Friends, Rats, Uncomfortable Chairs, and the Blending of the Three

NOTE: this will likely be the first post you see because I’ve had some problems posting, and thus have a backlog of entries. Accordingly, I suggest you begin by scrolling down to my first post, “Before I get too Crazy..." in order to understand my experience chronologically. Or you can read it backwards and just pretend it’s a Quentin Terrentino movie. Sorry for the inconvenience. In the future, I'll only be posting once every week or two, so don't get too overwhelmed, you can pace yourself on these first few.

After my somewhat negative first experience in Auckland city, I was weary about traveling back in. Like I’ve said before, I’m really finding this monastery lifestyle (though not a monastic lifestyle for me) both beautiful and satisfying, and at times almost fear the saturated sensory experience that I once called “normal life.” Though these things were sitting heavy on my mind, I had heard about a reddit.com meet-up in Auckland some weeks earlier and had my mind set on it. If you’ve never heard of Reddit, similar to digg.com, it’s an online news and social media site that encourages its users to share links and comments. It’s like a “what’s hot online” forum and it’s used worldwide. Did you hear about that Colbert/Stewart Rally to Restore Fear/Sanity? That was Reddit’s brainchild, put in motion by Colbert. We can be a pretty powerful community when we’re not talking about online comics. Coincidentally, r/newzealand (NZ subreddit) had planned a meet-up for early November, perfect timing for me to meet some like-minded internet geek Kiwis. Ignoring the larger half of my conscience screaming “Don’t go back to the city!,” I went and checked myself into a hostel. I stayed in the more “artsy” part of inner city (though it’s so small, no neighborhood is really separate from another) on what’s known as K Road and headed to the meeting place. Thankfully, the bar chosen for the meet-up was in the opposite direction of where I had been the week before, so I felt there was hope for a better experience. I arrived to find about 20 fellow Redditors and only one laptop; a surprisingly large group with a very surprising absence of internet feed (it’s like a drug, man), and more surprising yet, everybody was pretty normal! I mean, granted we’re all geeks for taking time out of our lives to meet other anons in real life, but there were no, shall we say, uber-geeks. There was a nice mix of Kiwis, travelers, and permanent residents (like a citizen with fewer privileges), so I was able to get a lot of great info about the local scene, the travel scene, and young-adult Kiwi life in general. I was the only guy from the States, and more importantly, from California, since Reddit “headquarters” are based in SF (I’ve never seen it, I guess it’s just an office with like 5 dudes running the show. It’s a user-based site, so the big cheeses are really only involved in ensuring smooth site operations). I was asked a lot of questions about American and Californian life and politics, particularly because the meet-up was just a few days after the mid-term elections and Reddit had been chucked full of political posts. Many random questions were asked, but I also asked a few good questions and wound up exchanging contacts with a few different travelers and locals. As the group began dispersing, I was invited to grab some food with a few cool cats, so I tagged along. These guys were all really into music, skateboarding, being outside, and doing adventurous things, so we got on well. Subsequently, I was invited up to a gathering at one of the guys’ house. They liked me, they really liked me; I was so pumped, I almost couldn’t keep my cool.

At the house I met about 20 new people, all of whoms’ names I forgot almost immediately. Thankfully, I remembered my Reddit buddies, so I was in the clear. Everybody was really nice and had a million questions about California… I felt like some sort of American Guru. I warned them not to take my word on anything about American culture because my individual American experience is different than yours and your neighbor’s, but I think they were happy to just take me at my word on most things. After the initial interrogation, it was crazy how comfortable I felt at the gathering; the group had all been friends since high school, and they reminded me so much of my close friend group from high school. Not that they replaced you guys, I MISS YOU ALL!, but it was just nice to be back in that sort of environment with musicians, inside jokes, good times and good people. While the whole night was a blast, by far the best part was when we were all sitting outside on the deck. I had been offered a chair, which was nice, but the sitting surface of the chair was like rubber bands, so they kept stretching out and allowing me to slide through. As I struggled to stay afloat, I noticed the back of the chair was a cool design, but just terribly unfunctional as a back support. It had no surface where I needed it, but instead had gangly awkward bars jabbing me in the spine and across the ribcage. It was ridiculous. I thought it was some kind of weird new age massage device, but I wasn’t old enough or tense enough to actually enjoy the massage. I wasn’t going to make a big deal about it though, I was a guest in this house and desperately wanted these people to enjoy my company. As I quietly squirmed about, climbing out of the quicksand seat and trying to find the best way to take full advantage of this devious massage, I noticed another guy stuck in the same quagmire. I quietly mentioned, “Hey, what’s up with this seat? It’s really uncomfortable, right?” Unfortunately, a handful of other people heard me too. The response came swiftly and confidently: “Well yeah man… It’s the height of New Zealand art and culture to sit in uncomfortable chairs. We do it at parties, and it’s representative of a man’s worth and masculinity if he can endure the discomfort without squirming. If you wiggle too much, you’re perceived as effeminate and uncultured.” My face dropped deadpan as I contemplated this barbaric social construct and form of art; interestingly, we generally sit on the floor at the monastery, which is pretty uncomfortable for a normal chair user, so it was all beginning to make sense. Then everybody started busting up laughing. “I’m just kidding man, if that was the truth, I would have suggested you leave New Zealand immediately. Actually, those chairs came with cushions, but they’re in the garage right now. Let me get you one.” I was relieved and deeply humored, and when the cushion came, it was luxurious comfort. They make some quality cushions out here.

