Transitions are difficult.

The dynamics of our monastery in the first year of my being there were not very healthy, and thus they did not last long term. By the end of 2005, however, things were coming to a head, and 2006 ended up feeling like a fresh start. And as things were coming together a bit more for our monastery, the one in Christchurch completely fell apart, and monks stared migrating our way.

The older school Hare Krishna monk mentality prevailed at our monastery in 2005. The attitude was that to be a good monk you had to be good at selling books, if you struggled with that one task it was a sign that monastic life wasn't for you. Our UK import tried to mellow this hardline stance, but it still came through from our monastery leader. And I heard about it regularly, though increasingly indirect, as a result of my increasing illnesses.

I was being presented with an ideal standard, that I would be able to sell books and lots of them, and told that that would ensure my life as a monk. Of course, I liked monastic life, the simplicity of it, and the focus involved, and the chance to steadily work on improving myself. I liked those things. So I wanted to achieve this ideal goal, but my failure to do so resulted in a feeling of failure, combined with the feeling that, if I failed, I would have to give up what I liked about my life then. It was a scary feeling. And even though I was being told by other senior members of our monastery that this wasn't actually the case, nonetheless it felt like it, it was what was being dictated by the monastery leader.

Around half way through the year we had two senior and well seasoned monks join our monastery, after escaping the collapse of the Christchurch centre. At the time, their presence in the monastery improved the situation to some degree. They were much more soft hearted in their approach to others, and were encouraging to me of my efforts as a monk. They were monks of the 'new school', where monasticism was not based on book sales, but character, study and discipline. As they recovered from their experience in Christchurch, which I must say were infinitely worse than what I have described so far, they eventually took up roles of leadership in our monastery.

As the year came closer to an end our monastery manager made the decision to give up monastic life, and pursue life as a married Hare Krishna. This left an opening in the monastery for someone with computer, management, organisational and communication skills to take his place. Because of my failing health, my computer skills which far excelled anyone else's in the monastery, and my previous experience running an animal rights group, I was the obvious choice for the job.

Each year, as I've mentioned before, the Hare Krishnas run a book distribution marathon, focusing all their attention on selling books for the month of December. Because book distribution was such a strong focus for the monastic as it is, the marathon was the chance for the monks to really show their prowess, show off their strengths to each other. Sometimes even cheating. As the time for the marathon approached, perhaps a week before, I came down with another massive illness. I developed a huge fever, which literally made me completely delirious for two days. As that illness progressed it moved into my lungs and I developed pneumonia. Others also got the flu/fever, but I was the only one to develop pneumonia. I was out of action for three weeks, coughing all night.

For most of my time that year, everyone was encouraging me that even though I was sick and not distributing many books, there was no reason for me to think about changing my service focus and doing something else instead. But when I got this illness the mood changed. As I lay awake one night, coughing my lungs out (not literally) the manager came into my room and said "I've had enough of watching you hack away at yourself like this. If you keep this up you will end up completely destroying your body. We need to change this." His suggestion was actually that I consider going to university to study something, but remain a monk. I found out recently that he got in a whole lot of trouble for suggesting this to me without discussing the concept with my Guru first. Our UK import talked to me the next day, and agreed that my time as a fulltime book distributer was over, and that I would have to do something else as my focused service. The problem was, nothing was certain about what I was going to do next. Nothing had been confirmed or discussed with my Guru at all, and thus I spent most of December in a state of insecurity. What if I did have to leave because I was changing services? Was I failure because of this? What was I actually going to do next year? And how would it affect my relationships within the monastery?

These were big concerns for me during that time. It bothered me a lot. I spent most of my recovery time then listening to lectures on my mp3 player, reading 7 hours a day and discussing philosophy with our manager as he trained me to take over his job as manager. He trained me as the manager even though, at the time, I had not received any direct word from my Guru whether or not that was actually what he wanted me to be doing with my time. That month I also started writing a blog, which was mostly philosophical musings combined with personal thoughts about things. It was a little unconventional for a monk, but that month was the start of the creation of my unconventional monastic approach.

The month of December in 2005 was a stressful month, but at the same time it was a month of hope. I spent my worrying time split between thinking I was a failure, feeling rejected by the monastery for not living up to the expected standard of a book distributing monk, and the other half of the time worrying about what I would be doing instead, whether it would mean leaving the monastery, or being looked down upon for doing some 'inferior' activity, whether I actually had what it took to do the other activity or not. It was a stressful month for me.

There really are few feelings in life that I can think of that are worse than feeling rejected, a failure, not good enough and uncertain about what will happen to you next. The feeling of plans falling through, and hopes being pulled away can sometimes be heart crushing. That December felt like that. And this February has felt like that.

Over Xmas and New Years that year, I did manage to visit my family for the holidays. The festival that was being held at that time was not open to the monks, instead we joined a second end of year festival which took place in mid January. I had relatives visiting from Canada, and I explained to my Guru that this may be the last chance to see my Oma. As it turned out, she didn't come to NZ anyway, though she is still alive in Canada.

When I returned from my parents place to the monastery, I was greeted with news about my new services. I would be taking over as the manager of the monastery AND I would be more involved in the outreach work at the Loft, giving classes there more regularly, including during the week, teaching philosophy, making friends, drawing people to take up the Krishna conscious lifestyle. I was pretty happy to hear the news, it brought a feeling of stability.

But it also brought some personal changes that I didn't expect. And some of those changes were things that grew in later years into things that I despised.