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...