While I was happy to make some new friends and contacts and plan to hang out with them again, I still spend almost all of my time on the monastery. Along with wild rabbits, opossums (of the cute Australian variety, not the American giant-rat-opossum), dozens of different birds, and millions of different spiders, there is a rat colony who has taken up residence on the property. They live conveniently next to the compost pile, which isn’t as much a compost pile as it is a rat welfare distribution center: food has no time to compost before it is consumed. I usually take up the responsibility of delivering the compost to the bin, and recently have begun really enjoying spending time with the rats. They’re not all scraggly and vicious like the American street rat, and are actually rather cute and playful. I figure this is because they get fed daily by fresh, vegetarian, mostly organic food without having to fight for it. They’re pretty happy beings. Anyway, I’ve grown close to these rats, I think they’ve learned my scent and know food is coming, so they come out to say hello. I tell them secrets, I watch their family dramas unfold, I oversee their well-being and make sure their garbage-food is well balanced and free of toxins. Unfortunately for the rats and me alike, the purpose of the compost bin is to create compost, not support a rat colony. Furthermore, with such good, consistent food, the monastery is bound to have a rat infestation in no time… then they won’t be so cute.

So I had to cover the compost bin’s holes with chicken wire so they no longer have access. It kinda killed me inside, just a bit. After the meal, I took the food down and found the rats in a state of emergency. All of them were out, scurrying around, clawing at the chicken wire, looking for a way in or a new food source. I dumped the food and sat to observe my four-pawed-confidants. They had figured out well enough that they couldn’t get in and weren’t even trying any more. They were anxiously, aimlessly running between holes on their grassy terrace. I saw four fights go down; I’d never seen any of them fight before. The whole scene was just tense and everybody was on edge. It was hard to watch; this is why the Buddha teaches to remain unattached from all, as all is impermanent and attachment only leads to suffering. I dumped the food again the next day to find only two rats say hello. All I can hope is that they’ve found a brighter compost pile in some other pasture; I really, really hope they didn’t move on up to the kitchen, because then I got a serious problem on my hands.

I have a new set of pictures, but haven't uploaded them yet... so check back in a week or two for more of the good stuff.

Adaptation

The Buddha taught that impermanence is an unavoidable reality of life, meaning our self, environment, and conditions are constantly changing, and thus we are ever adjusting and readjusting. Along with a complete lifestyle shift, change of environment, and an altered mind state (but I’m not on drugs!), I’ve been working on adapting to a number of more minor shifts. My dad used to say I always eat like a bird. Now, you may have a mental image of me repeatedly smashing my face into my cereal bowl attempting to peck my Cherrios like a chicken pecks corn, but this isn’t the specific likeness. Though my pecking habits have always been a bit odd, he meant that I have always eaten very slowly with a picky palate, and I sometimes eat lightly throughout the day instead of 3 main meals. Here on the monastery though, there is one meal a day. Just one, from 11AM to 12. Other than that, most people aren’t allowed to eat; by the body’s dependence on food energy, most people aren’t allowed to eat like birds. The purpose of eating only once a day is to keep one’s thoughts centered on meditation and mindfulness rather than the pleasure of food and eating; it’s not a practice of starvation or even “fasting” necessarily, but a simply a focus aid. The digestion of food can be distracting for the body and mind during meditation. Also, meditating on a full stomach can be a rather drowsy experience… eyes closed, sitting comfortably on the floor, belly full and warm, breathing deep, releasing tension, just makes you want to just maybe do a bit of laying meditation. Yeah, I’ll just lay here for a bit…and breath… and close my eyes… and relax… and then laying meditation quickly turns into sleeping meditation, which isn’t really meditation at all. Yes, our goal is to be awake and alert, light in body and mind, and mindfully aware of our consciousness in the present. Sleeping is good too, but I really hope my dreams don’t represent life’s Truth, because my dreams, while saturated with pretty flowers, remain generally light in logic. But who’s to say Truth can be found through logic…

