Holy Donuts
The sidewalks in West Philadelphia are notoriously uneven. Cracks splinter across a cement landscape of protruding roots and gnarled knots, a battleground of nature’s rebellion against the cages built by mankind. Litter adorns small patches of grass like jewelry, reflecting the sun’s rays as it pierces through thin layers of clouds. Yellow caution tape fluttering in the wind is not an uncommon sight, indicating another night of gunshots and deaths. Walking these streets, I was allowed to condemn the trash and violence as manifestations of human greed and ignorance but shied away from a conscious appreciation of the resilience of trees or the beauty of the sun. We were told that attraction to even a single sunset would be the downfall of our spiritual aspirations, forcing us to take birth again in this material world.
*
I first came across the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), known colloquially as the “Hare Krishnas,” when I was twenty-two, during my last semester of college while in a study abroad program in Wellington, New Zealand. After graduation, I planned to explore the country before backpacking across Southeast Asia for a year, eventually returning home to Chicago. Despite the veneer of an intelligent and adventurous young woman, my nights were spent mixing booze and drugs in a purposeful flirtation with death. I had escaped to an island, over 8,000 miles away from home, but was struggling to stay afloat beneath the weight of sexual abuse and PTSD. Coasting along the downhill current of my mind, death was becoming an ever more attractive escape route.
It was after another morning of staring at a toilet full of tar-colored vomit with apathetic disgust that I decided to try something new. The brochure promised a “Soul Feast” – a night of donation-based yoga and meditation, complete with a vegetarian meal. The place was located in a second-floor unit at the bottom of an infamously steep hill, a mere fifteen minute walk from my flat. There was no mention of religion or God, no reference to an institutionalized structure or demands. Just a night of spiritual satiation for the soul.
Eager for the cheap meal and clinging to the promise of peace, I dragged two friends along with me. It was a sensory overload from the moment we entered – tendrils of incense smoke greeted us in a potent embrace and the hum of meditative music filtered seductively into my conscious awareness. The pictures adorning the wall were exotic and intricate – scenes of cowherd boys decorated in forest attire and circles of young girls dancing under starlit skies. It was strange yet welcoming. I donated $2 and placed my shoes on the rack, unaware that I was stepping into a world that would consume my life for the next six years.
*
On the streets of West Philadelphia, I felt the beads of sweat dripping down my back in warm rivulets. My feet shuffled side to side in an impatient dance as I waited in line at Dotties Donuts, six feet behind the customer in front of me. I was grateful for the slight anonymity that my face mask bestowed upon me even as the edges dug into the sides of my cheek and the bridge of my nose. Wearing a mask was a Covid-19 pandemic-driven phenomenon and then a city-wide mandate, leaving only the outer edges of my face visible to passersby. Not that there was much to see anyway. In the name of chastity and subduing sex desire, all girls in the ashram wore loose clothing that covered our skin in an attempt to obscure any indication of a feminine shape. M.A., the manager of the ashram and a leading disciple of our guru, was strict with these rules. Harsher than the slap of a hand, her words and punishment cut deep into the most vulnerable aspects of our minds, bringing us to our knees to grovel for forgiveness.
The first time it happened was after I had joined her in starting another project for our guru. I was wearing a loose-knit grey sweater over red leggings, my hair tied up in a bun under my favorite beanie hat. We were loading boxes into a car, and as I leaned over to push a box to the far back of the trunk, I felt a hand on my butt accompanied by a derogative chuckle.
“Everyone can see your butt when you dress like this,” M.A. said. “Think of how the men will feel when they see you. This is how you used to dress, isn’t it? And do you remember what happened?”
My face flushed with the remembrance of what she was referring to – the distinct sound of sweaty skin slapping rhythmically against mine filled the chambers of my mind. Flustered by the overwhelming memories of rape and reckless sex, the familiar burn of shame traveled throughout my body in seismic swells. I glanced around to see if the others had heard, shocked that M.A.would speak so openly about my past in front of them. I hastily stood up and pulled the sweater down as far as it could go.
“It covers my butt,” I replied, desperate to prove my innocence.
M.A. turned away in anger, seeing rebellion in my refusal to agree with her. She did not speak or look at me for the rest of the day, and by evening I was shaking from the fear of her neglect. She was the connection to our guru, the person who decided every detail of our day-to-day lives. Her disappointment was equivalent to the disappointment of God. I was lost without her.
After dinner, I knocked on her door in tears. I gushed out an apology for the sexual promiscuity of my leggings-clad butt, promising to change and begging her to continue correcting me so I could learn to be chaste and more obedient. When I finished, she smiled in a warm reversal from her treatment earlier in the day.
