[Update] Keeping Austin Weird
I am feeling more and more surprised and pleased lately how I have been coming to enjoy the nomadic, monastic lifestyle more. At first, when I began traveling full time in early January this year, I was really concerned and had a lot of trouble getting used to the new life: the uncertainty, the unfamiliar quality of it, and the. Now, somehow or another, I am looking forward to continuing it and hoping to keep it up as long as possible.
I haven’t traveled very much this year so far (actually, perhaps it is a lot, relatively speaking)- I’ve only been in Dallas for about a month, India for two weeks, Huston for a couple days, and now I’m in Austin for about three or so weeks. So far it has been a great time. I have a close friend in Dallas whom I was able to spend a lot of time with which was very nice, similarly my friends here at the Bhakti House project in Austin are very dear to me so it is nice to spend time with them and help their project out, and the time I spent in India was especially rejuvenating and enlivening.
I have really enjoyed being in Austin. I feel like different places in the world, which I think everyone else knows intuitively, have different vibes (for lack of a better word) which affect the people who travel through and inhabit that land. And Austin’s is very nice for some reason, which is probably why so many people have been moving here lately, or so they say. At the Bhakti House, my friends Amiya Radhika and Govinda are working sincerely to share Krishna consciousness with people here by holding free weekly yoga and meditation courses that expose people to the practices of bhakti yoga. Soon I will be leaving them for another adventure in a couple days and I am very sad about this.
While I was in India, in the amazingly sacred city of Mayapur, I was able to spend a lot of time assisting and hearing lectures from teachers whom I hold to the highest esteem and consider epitomes of the kind of people I would like to be like. Besides just the lectures and opportunities to help them, I spent a lot of personal time with some of them which really stuck with me, and even shared a room with one for several nights. Saintly people really do exist. There are some people who go to sleep and wake up incredibly early, meditate for hours, then begin doing their daily services of corresponding with students who seek spiritual guidance from them, writing books to share Krishna consciousness, and then, after being awake already for over 7 hours, they have breakfast and then their day really begins, at the time that some people hit their final snooze on their alarm, at 9am, and they go out to do whatever other duties that they might have in the world. How can we imagine living a life like that? The amount of determination, discipline, and character required to maintain a schedule like that is herculean.
I’m beginning to realize that it’s through these teachers that we can really begin to grow ourselves. Without guidance and mentorship, it is very difficult for one to do anything. This is why education is required for children in order to make them competent members of society. We have to learn in order to grow, and who can we attribute our success in learning to? It can only be measured by the success of the teacher in imparting their knowledge to the student.
Soon, I will begin to travel for a short period of time with a very senior Hare Krishna monk. He is a reserved, humble traveling hermit, but he is of the utmost character and is very outgoing when it comes to the service he dedicated his life to- sharing spiritual literature with people. Paramesvara dasa, his spiritual name, designates him as being the servant (dasa) of the Supreme Controller (param isvara (sanskrit combines vowel sounds (a+i=e)). I met him recently in Huston before coming to Austin and he inspired me greatly in my spiritual practice. So what exactly does that mean? What is my spiritual practice, what does it mean to be a traveling Hare Krishna monk? Well, my vow as a brahmacari which I took in December of 2023 (single student monk) primarily consists of: celibacy, sobriety, vegetarianism, poverty (in the sense that I can’t work a traditional job), and meditating for two hours a day. Secondary parts of that vow include simplicity (in the sense of not having too much stuff other than my necessities, living in a van and travelling a lot really helps with that), reading and studying spiritual texts like the Bhagavad Gita, Bhagavatam, and Chaitanya Charitamrita, sharing the aforementioned literature with other people through giving classes, distribution of the books, and writing articles like this. When I go to different temples and mediation centers, I help with other services like cleaning, leading musical meditations, and cooking amongst other things.
After being a student engaged in some kind of formal education for over 15 years of my life (at least? Age 5-22), switching over to this simple lifestyle without the traditional milestones and landmarks like grades, assignments, holidays, graduations, and other such things that I’m used to striving to accomplish was very difficult. I felt pretty off kilter at first. Somehow, through the trip to Mayapur, meeting devotees like Paramesvara, and time, I have been feeling so peaceful and excited to see where Providence takes me. So let’s see what happens next.