Memory III

Monastic life

  
              “For the next three years, from the age of fifteen to eighteen, I lived my life somehow! I lived and I lived my life in seminary far from home and feelings, emotions or whatever that tempt the romantic side of mine. I read the holy bible and studied liturgy which I hadn’t ever imagined or dreamed. As the time passed by, my memories also faded in to the thick mist of conscious construction of church and liturgy, memories of all the girls I loved or infatuated faded slowly or slept with in my memories. Memories were hypnotized by the religious teachings or retreats, which, in fact, brain washed me in order to forget or restrict all my romantic entertainment. Actually I never thought about a girl during that three years and no one visited my memories. What else to happen, I became a perfect monk- no girlfriend; no worldly thoughts; no dream of professional achievements; no thoughts of completion; no physical aspirations and so on. The monastic world molded me in order to tame the physical as well as worldly aspirations, to which I was vulnerable and fragile. Girl was a distinct dream of all boy monks because they, girls, were not available as the holy bibles or rosaries were available. We pitied our strange life. We were twenty five young boys when we began our journey of ecclesiastical as well as spiritual aspiration, but, later, day by day we became few in strength. It was quite easy for me, somehow, to lead a life of my own. The freedom of loneliness and the freedom of self from all kinds of material bonds which consists of family and relations. I know I can live anywhere in this world without any emotional attachments or bonds. I may be wrong! Monastic life was helpful for me because I know what I am now is the result of my monastic life. I know what I am and I know I am not what I am! I can live anywhere in this world under any condition because I was a monk for three years, I am proud to say so. I was the ‘small’ one in our monastery and I found big boys around me, and, one night, I heard one such a big boy crying because he wanted to see his mom. And later I witnessed many big boys leaving the building for several personal reasons and it continued until the day I left the monastery! First year is over; I learned many things including self-examination and a bit of religious spirituality. One night my mom called me and asked me to come back to home, a shock to my religious mental constructions and I never wanted to leave my monastic life at that time, but some years later. I never wanted to stay for my entire life in a monastery. I wanted to know something more and I was ready for my next stage of monastic life. I traveled to north India and   continued my service life. It was here where I made an agreement with my living god and the rules and regulations both of us are supposed to follow in order to continue in a mutual understanding  and corporation. Things went on as all it was written already. I saw the lives and learned from them, but I knew the inference of lives that differ from person to person. I saw poverty, I saw exploitation and I saw 'haves and haves not'; all of them were silent and the haves silenced the haves not because no one is there to ask a question. And things went on. Inside the monastery, things were a bit or more different from what we have seen or understood, there were too the presence of ego, jealousy, gluttony, spiritual laxity, and the list goes on what they were and are preaching about. They are subjects of what they preach and restrict. We became few in number, when we traveled our journey we were twenty five and within a few weeks the number shrugged into twenty. One year later, when we completed our first austere life we saw our friends waving hands, we were reduced to ten. And we started our second phase of monastic life, a new world, a new horizon and things started to change. I knew, I wasn't a smart or lively boy compared to the boys of my age, but I was something who carried a name. I still don't know why I cried when my mother called me back to home. The second phase of the monastic life was perfectly strange that I saw many things which I haven't ever thought about, new land and people; custom and religion; belief and practice; language and symbols; faith and system; culture and nature, all of them penetrated and placed a place in my conceptual map. We prayed, played, slept, studied, saw, sang and ate together; we also fought each other together for nothing, we paid off all our carnal and worldly desires though our manly fights, fasts, meditation, retreats, prayers, self-examination, games, works and possibly everything. As times passed by, I understood that the existence of god and evil, virtue and vice, good and bad are the creations of the church in order to persuade the fear and punishment concept of the common man. I communicated with god as well as Satan and I knew both are good in nature. I am not a Satanist or Godist, but I am a man of trifles and imperfection and I loved both god and Satan because I found them both inside me and I had to meet them daily, they were and are part of my self and soul. That makes me what I am essentially; I was on the way to my spirituality. I became a new man of system and structure, a total deconstruction of belief system and culture as a structure. I prayed well and I experienced the presence of my soul that I could communicate with it and the concept of god gradually shifted from point to point- a paradigmatic shift in my conceptual and intellectual space of cultural construction. God, I realized, was a psychic existence for me and another of my soul. I was communicating to the other of my soul and we/ I call it as god, but I believe him because he/ it trusts me. I found that almost all the liturgical rituals are folly and nothing to do with god or so called salvation of the soul. Church is manipulated and its rulers are egocentric and they are at the center of material profits, it is no more a tent of peace or salvation. Church has nothing to do with the salvation of the souls because church itself is a profit oriented institution or an entrepreneur undertaking. Though church orates on the gluttony of man for money and power it cannot restrict itself from engaging   in all these kinds of bossiness. And I became a man who knows my soul the most and the both elements, god and something not goddish. I realized my soul and I lost my faith in the church and heaven and hell. I lost my faith in the ritual of confession where I confess all my so called sins or wrong doings to a man who is entitled as a priest and claim himself as the agent of god or someone who is assigned to save our souls. Something interesting happened one day, a senior of mine called me to the altar when I was cleaning the sacristy and asked me to hear his confession! I was shocked because I believed in individuality and individual secrecies. He insisted me to hear his confession in the altar and I was emotionally forced and moved. I heard his confession and he felt relieved, I still have no idea how something could happen to me like that which I never wanted to do or hear. My last confession was sometimes long ago when I was in the monastery and I haven’t ever confessed ever after I fled from the monastery. Let my sins, if I have them, die with me with my death. When the second phase of our spiritual life was about to end five of my friends returned to their physical world and we were again, as a ritual, reduced to five. The third year of our monastic life was important in many ways because it was that year we had to decide whether we have to stay or not. We were given special retreats and counseling that we may stick there for the next phase of the institutionalized, religious, life too. During all those years we worked in the paddy and grain fields, we saw and reaped all what we have sawn. They made us good farmers or workers. We had carrot fields and guava plantations, but they were given for lease and none of their yields were accessible for us so we had to steal them during the night and the early morning.  We were like rats and rabbits during night and early mornings so we had to wake up at 4.00 am that we might get the sufficient time for our drilling jobs. Morning session was from 4.00 am to 5.00 am, the bell for morning rituals. We kept all our stolen carrots and fruits in a bucket under our cot. By the time when the bell rang for the morning prayers at 5.30 we were like saints in the chapel, innocent children who knew nothing, but god. Later we shared our yield of work and shifted them to our study rooms, desks, pockets and under the bed. And things went on and on and on. Finally I had to take my decision on my stay and I decided to return to my home. And thus two of the five left the journey; we/they were reduced to three. That’s the end of my monastic life, in a nut shell.”

Life is strange when we move away from the usual track of our running. He did something great, a life far away from the family, emotions, feelings, and imaginations! How could a boy of his age sustain there? He can live anywhere in this world under any conditions. “I never wanted to be a part of the church and the priesthood. I always damned the priests and the church. I never believed in the church and agents of institutionalized gods. I am human and I am natural and I always wanted to live my life the way I like. But I joined the seminary which I hated the most. I did something which I never wanted to do.”  Doing something which we never wanted to do make us strange and we become a mere object of the life. We read the script of our life. There are things already being written down. And there is no future and hope because everything has been written already and what’s the point in believing in faith or some miracles? Everything has been written already, it’s a script and we read it.