“Thank you for apologizing,” she said as she enveloped me in a hug and patted my head. “I only show anger so that you learn. You don’t learn any other way. My anger is mercy.”
*
The donut line was moving slowly and feeling increasingly anxious, I craned my neck to see through the plexiglass fixture they had set up to serve customers at the temporary “to-go” window. Dottie’s Donuts was famous in West Philadelphia, even apart from the vegan crowd. But the wrath of M.A. was on my mind. I was not supposed to be there.
vāco vegaṁ manasaḥ krodha-vegaṁ
jihvā-vegam udaropastha-vegam
It played in my head as beautiful prose, metered and rhythmic. I knew many Sanskrit verses from rote memorization, but for this one I knew the English translation as well — A sober person who can tolerate the urge to speak, the mind’s demands, the actions of anger and the urges of the tongue, belly and genitals…
As a Hare Krishna under the leadership of my guru, known to be one of the strictest within the movement, we were told to memorize this verse early on. It set the foundations for the rules and regulations we vowed to uphold when joining the organization— no intoxication, no illicit sex, no gambling and no meat-eating. The additional caveat was no eating food cooked by non-practitioners — no restaurants or cafes, no pre-made meals from the grocery store. The consciousness of the cook entered the food and in a world where it is the spiritual “us” versus the sinful “them,” we could not risk any contamination. One who was loose with their tongue would inevitably become loose with their genitals - and sex, we were taught, was the ultimate binding force to this miserable world. It was the grossest exhibition of sinful pleasure and indicative of bodily, rather than spiritual, identification. The desire for sex was the root cause of suffering.
My time in line passed as a battle between guilt and rebellion, and my defiant resolve slipped further away with each passing minute. I had woken up feeling restless that morning, a growing occurrence as my depression and boredom grew, and my arguments with M.A. became more strained. She slept in late on Saturdays and I had left the ashram to take a walk in a burst of rare independence, seeking a brief period of solitude. My mind raced as my feet brought me to the closest park I knew. The walk was familiar, one I had traveled frequently while hustling the rich, poor and vulnerable for money under the guise of collecting donations for spiritual books. This was one of the main activities of Hare Krishnas and it consumed 6-8 hours of my day, seven days a week. Selling books was the zenith of “spiritual service,” and the formula was simple: the more books you sold, the closer you were to God.
Despite years of forcing my face away from the alluring scent of sugary sweets as I walked the streets, I approached Dottie’s Donuts that morning. Looking through the window, I saw endless trays of donuts stacked one on top of the other in a colorful array. The sprinkles fell delicately over their seductively glazed forms and cream dripped off the sides in excess, pooling in the corners of the trays. The employees walked around sporting punk hairstyles – spiked blues, greens and reds – and tattoos, wearing hipster t-shirts and nodding their heads to a soundtrack I could only guess at. I knew none of the popular songs anymore – one of the rules was that we were forbidden to listen to any music other than chanted Sanskrit mantras. I turned my gaze to the menu and allowed the tantalizing options to overwhelm me: cinnamon buns, apple fritters, and donut varieties of cherry hibiscus, blackberry lemon, chocolate pistachio, maple almond. Even the vanilla, Boston cream and sprinkled classics made my mouth water in delicious anticipation. They screamed out to me with an exhilarating “Fuck you!” to M.A. and the unfulfilling life I had found myself living. I craved their sweet flavors and illicit fluffy texture, the dissolve-in-your-mouth goodness that is unique to donuts. In a life of restriction and rules, the thought of choosing to eat these forbidden pastries was intoxicating. Despite knowing how the consequences I would face if caught, I decided to get in line.
*
With only one more person to go until it was my turn to order, I closed my eyes. The sweat had by now drenched my shirt, pooling around the hole of my belly button in a spreading circular stain. If I was caught, the reprimands would be severe. M.A. would tell our guru. I would be stripped of the few privileges I had, shunned and threatened with expulsion from the ashram. I would be told, yet again, that women are by nature impetuous, that my desire for sweets was the manifestation of uncontrolled sex desire, that I needed to purify myself and repent. My past would be used as a rationale for my wrongdoing and for proof of how deeply those sins had rooted in my consciousness. According to our philosophy, the simple act of eating these donuts was enough to destroy the very foundation of my spiritual life, initiating a downward spiral into a hellish existence.
I was risking everything for donuts. Perhaps this is why they made us promise to obey and punished us for independent thinking – our own contaminated minds couldn’t be trusted.
My last weekly meeting with M.A. had reinforced this creed, when my request for a schedule change was reason enough for her to dig into my past.
