Turtle feet : the making and unmaking of a Buddhist monk : [a memoir

Nikolai Grozni was a music prodigy, a jazz pianist training at the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, when suddenly he decided to transform his life. He moved to India to become a Buddhist monk: shaving his head, learning Tibetan, and donning long traditional robes. In the Himalayas, living in a hut a stone's throw from the Dalai Lama's compound, Grozni became entrenched in a sometimes comical, sometimes reverent, always intriguing community comprised of feisty nuns, bossy monks, violent chess players, demanding teachers, and a spectacular friend called Tsar, a fallen monk from Bosnia. Grozni went to India in search of knowledge, but learns that the people who can teach him the most are not wearing uniforms and following special diets, but rather those who, like him, struggle with doubts and cannot accept an established system of faith. Instead, he journeys with his colorful cast of friends to a new understanding of himself and his place in the world. Like Anne Lamott or Elizabeth Gilbert, Nikolai Grozni offers the insights of a religious pilgrim from the inside, in his case, from a male, Buddhist perspective. Thoughtful, funny, and elegantly written, Turtle Feet details the reality of a world much mythologized in the West and tells a wonderfully bittersweet story of a spiritual journey.

A brilliantly colorful memoir of becoming a monk and a young man's spiritual journey in India.

Nikolai Grozni, a Boston jazz pianist prodigy struck by spiritual ennui, suddenly abandoned 15 years of music studies to seek out the Dalai Lama's university in India, where he began his quest for the ultimate truth. Instead of finding answers, Grozni fell in with an unusual cast of characters, and struggled with Buddhist logic and with the many small challenges to life as a monk. This is his bittersweet and funny memoir about the search for higher power, and the discovery of oneself amidst teeming, chaotic, and glorious humanity.

A. J. Jacobs

Turtle Feet is a remarkable book. Yes, it's a spiritual journey filled with beautiful insights but it's also a funny and gritty tale of dysentery, stoner roommates, cranky monks and flirty nuns. I felt enlightened for having read it. (A. J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically)

A brilliantly colorful memoir of becoming a monk and a young man's spiritual - and not-so-spiritual journey in India. Nikolai Grozni, a Boston jazz piano prodigy struck by spiritual ennui, suddenly abandoned 15 years of music studies to seek out the Dalai Lama's university in India, where he began his quest for the ultimate truth. Instead of finding answers, Grozni fell in with an unusual cast of characters, and struggled with Buddhist logic and with the many small challenges to life as a monk in a community of Tibetan refugees. Turtle Feet is his bittersweet and funny memoir about the search for higher power, and the discovery of oneself amidst teeming, chaotic, and glorious humanity Traces the author's spontaneous decision to give up his life as a musical prodigy to become a Buddhist monk, a choice that led to his relocation to the Himalayas and his indoctrination into Buddhist culture, where he found unexpected humor, doubts, and new friends. "A thoughtful, bittersweet, and funny memoir about the search for higher power, and the discovery of something better: one's self amidst teeming, chaotic, eccentric, and glorious humanity."--Back cover A brilliantly colorful memoir of becoming a monk, "Turtle Feet" details a young man's spiritual--and not-so-spiritual--journey in India