Turtle Feet: Making and Unmaking of a Monk

Rude Introduction to Buddhism
By Beth Taylor (July 6, 2008)

Nikolai Grozni, who lives in Providence, R.I. was a gifted pianist from Bulgaria who, in the midst of absorbing Coltrane, dope, and booze at Berklee College of Music, suddenly decided to leave behind materialist, “finish line” careerism and head to India to train as a Buddhist monk.

His Bulgarian parents were not pleased, having nurtured his musical genius as a ticket out of Communism and the limits of a childhood reading Das Kapital. But Nikolai had always resisted institutional thought and he believed the monks would teach him how to live a life liberated from frivolous and mindless habits.

The surprises in his journey toward enlightenment make this memoir a refreshing counterpoint to any presumptions a reader might have about the monk’s life, about Buddhist thought, or even formulaic coming-of-age stories. In Dharamsala, shrouded by rain and fog from the Himalayan mountains, Nikolai shaves his head, dons the saffron robe, learns Tibetan, and studies ancient texts with cantankerous monks, including one who is a Jedi Knight.

He learns that life is a construction; that everything he once knew is “just a collection of old names.” He learns that the past, present, and future are simultaneous. “Everything has already happened and everything is yet to happen.” He learns that the Buddha had turtle feet. His friends are a rag-tag group of refugees from wars and life — a dope head researching a master’s thesis; a failed husband and father who plays violent chess, never showers, and harbors the illusion that his son will decide to find him. They were “all running away from something, trying to replace the missing pieces with new people and new circumstances.”

But the key friend and dramatic center of the narrative is Tsar — a refugee from the war in Bosnia, a former thief and prison inmate, now stuck in India with no passport and trying to leave through various ruses that always fail. He is a “fallen monk,” a “degenerate mystic” who scores with willing nuns and hippie girls, but mostly offers cynical, drunken counterpoint to Nikolai’s sober sincerity.

Nikolai is not immune. He struggles in particular with lust and the flirtatious nun who gets him all the way to the bed. He can visualize the future that will now evolve, down to the most erotic detail, but still manages to push himself away. He minds less that they live in mud huts with rats and snakes, cook on kerosene stoves, and share water from one public pipe to shower and drink. They chop food on the floor with spiders and rat scat and drink “drowned mosquitoes” in their chai. Dysentery and malaria are just part of the training.

But the earnest lessons sometimes seem absurd, rooted as they are in wisdoms from before the dawn of science. In the crowd of young men parrying their memorized dialectics, stamping their feet and gesturing their disdain for a weaker argument, Nikolai sees sublimation of the aggression and lust they cannot express. He understands when Tsar dismisses his own training: “I couldn’t smile, couldn’t get angry, couldn’t move, couldn’t remember.” There is no more freedom here than in an army.

In the end Nikolai decides Buddhist monastic vows “protect you from knowing yourself,” the opposite of what he wants, and he returns to America to earn an MFA at Brown, start a family, and write — three novels so far, as well as this superb memoir. But, according to a recent interview, as his kids eat breakfast, he still studies Buddhist texts at the kitchen table.

BOOK: Turtle Feet: the Making and Unmaking of a Buddhist Monk (Nikolai Grozni, Riverhead Books, 2008, 326 pages)