“Look where your mind got you before — you were living the life of a drug-addicted prostitute,” she said, her eyes narrowing in anger. “Who would ever love someone like that? No one else loves you like I do. Why can’t you just listen to me?”
It was my turn to order. Her words pounded in my head as I stepped up to the window and gazed down at the options in front of me. One just didn’t seem enough. I ordered the cherry hibiscus because of its bright pink color, the cinnamon bun dripping with cream because it was bigger than my hand with all fingers spread, and the maple almond because it reminded me of my Canadian Grandmaman. I paid for the donuts in cash - money I had stolen during the week from the sale of books. I didn’t have any money of my own and I didn’t think too much about justifying this particular action. The few dollars from a previous day’s book sales felt dirty and contaminated as I ran my fingers over their soggy edges and handed them over to the cashier. Although I was supposed to be becoming more virtuous on this spiritual path, I found that now it was lies that slipped from my mouth more easily than the truth. I would say anything to meet the quota of books and money that we were asked to meet each day — anything to make a stranger buy a book; anything to lure them in. I was exchanging lies for donuts.
Sticky contraband finally in hand, I sat beneath a tall oak tree overlooking the park. The tree’s canopy was a welcome relief from the sun-struck line and I allowed my shoulders to relax against its rough bark. I watched the people enjoy their Saturday morning as if peering in from a different world, one that I was no longer a part of. For years, I had been told by my guru that everyone on the outside was miserable, living the life of animals with no hope for salvation. Yet they looked happy compared to me — playing with their dogs, lying in hammocks, reading books, kissing and laughing. I ate the donuts in record speed, the sweetness dissolving in an explosion of flavor on my tongue. Licking the remnants of donut glaze off my fingers, I refused to let even a single particle go uneaten. I felt sick. My head tingled with the rush of sugar and my stomach churned. There was some relief that the physical evidence of my sin was gone, but regret flashed through my mind: I shouldn’t have done this.
My mind had been trained over the years to search for answers in scripture, and I remembered one of my favorite passages from the Srimad Bhagavatam, our main holy text. The words had resonated with me when I was looking for an escape from the torments of my mind. They came back to me now as an epiphany: "The need of the spirit soul is that he wants to get out of the limited sphere of material bondage and fulfill his desire for complete freedom. He wants to get out of the covered walls of the greater universe. He wants to see the free light and the spirit.”
The absurdity of fearing donuts suddenly struck me. I had wanted freedom from the depression and shame that filled my mind, but my salvation was covered in chains of abuse and servitude. What faux freedom had I been sold – one forbidding indulgence in the innocent bliss of sweet pastries? With the taste of sugar glaze on my tongue, I was suddenly unsure of whether or not God existed. I was unsure of everything. Sitting beneath that tree, my life seemed strange and foreign to me, a God-forsaken skeleton of what I had dreamed and desired for myself.
Who had I become?
I didn’t like the answer.
As my feet meandered the streets back to the ashram, my mind churned with doubts and an unnerving exhilaration. I knew I would be back at Dottie’s Donuts next Saturday morning. The joy of donuts outweighed the risks, overcoming any guilt of lies and hypocrisy. And as the months went on, I did return — every Saturday. I would lick the glaze from my fingers with my back against a tree, watching the people in the park and feeling closer each week to their reality. My donut excursions expanded to include headphones. Pulled up on an “incognito” tab, I laughed over SNL skits on Youtube and researched backpacking trips in Patagonia. I heard, for the first time in years, the top songs of 2020’s most popular musicians.
I contemplated a life unlived and a different future.
Less than six months after my first visit to Dottie’s Donuts I left the ashram for good, following a tearful call to my dad letting him know that I needed to come home. My parents drove 15 hours to pick me up, my belongings packed into large black garbage bags, my existence condemned by those I was leaving behind.
As we pulled away from the ashram, I could feel hot tears streaming from my eyes in exhausted relief. I was out. I was free.
They had told me that God was the source of freedom, love, beauty, all things good and sweet and wonderful. And yet, I had not found that in God. No – that I had found in the freeing, holy circle of Dottie’s Donuts.
-Justine Payton
Justine Payton writes to explore the themes of resilience, curiosity and growth in the face of adversity. A survivor of sexual abuse and having spent over six years in a religious cult, she brings forth in her writing unique experiences and insights into the dynamics of what it means to inquire and live as a human being in this world. Justine has been published in the Wild Roof Journal, was a semi-finalist in the Wild Women Contest, and apart from writing is an avid hiker, climate feminist and an active seeker of wonder in the small things.