A weekend in the 'Tron

When I moved out of Hamilton at the beginning of 2003 I had put together a small zine with my then girlfriend, as a sort of reflection on the time I had spent in that small city. In my opening words of that zine I thanked a number of my friends who, I felt, had given me so much and helped me out at a time in my life when I most needed friends around me. Of course, since becoming a Hare Krishna I had pretty much zero contact with them whatsoever. In fact, when discussing my feelings of indebtedness to my friends who had helped me out over the years most devotees would kinda smirk about it, because the help they had given me had done little to nothing for my spiritual advancement. In fact, I was told that any help that was given by my friends and family was actually a spiritual poison, because it simply served to increase my material attachments and desires. I had a hard time swallowing such a cold analysis of life.

With Suzy's death I started feeling like I needed to get in touch with the people in my life who had helped me out so much over the years, especially those people who had gone the extra mile to make my life happy at times when I struggled to smile through the days. It was not a comfortable feeling knowing that I had neglected these relationships for so long. It made me feel genuinely awful, even made my stomach turn to think that I had turned my back on these people for so long, especially since I had not really developed any friendships within the community I was confined to at the time that really even came close to being as sincerely supportive as those.

In May myself and another monk were asked to help cover for some friends in Hamilton, who were running a restaurant there at the university. They needed to head down south for the weekend, returning on Monday, but they needed someone to cook and open up their little restaurant for them on Monday morning. We had to come down on Thursday night, help out with the evening program they had at their house, then get up early on Friday to learn the routine for the day. The weekend we had to ourselves for the most part.

At the time my little brother had a friend who was coming sometimes to the evening events at the Krishna place there. He had a few friends in Hamilton, and would sometimes head down to visit and hang out and go to shows. He decided to come down that weekend as well. He came to the program on Thursday evening, and we hung out together on Friday and Saturday.

On Friday morning I was supposed to get up to learn how to cook and everything. But when morning came I didn't budge. I felt completely exhausted. I had just spent the previous three days cooking and serving out and cleaning for our university programs, and basically running around like mad in general for some time. My body just shut down. Plus, this was my first time away from the monastery in a good number of months. I hadn't had a break from the constant harassment I felt within the monastery, and had almost gotten used to the feeling of never being able to relax for a second. As soon as I was out of that environment I just felt all the anxiety flee from my muscles, and my body just collapsed in exhaustion. It was a bit of an eye opening experience really. It made me realise for the first time just how incredibly stressed out I was, and how dangerously close I was to burning out completely.

I showed up to the restaurant late, and in a rather dazed state. My brain felt like it had slowed right down, as if on holiday mode. I helped out a little bit, learned what I needed to know to assist in cooking and running the restaurant. Luckily my friend who had come down with me was a resilient guy, he pushed through the tiredness of the previous weeks activities and got done what needed doing in the kitchen. Afterwards I went into town with my little brother.

While there I ran into a number of my old friends around the place. Hamilton is a small town after all. Catching up with friends after a long absence can sometimes be a happy experience, and sometimes it can be rather depressing. Sometimes it's inspiring to see where people ended up, what they did with their lives, and how they had bettered themselves. Other times it can be a bit heartbreaking to see that people ended up in worse situations than before. This trip gave me a mixed bag of feelings like that. The odd part I noticed was that I felt everyone had considered that I was one of the sad cases, someone who had potential but let it sit unused.

Some friendships had suffered drastically over the years, to the point where it was just incredibly awkward being in the company of these friends. I felt guilty, and I think that they felt bitter. Others felt like they hadn't changed much at all over the years. I met up with one good friend of mine who had gotten married. I hadn't even really met his wife. I went to their house, bringing cookies as a gift. It was so refreshing to see him and how he interacted with his wife. Their house was awesome, especially their extra deep bathtub they showed off with pride. We sat and talked for a long time, and about a lot of different things, very candidly. I left feeling a little jealous about how his life turned out. I would rather have been in his place than my own. (As I typed this paragraph out I received a Facebook message from this friend, offering me a place to stay for the weekend while I visit Hamilton.)

I also met up with two other friends who had helped me out a lot during my last year in Hamilton. They both came, independently of each other, to the restaurant on Monday to hang out. It was so nice to see them both. I still have photos of both of them on my phone. Talking to them both it was like nothing had changed. They had never changed their opinion of me over the years, they still held me as a friend despite the separation of time and distance. They were both people who have always popped up in my mind on a regular basis, people I always cared deeply about.

As we returned home to the monastery I felt that I had a lot to think about. Firstly, I had to acknowledge the fact that the environment at the monastery was stressing me out beyond what I thought I could bear much longer. I realised that if things kept up like they were I would eventually completely snap. As a result I wrote a letter to my Guru explaining the situation, what was stressing me out, and how I was feeling in the situation. I said that if things continued like this I would have to make the decision to leave this setting altogether. His solution at the time was that I should take monthly retreat trips to Hamilton to recover, and in the meantime he would think up a solution to the general issues. When I explained this to the leadership and management team of the monastery, they monastery leader responded by making some of the most hurtful personal digs he had ever made towards me. It was like rubbing salt into my already agitated wounds. I had to struggle not to respond by yelling at him.

The other thing I had to acknowledge after my trip to Hamilton was that I was becoming more and more aware of my shifting desires. I was becoming less and less attracted to the monastic lifestyle, with its social limitations. I wanted a life like my friends, with his career, house and family. I discussed this also with my mentor. At the time it was dismissed as being a product of psycho-physical changes that were expected at my age, and that I should try and push past them to continue with my monastic career.

In the end, I felt like nothing much had changed in the monastery and in my life, except that internally I was going through more and more battles to reconcile my two different halves. Part of me still enjoyed and aspired to the monastic lifestyle and my spiritual focused life. But a growing part of me started to actually feel repelled by it all. I reconciled it all mostly by relying on basic philosophy for a while and by acknowledging that fact that the mind is never satisfied wherever it rests. The 'grass is always greener' is an effect which will always act on the mind, even when your life is running perfectly and fine. I knew that life away from the monastery wouldn't be as easy as my mind would sometime pretend it to be. When I brought up these feelings when discussing with my Guru this is one of the things he pointed out as well. He once said that yes there were problems, but there were going to be problems in any situation, and that leaving this situation wasn't truly going to get ride of the problems. On one level I thought that made sense. On another level I struggled to deal with it continually.

After writing the updates on Suzy I have felt kinda emotionally neutral. Those were tough to write out, and left me a bit exhausted. I was just getting texts from a friend who has been trying to read the one about Suzy's death for the past few days and just hasn't been able to make it through the whole thing yet. I've kinda gotten back on track today I think. I'm making a trip to Hamilton this weekend, so I'm not certain what will happen in terms of updates. Either I will find it an emotional experience and feel the need for an outlet for it all and end up writing loads, or else I will just have loads of fun, forget about everything else and start updating again when I get back. We'll see how things go.