Anyway, since there is only one meal a day, this meal is pretty large. The monks don’t always eat this well throughout their monastic life and at times have to survive on little to nothing for days, but, lucky for us lay residents, there are lots of supporters who bring lots of food to the monastery every day. Because I’m the official caretaker, I’m the only one allowed to eat a light evening meal, but the 11AM meal is by far my main source of sustenance. For a bird-like eater, taking in all of my nutrition for the day in one sitting was something I never thought could happen: I knew I would need a mountainous plateful each day, but the mountain looked unscalable. I watched my fellow lay residents, all of them fit and some skinnier than me, take down heaps upon heaps of food. Meanwhile, I ate some noodles, a few veggies, some rice, nuts and seeds and felt like crawling into a food coma. After a few days of dishing up way more food than would fit, my stomach finally got with the program and learned the valuable and necessary technique of periodic massive expansion. I’m happy to report that I not only eat a large and well-balanced meal each day, but always have room for dessert as well. I’m also gradually becoming less picky, especially because there is so much traditional Asian food that I’ve never seen (Sri Lanken, Malaysian, Thai, Indian, and many more), I usually have no idea what I’m spooning onto my plate anyway. It’s not like I’m some uncultured American-burger-scarfer, I try plenty of different Asian and Middle Eastern food at home, but this isn’t the San Francisco special, it is the real deal. I sometimes can assume that green things are veggies, white stuff is some rice product, brown things are proteins of sorts, and red and yellow things can be very spicy, but these assumptions have proven false many times over. In the end, I pile all these colors together on one plate anyway, so I sometimes find it best to mix them all together and just shovel away; other times I keep the blobs mostly segregated, look at the sky, and let my fork choose what sensations will come next. Both methods usually produce a nice balance of pleasurable sweets and succulents, and tearful spices on the tongue and sinus system throughout. My evening meal is composed of leftovers from lunch, so I do my best to memorize what’s-what in the smorgasbord… but still, my memory often proves ineffective and I doope myself into eating more of the wild and unpredictable madness. But I’m loving it!! (I need to mention, I’m VERY grateful for the generous donations of people… all this food is free!) Also, in case you were wondering, I tried vegemite…. that stuff tastes like poison. It looks like chocolate, but the first bite almost made me ralph, with the second bite tears were welling, and by the third it was confirmed disgusting. Everybody was happy to laugh at me, but nobody else was eating it with me… I should have known.

While food-intake-adjustments have been a gradual, though ultimately successful endeavor, driving on the left side hasn’t been such a smooth transition. When it comes down to it, driving on the left side is just stupid… I know because so few countries in the world do it. The British were just jealous we invented cars before they did, so they made their rules opposite and stupid so they could produce their own cars and make all the money off it. Along with stupid rules, the British make ugly cars. Sorry, I’m just a little bitter. Have you ever tried to drive on the left side? Go outside and try it right now. I didn’t think it would be very difficult to just hop over and drive on the left, but no, it screws with my mind every step of the way. It has come to the point that whenever I drive, I must sing a song the entire time. It goes like this (to the tune of “Jingle Bells”): Left left left, left left left, left left left left left…. If I don’t sing that song the ENTIRE time, I will inevitably wind up on the right side (I mean, it’s called the “right” side for a reason…), receiving expletives and dirty looks from a line of left-siders in ugly pseudo-British cars. It’s happened. More than once.

The first time I drove, I was really focused on doing everything perfect. Added to the challenge of opposite driving, New Zealand has apparently made speed limits a national secret, because there are 100x more billboards of cops with radar guns threatening “Speeding, it’s not worth it” than there are actual speed limit signs. I can’t even judge what I think would be a good speed because I’m too busy focusing on “left left left” to do mental conversions of MPH to KPH (kilometers/hr)… seeing my speedometer at 100 was a bit jarring, but apparently it’s only about 60 MPH. So anyway, I’m driving from the monastery to Auckland city for the first time to drop off Ajahn Chandako at a retreat, occasionally reminding myself “left” and driving slower than a grandma in a pink Cadillac. We bumble down the freeway (called the motorway out here, but I never remember to say that) just fine, find the retreat center after a bit of searching, I drop off Ajahn and get back on the motorway and do my best to remember the return route, ALL WHILE REMAINING LEFT! I make all the correct turns, stay on the correct roads, find the correct exit, and I’m feeling pretty confident. First time driving, no mistakes! I spin around the round about (no stop signs here, just round abouts and a suggestion to "give way"… don’t get me going on that) and continue along, though I begin to wonder why those headlights look like they’re coming at me. They are! Cuss, swerve, correct, thank Buddha I avoided that one. As the oncoming car passes me, I notice it’s a cop… and now he’s quickly flipping a U-turn, and now his lights are on. Of course, I pull over immediately and throw the car in park, trying to remind myself to stay calm, it was just a mistake, it will be okay. As I roll down my window, this cop is storming up to me already yelling,

