Getting Deeper into the Practice

Eventually, I decided that I wanted to get directly involved in the Krishna lifestyle, and take it on as my fulltime focus. I decided that I would move into a living situation with some devotees, and have my day structured around my spiritual practices, and helping out with the Krishna projects they were involved with. So I packed up my things, my parents came down to Wellington to help me move, and I made my way up north, back to Hamilton, to live and work at the Krishna restaurant that was running there at the time.

I made the decision myself that I wanted to move in with the Krishna devotees in Hamilton. However, this decision was a little bit controversial within the Wellington community at the time. Not controversial in any sinister way, more just unconventional. Generally, when one becomes interested in the Krishna community in Wellington, the expectation is that they will decide to move in to one of the ashramas in Wellington, either living with the men or the women of the community. For me, however, that option did not appeal to me. There were a few reasons for that.

The first reason had to do with the personal situation I was in at the time. When I first started looking into the Krishna lifestyle seriously I was living with my girlfriend in a flat with a few other friends. Our flat was vegan, which was great. Pretty much around the time that we moved into our flat, my girlfriend started getting self-destructive with her depression, and I started becoming less interested in continuing our relationship as a result. Sometimes she would cut herself when I was out at something I really wanted to attend, and she would call me on my cellphone in tears, wanting me to come home. At the time, when I decided to get involved in the Krishna lifestyle full time, I felt that if I were going to be able to give my full attention to my spiritual practices, I would need to be as far away from that relationship as possible. At least until things settled. Whenever people asked why I decided to move to Hamilton instead of straight into the ashrama in Wellington, that was usually the reason I would give.

However, the primary reason I didn't want to join the ashrama in Wellington straight away was really because it scared the heck out of me. What scared me at the time wasn't the strict discipline that one was expected to keep to while living in that ashrama. That was actually something that appealed to me at the time. What scared me more was the uncompromising character of the head of the ashrama, who appeared to me at the time to use fear and emotions to get points across. I had witnessed enough brief interactions of that sort while on my short visits for the ashrama to make me feel uncertain about living in that situation. To be fair, he wasn't all bad, I actually got along with him better than the rest of the Krishna devotees at the time. And I'm under the impression that he has acknowledged this tendency of his, and has tried to rectify for the most part. But at the time, the last place I wanted to move to was his ashrama.

I found out later that the majority of Krishna devotees were certain that I was not going to last as a devotee in Hamilton. Their reason for thinking this was that the majority of my good friends were in Hamilton. The Krishna community does frown on having deep friendships with people outside of their community. The reason being that our desires and values are based on the people we associate with, and since the Krishna community has radically different desires and values than the mainstream communities, it is best to keep friendships outside the community limited at best. Their fear was that I would just dive back into my social circles once I arrived in Hamilton, and eventually turn my back on their community for good. In one sense, that is what happened, but a good six or seven years later.

So, I decided to move into the restaurant that was then function in Hamilton at the time. The restaurant was run by a nice Hare Krishna family, who had an older male devotees staying with them, and younger, fresher female devotee. I lived at the restaurant for six months, during which I learned how to cook, and carried out all the different duties involved in running the restaurant. It was a fun time being a productive part of the project.

This period was also a time that I used to really ponder about my decision to dive into this lifestyle. I was reading Krishna literature as much as possible, often four hours a day, whenever I had a spare moment. And I spent a lot of my money downstairs at the internet cafe, both debating this new found philosophy with others, while simultaneously researching all the controversies that arose WITHIN the Krishna community. I would think about all these things deeply, and work out ways to reconcile my doubts without compromising my intelligence. I wasn't going to ignore that there were problems within the community, but I was convinced that these problems in themselves weren't reasons to abandon the community.

I also watched as the young woman who was living with us at the restaurant went through her own intense personal and emotional struggles. Eventually, her emotional stresses were too much for the rest of us, and she was asked to leave. Sometimes she would spend the whole day hiding in her room, sometimes crying under her bed. At the time I was known for being incredibly tolerant of others, never one to lose my temper. But one day, during a rather stressful event at the restaurant, where she refused to help, I came so close to losing it at her that even she, when talking about it later, said she was surprised to see me so angry.

That summer my parents took a trip back to Canada with the rest of my family, without me. That was my first Christmas without the family, and it was definitely a tuff one. In New Zealand, our little Krishna community would organise a large festival over the Christmas and New Years period. That year we congregating together in Christchurch. On one level it was always a nice experience getting together with the other Krishnas from around the country. On another level, I always felt uncomfortable with the fact that we were all expected to abandon our families over Christmas, which for me was always such a family time. However, this first year, I felt more that my family had abandoned me with their trip to Canada. During this summer break the restaurant was closed, and I spent a week or so house sitting my parents house, attending a Krishna wedding, and going to a temple opening in Auckland. It was also during this time that it was decided through talking with the senior monk (who later became my Guru) that if I wanted to progress in my spiritual practice I would have to spend some time in the ashrama in Wellington. By this time I was convinced I could deal with the situation there, and that whatever struggles I went through while living there would be for my own benefit.

The restaurant ended up closing, under a rather dynamic situation. The family who were running it decided to move to India so that their son could attend a special boys only Hare Krishna school there. They tried selling the restaurant to some Hare Krishna friends of theirs, but the business deal was strictly business, and as a result the friendship exploded. Since I am a fast typer, and I had a lot of computer and internet skills in comparison to the family I was living with, I had to write various correspondence on behalf of the family trying to deal with the sudden break down of their business deal. The family was leaving in a few days, and their expected income from the sale of their business was pulled out from beneath them. It was a rather stressful time for them.

Eventually, they made their way out of the country, and I made my way, by train, down to join the ashrama in Wellington.