The Journey of a Blind Heart: 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.