. And I liked the dynamics of the monastery for the first six months of 2006. My new responsibilities gave me a sense of worth and achievement, and it provided a stable ground for my relationships with those around me. I was fairly content and peaceful. There were still occasional stresses. As I mentioned in regards to the rosters, it was difficult being in a position where I had responsibility to decide things in an insubordinate sort of way within a social hierarchy which didn't appreciate that. But overall it was nice.

Then, our monastery took part in a three week book distribution marathon in May. I structured my daily program so that I could take part in it as much as possible. But my fatigue grew during the weeks. By the final week of the marathon I ended up sick with the flu. This was the start of about three months of steady illness. I had the flu for a week, followed by a lung infection which took several weeks to recover from. Then I was hit with the most awful stomach bug I've ever suffered from. I could not keep anything down for a week, nothing at all. By the time I could eat again my eyes were sunken, I had lost a lot of weight, and my already tired body was even more tired. And then I got another flu, followed by another lung infection.

My Guru came to visit after this spell of illness, and expressed concern. On the day he left Auckland on that trip myself and two other monks made a journey up to Tauranga to visit distribute books using my parents place as a base for our operation. We arrived late at night. In the morning I didn't wake up. I didn't wake up until about 3 in the afternoon. I had another flu, the worst I think I have ever suffered from. I was delirious again with fever. I got up during the night to visit the toilet, and passed out in the hallway, waking up to find myself curled in a ball in the small space between the hallway and the toilet door. We decided that this didn't make the best impression for my parents, and we left the following day, after I had taken a trip to the doctors to make sure everything was okay. When I recovered from the illness I was exhausted for weeks, having not yet recovered from my previous illnesses.

I wrote a letter to my Guru explaining the situation with my health. He decided that I should travel down to Wellington to visit a natural doctor down there and seek treatment from him. This doctor was an unconventional character in pretty much all ways. His focus seemed to be homeopathy, but he also practiced Traditional Chinese Medicine, Naturopathy, neuro-linguistic programming, and I think he was also a trained chiropractor or osteopath. I'm not certain. The idea was that I should have an initial appointment with him, with the likely result of shifting down to Wellington to stay and recover my health for a while.

Moving down to Wellington was another uncertainty. Within the monastery Wellington had a certain stigma about it. And a monk spending time in Wellington was almost looked down upon. The reason being that generally monks went down to Wellington to give up their monastic lifestyle. Our previous manager was now in Wellington, about to be engaged for marriage. I don't know if I've managed to convey the mentality very well in this blog so far, but amongst monks there is, whether rightfully or wrongfully, a lot of prestige about being a monk, and aiming to maintain one's monasticism long term. Even if one left the monastic order, if they had maintained if for a long period of time they were looked up to by the monastics. And anything which indicated a possible change from a monastic life was deemed to be the result of personal weakness, and looked down upon. Openly we knew this mentality was wrong, and I think the monastery over time had worked hard to squash this mindset out as much as possible. But for the immature among us, like myself at the time, this was a serious concern. And I overheard several conversations while in the monastery indicated that others thought that my move to Wellington was indicative of my giving up the monastic order, which was not the case at all.

I arrived in Wellington a few days before the biggest festival of the year, the same festival I described several entries ago when talking about the argument turned potential fight. The day before the festival I had an appointment with the 'doctor'. As part of the treatment he hooked me up to his computer and ran some kind of computer program which was meant to scan the energy vibrations of my organs AND my emotions. Personally, I always thought that was quackery. BUT the result his computer generated was INCREDIBLY interesting to me. According to his computer the reason I was suffering from so many health problems was because I was suppressing my revolutionary tendencies. I think that was incredibly accurate. As the manager of the monastery now, dealing within a framework of entrenched hierarchy, and even nepotism, I had to restrain myself so much from expressing my revolutionary propensities to rebel and take over. His counselled me a bit on the issue, telling me that he was certain that I was destined to be in a role where my tendencies could be exercised, but I just had to learn how to express them safely in the meantime. He was no fool when it came to understanding the intensely hierarchical social structure I was living in.

The next day was our big festival of the year. The yoga centre in Wellington held a huge celebration, and I was asked to give the philosophy presentation for the evening, which I was delighted about. I loved giving presentations, and public speaking.

This trip to Wellington, however, brought up some other tendencies in myself which I hadn't had to deal with before. In Auckland I was the lowest of the pecking order. In Wellington, staying with the younger men, most of whom were not initiated, I was a senior person. And how I learned to act in that different situation was an interesting example of how human behaviour works within structured hierarchies.

(This is a photo of me taken while I was giving the presentation at the festival celebrations in Wellington)