The Forming of Associations

After attending my first Sunday at the Gaura Yoga Centre in Wellington, and meeting for the first time this travelling monk who shared his wisdom and experience with the guests who attended his seminar, I was drawn to continue coming back every Sunday. The experience was fresh and new, the philosophy touched the same attractive features which I found in all eastern philosophy which was the pronouncement that material life was the source of our suffering, the practices were demanding yet appealing, and my vegan hunger was catered for with smiling service. At the same time, I found the members of this newly discovered community to be rather odd, people I could not relate to. I remember at one point, I was in constant correspondence with the senior monk I had met on my first visit to the Krishna centre, and I mentioned to him the fact that I didn't really like any of the Krishna devotees. I told him that they just seemed weird to me, and we just didn't seem to have anything much in common. He told me just to keep up a friendship with my old friend-turned-Krishna, and to keep writing to him weekly.

The ironic thing about my time in Wellington was that I found it hard to really gel with any community there. Even the punk and activist communities which I normally fit into seemed a bit foreign to me there. Being straightedge was such a faux pas of sorts in Wellington that it made me feel like the odd one out even amongst people I otherwise shared a lot in common with. When I rode my bike through Cuba Mall I would have punk kids yelling "CRATE EDGE" at me. During social gatherings at my house people would try to convince me that drinking and getting stoned was akin to eating tropical fruits. As a result, although I felt it would be impossible to fit in with the Krishna community in Wellington, at least I could feel that we shared some primary values. That was a draw card for me for sure.

Another draw card for me was the chance to do something that I felt was positive for the wider community. My activism was an extension of this same value. I wanted to do something, to help the community in some way, and I was always looking for some avenue to feel useful in this way. The Krishna community has a focus on service, and if you want to offer some service, they will encourage you to no end. So, my desire to offer service to the community was picked up by them, and fanned from a spark into a burning fire. I started by just vacuuming in exchange for yoga classes and dinner. Eventually I started helping in the kitchen, doing some basic kitchen hand work, doing dishes. Helping out in this way made me feel like I had a place within this community, regardless of whether or not I felt that I actually had friendships with the members of the community. Looking back, I don't think that changed much over the years.

I also started getting more involved in the practices of Krishna consciousness; the chanting, the reading, the diet changes and world view adjustments. My girlfriend and I were growing apart and we decided to spend as much time apart as possible. When she was out of town I would spend most of my time hanging out with the Krishnas. When I went out of town I would often spend time visiting the Krishnas in Hamilton. One week I took a trip to the Auckland Krishna community for a series of festivals there, and from that moment I had made my decision to dive head first into the experience. My desire for an all-encompassing, high demanding spiritual practice was being fulfilled, and at a very timely moment, just when I was starting to most feel isolated from my friends and communities.

For some reason, the activist communities in western countries seem to be so full of infighting and depression. Everyone has their ways of dealing with it, but the ultimate result is that the communities become unproductive. Some escape through drugs. Others focus on gossip and shit-stirring. Others turn to religion as an escape route. For me, that was definitely the case. My turn to a spiritual community, especially a highly demanding one, was partly an attempt to deal with my personal inabilities to deal with a struggling radical community. I wanted to strive for a positive change, and I wanted a radical lifestyle of rebellion, but I also wanted an escape from aspects of the communities around me. My escape was to turn towards a spiritual community full of rather passive personalities, subdued by their practices and by the leadership structures that they operated under. And it worked, for some time. Until, at least, I realised that the sense of community was painfully superficial, and over-shadowed by an authoritarian approach to everything.