Bringing It Home

A few days ago a friend who follows my blog and whose adventurous love for the great outdoors wrote ma a nice note about goings on in his life. He mentioned that he enjoys reading my blog but get little knowledge about my actual life from them. So after careful consideration I decided to write today on why I chose a monastic life. Of course there are many paths and individuals following those paths, but for this blog I'll stick to the Krishna Consciousness Movement and my, as well as some others' involvement in it.

The hope of a parent is to see that their child is educated, and happy in life, and some, if they could, would try as hard as possible to shield their children's innocence form time. My innocence was broken at an early age, 6 years old, as Politicians in my country staged coups and imposed curfews on the citizens during their fight to the top of the mountain and occupy some post. Again, on my eleventh birthday, the civil war that lasted for more than 10 years in Liberia began. I quickly put away my toys and became mother's helper, making sure everything went smoothly in running our household, now also joined by other family and friends whose areas had been severely affected by war. As time went by I was practically and adult before 15 and my dreams of becoming a Franciscan monk was fading away as the mode of life, keeping your head above water, crept in. Then something else threatened- recruitment of child soldiers, which urged my Father to bring me to the US to live with him.

My father had a zillion plans for my life and worked hard to give me a comfortable means for studying and then realizing his dreams for me. But mother had taught me to make decisions I will live with for the rest of my life and blame no one later for "making me" live a life I didn't want to. In America thanks to the Media, the lives of everyone was an already opened book or a book waiting to be opened by some luck of the draw act- win the lottery and you're on TV; Save a dog from drowning, blow up buildings, molest someone- anyone could be famous in an instant. I also watched my dad struggle daily as he drove from New Jersey to New York to work and then on the weekends spend most of his time on the sofa in front of Headline News pouring in with more and more negative things happening in the world. From my own experience, children are impressionable and so I began to really question the dream my dad had for me vs the monastic life I wanted to lead since I was 5. What kind of culture was this where people worked so hard 11 and a half months out of the year for two weeks of vacation where they spend their hard earnings on Jack Daneils, Jim Beam, Johnny Walker, Jose Quervo and a T-shirt that says they did?

In Africa I lived in a community with Jews, Hindus, Christians, and Muslims shared everything. Once I asked my mom why we had so many mixed bowls and plates and she mentioned that if I wanted a complete set of china, I had to go and retrieve them from the neighbors. But I also couldn't take their bowls and plates back empty. Here, I saw a deep resentment of individuals based on externals- religion, skin color, this, that, etc.

So when I came across Four Krishna monks and two nuns on a busy day in Seattle, I had to dig deeper. I visited them almost daily for three weeks straight trying to understand why 25 people lived so happily sharing rooms in a house meant for maybe 6 people. Why were they so peaceful? Why was I not satisfied although I was earning and living as I desired- or more as I had fallen into the pattern of living. Talking with some of them was even more incredible! These were young men and women from well-to-do families who just didn't find satisfaction in their daily life course and so dared to do the extraordinary. Of course their families freaked out beyond reason; got cut out of wills, others "deprogrammed" back into the "normalcy" of society, and others who had everything, like on monk who lived with his mother in Beverly Hills in a mansion, just decided to move into such a situation.

So why did i do it? For me, sharing things with people was natural in my upbringing, I shared a bedroom with bunk beds occupied by my brothers and the best part, the music, was something I did everyday with my Mother and Step-Father. When my mom would come home after work, in the evenings she would sit on the porch with my Step father and sing songs they learned from their parents, for Church, or from growing up amongst friends. So when the monastery came alive at 4:30 am with Songs of the Spiritual Master, I was more than happy to Join in. Also the topic of God was not doctrine but very practical- we have a relationship with God, Krsna as he's called in Vedic thought, and to show our love for him, we did something for him. Just as I saw my mom cooking and sharing with the Neighbors, or many guests coming over on the weekends to spend the day in our yard on the beach, or other personal dealings, Service to God then means that He is a person and doing things in the association of devotees shows love for Him. We, in the monastery also came from various religious or nonreligious backgrounds. We developed great friendships with each other based on service to a common goal, we protected each other and cultivated each other. This was nothing like I had seen as a result of the Civil wars or my introduction to America. More interestingly, people in the war were before very close friends, and due to intoxication of power, were now hunting each other down.

Come see a world that's filled with pain

broken homes and scavenges

where hatred and strife

seems not to cease

where children laugh and play

as kids together

then grow as men and fight

to kill their pals.

Where friends betray each other and then sing "Soul rest in Peace" -

I had to change my world, even if it meant sleeping in a sleeping bag next to five or five hundred people with that same goal. I prefer living simply with a small bowl of Good healthy food, than a fridge supply of junk, filling the empty gap of satisfaction in the body with food prepared by a machine or someone who takes the place of the machine, does his job, care nothing about you, but cares about his paycheck at the close of the week. When mother made food, it was infused with her conscious love for her children and this same, or even better conscious was in the minds of the cooks in the monastery. No pay, just love for those you live with and a desire to see them satisfied eating food offered in Love to Krsna.

In this realm I live in now, no one who deeply understands this Krishna Conscious philosophy lives to exploit anyone else. We're learning daily that Love means self sacrifice, and knowledge of the Supreme Person is very vast. Not limited to cast or creed. When a person lives without fear- without feeling threatened by the next person, then human life becomes a grand vehicle to drive us to our ultimate goal- to build a world where God is real and we are real and our relationship between God, man, and nature is harmonious :)

Good Morning. Hare Krishna.