“—the * do you think you’re doing? Are you trying to * kill me? You know that’s how people get killed, * like that! Get out of the car… you’re drunk. Get out of the car, let me see your eyes… Where are you going? Get out of the car!”

“No, I’m not drunk, I’m from California, it’s my first time driving here—“

“No excuse, friend, no excuse, that’s how people * get killed. How much have you had to drink? Let me see your identification. What are you doing in New Zealand?”

“I haven’t been drinking at all, I was dropping off a monk at a retreat in the city [In hind-sight, I realize a retreat in the city sounds a bit counter intuitive]. I’m living on the Buddhist monastery down the road. It was a mistake, I got confused—“

“No excuse, friend, no excuse. A Buddhist monastery? Where? What’s the address?”

“I… I can’t remember, it’s right down there, like 3 miles—“

“We don’t use miles here, it’s metric. I’ve never seen this monastery… wait here.” He comes back with a breathalyzer machine and tells me to speak into it. Interestingly, their breathalyzers here appear to be way more efficient than ours in the States, where you blow in a tube and the cop repeatedly says “blow harder” like you’re a big idiot until you’re blue in the face. The Kiwi cop sees that I haven’t been drinking at all, turns around, mumbles “keep left” and drives away, just like that. I’m left still standing outside the car, nerves tighter than an E-string, bewildered as to what just happened. I later realized it was Labour Day (not to be confused with our Labor Day, which already came and went) and the Kiwi cops have been cracking down on drunk driving in the last few years because apparently it happens a lot and dozens of people die every year; with a population of just 4 million, dozens of deaths is a major blow to the economy. This explains why he was so certain I was drunk, found it hard to believe I wasn’t, then drove off in search of other, more honest drunks. I’m just happy I didn’t get arrested, not even a ticket, and very happy I reacted quickly enough to swerve out of the way. I got really lucky. I also learned a lesson: sing “Left Left Left” AT ALL TIMES. Since that night, I’ve driven several times with decent success. I’ve only pulled to the right one other time, and that was because I had other stresses (particularly, a truck bed overloaded with oversized sheets of wood catching wind like a sail…) clouding my mind and distracting attention from my new favorite song. Don’t worry, in the end I avoided catastrophe, but that’ll have to be a story for another time…

The Ways of the Buddha; the Ways of the Kiwi

I’ve really been settling into life here in the monastery. At first the daily routine seemed a bit mind numbing, to be honest, because I generally live my life trying to avoid persistent daily routines, especially while I’m traveling. I came here expecting to see lots of new things and push my comfort zone, not to see and do few new things over and over. I've come to realize, however, that my mind is simply constantly seeking new stimuli, a product of my youth and my American lifestyle. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if I’m to live on a monastery for 6 months, I have to get used to a more established, consistent lifestyle, without the excessive sensory input that I'm used to. After a few days bordering on boredom, I began to feel very content with the slower lifestyle and even started enjoying the routine. I mean, it’s hard to be unhappy in a place like this. I'm still not much of a morning person though, so getting up at 7AM can sometimes be a challenge; we can only eat until 7:30, so I've really had to shovel the food down some mornings. Another thing I've really had to get used to is not drinking coffee every morning; at home I drink a whole lot of coffee throughout the entire day. Coffee is allowed on the monastery, but all we have right now is instant coffee which always winds up making me sick, plus I just hate the taste. I've been drinking black tea every morning, which helps, but for a while I had to just keep my eyelids pried open... that really did the trick.

