I moved up to Auckland to be a founding member of the new monastery that was being set up here. I arrived in the first week of October, 2004. At the time we were renting a rather run-down house on Auckland's most prestige street, Paritai Drive. The street was so famous we ACTUALLY had tour buses running past our house constantly during the day. Sometimes we would wave at the tourists from our dinning room as we had breakfast together. I always wondered whether our eccentric run-down house-turned-Hare-Krishna-monastery ever featured as a site of interest for the tour.
Moving into this monastery was a huge paradigm shift for me. Not because I had to renounce much to get there, as I had already been practicing strict celibacy since half way through 2003, and I never have had money, or much or anything really. I would sometimes joke that I actually ended up with MORE belonging as a Hare Krishna monk than I ever had before hand. The paradigm shift had more to do with two factors. The first was that now I was going to be spending the majority of my days trying to sell books on Auckland city's streets. That was definitely a big task, physically, emotionally and psychologically. I remember after my first full week of book distribution I was so incredibly exhausted that on our visit to the Temple I fell asleep at around 4 pm and didn't wake up for over 12 hours. At the time I was typically getting up each day at 3 am to chant and read before our shared morning program, class and breakfast, then out the door by 9:30 to sell books.
The second, and actually more problematic aspect of this paradigm shift which was the most troubling for me was the fact that the leadership and management and relationships of the monastery I was entering into was a complete shambles. Even though there were only a few of us there at the time, there were power struggles, emotional blackmail, bullying, and even an at one point an attempted coup. I was the youngest one at the time, and was the worst at selling books, so I was definitely treated like the one at the bottom of the pecking order. It was definitely a confusing situation to be in, when the people you are meant to aspire to be like are acting in ways that were certainly not exemplary at all.
Without going into too many details, the leader of the monastery at the time had a major tendency of bullying, yet was very insecure about his short comings. I remember one time during a more academic class we were having he snapped at the teacher because I was getting more praise and attention for providing more consistent right answers. So he seemed to compensate by pointing out how many books he was able to distribute, and how great a monk he was. It was a very uncomfortable situation. And I wish I could say it got better. I just learned over the years how to deal with it more. Not that there weren't attempts to rectify his behaviour, but I honestly would have to say that there was very little change that occurred.
As a monk, the last thing you want to hear from someone is that maybe you aren't up to being a monk. As a young and struggling monk I was told this on several occasions, sometimes just because I had gotten food poisoning, or had started to have decreasing success in my books sales. When I had joined the monastery I had visions of being part of a team that would work together to promote something they considered highly valuable. I had thought of it as some sort of revolutionary spiritual group, like you read about in the Book of Acts in the New Testament, who would go out and 'spread the good news'. Of course, to me now that sounds incredibly immature, but I always like to put a revolutionary spin on everything I do. But to be faced with a disappointing mess of leadership, and constant discouragement and even bullying was definitely a disheartening thing indeed. I think my self-esteem took some massive knocks during that time. And to be honest, I think the self-esteem issues I struggle with now are highly linked to having to deal with that sort of thing, in different forms, for the past five years.
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