After woofing down a fruit smoothie and some Weet-Bix (kinda like shredded mini wheats, but flaky mini wheats instead), morning work begins. This time of the day is nice for me because I'm the only one working, so I get some good time to let my mind and body become aware of mobile existence sans caffeine. The work is usually not very demanding, though at times can nearly put me back to sleep; generally just weeding or cutting out materials to be used later in the day. Luckily, after years of working as a house painter at home, I've truly refined the delicate art of completely zoning out during monotonous work. Using this well-established base, I've begun practicing working meditation, which is similar to zoning out, but exactly opposite in that instead of zoning out, I now zone in to become “mindfully aware” of what I am doing in an objective way. Now, becoming mindfully aware of monotony seems a bit maddening, yeah? I thought so too, but I just started pretending I was happy about it, and now suddenly, strangely, I find peace and joy in the simple and repetitive movements. Another major shift in my mentality out here is what I call my “work mode.” At home, work mode usually comes when I'm doing physical labor and it means I think about nothing but efficiency and productivity; not contentment, pleasure, niceness, or pleasantries. People sometimes mistake my work mode for anger or mean spiritedness, but I never mean to offend people and am rarely offended or mad, I just have nothing but productivity in mind. Productivity is of course very important here, but I quickly learned that productivity should not be the sole purpose. Rather, it should be a by-product of happiness, consistency, and diligence. Generally, my work mode is now primarily made up of these three attributes and, low and behold, I get things done just as efficiently, and with only a small fraction of the perceived anger and frustration. And anyway, no matter how hard I bust my ass, there will assuredly be more work, so I might as well enjoy myself.

After two weeks adapting to this slow, mindful, meditative, low-stimulation lifestyle, I decided to check out Auckland city for the first time. Major sensory overload!!! I had no idea what to expect from the city, where I was going to go, or where I was going to stay, but I blindly caught a ride with a monastery visitor who was driving back to the city. I figured I could find a hostel, but I also really had a hankering to just sleep on the street; bum it like a real tramp. Possibly for the best, it was a bit rainy outside when I arrived, so I decided to just cave and get a bed in a hostel, as slight drizzles can quickly develop into torrential downpours here in New Zealand. I had completely forgotten about the date, October 30^th, and was surprised to be greeted by a bloodied zombie at the front desk. I was confused by the scenario, but decided to assume it was just an extra from Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive just fulfilling his zombie dreams. The zombie told me, “Yeah we have a room for $19, but it smells like garbage…do you still want it?” Uhh, well, when you put it like that... Word to the wise, don’t hire a zombie as your salesman. I took the garbage room anyway, figuring it was a happy medium between roughing it on the streets and lounging in the lap of hostel luxury. I tossed my pack on my bed and headed out to Queen Street, the main road in inner city, doing my best to get my bearings without sticking out too much as a tourist. Large groups of teenagers were walking around in strange garb and I began to wonder what was really going on here. These Kiwis are weird man, what is this, like Halloween or someth—oh yeah. As much as I usually love celebrating Halloween at home, I was a bit disappointed by the timing this year. I wanted to attempt to meet a few locals and maybe get a back stage pass to Auckland city, but Halloween is a holiday of false identity and debauchery, so I gave up hope making any real connections with people. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Kiwis love to drink… a lot. Especially kids my age. Obviously, American college kids party a lot too, but people are allowed in bars at age 18 here, so drinking is pretty serious business, and Halloween only ups the ante. I wasn’t really into the scene. Not at all actually; I can get belligerent with strangers at home if I want to. So I bumbled along the roads for a bit looking for a more relaxed scene, but to minimal success. I wound up at a more up-scale bar and talked to some business guys for a while, which was cool, but not really what I was looking for. Eventually I met a boat captain, he was pretty cool. We talked for a while, but I decided to turn in a bit early as to avoid the real ghouls. On my way home, I saw some kid get full on tackled from behind by a cop, total face plant and all, though I wasn’t around beforehand to see what the kid had done. Either way, it was some pretty negative energy on the street and that pretty much did it for me; it also taught me not to mess with cops in a rugby-loving nation. I got back to the hostel and crashed, greatly disappointed with my first night in Auckland city. I spend the whole next day exploring several parks, art galleries, record shops, the library, and different pockets of inner city and was much more pleased with what I saw, though I was still a bit jaded by my negative Queen Street experience.

I was lucky enough to catch a ride back to the monastery after my day of exploration and could not wait to get back. I needed to just sit in a quiet place and drink some tea for a while. I don’t know what’s going on with me, but this low-stimulation thing is really taking over quick; scary enough it reminds me of Be a Perfect Person In Just 3 Days by Stephen Manes, a book I read as a child that negatively describes "perfection" as forever sitting in a dark theater drinking weak tea. I haven't gone that far yet, thankfully. It’s all good, I just need to avoid Queen Street next time, and maybe find some weeds in the city to pull when I need to find my center. Back on the monastery, its life as usual, and that’s cool with me right now.