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Turtle Feet | 
 enlarge | Author: Nikolai Grozni
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $14.25
You Save: $10.70 (43%)
New (32) from $14.25
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 177708
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 336
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 1.3
ISBN: 159448984X
Dewey Decimal Number: 294.3657092
EAN: 9781594489846
ASIN: 159448984X
Publication Date: May 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: New/New; New Hardback Book - Inventory Mark - No Tears - No Creases - Ships Now!
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Product Description
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 monkshaving his head, learning Tibetan, and donning long traditional robes. In the Himalayasliving in a hut a stones throw from the Dalai Lamas 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 insidein 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Nikolai, say it like it is.....you the man! August 18, 2008
This book is the closest thing to English "ter" (spiritual treasure) I've come across. Grozni transfers the Buddhist understanding of emptiness magically through his brilliant use of prose. Tsar, the indulger is the symbolic embodiment of Guru Rinpoche. While in sexual union with his consort his monastic and lay vajra brothers attain insight into unborn wisdom along with the reader. Nikolai surprised me, this is the best book I've ever read...in English.
Sarva Mangalam
I Loved this Book!!!! August 14, 2008
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R267LYJ1OP3CA9
 Not about spirituality July 22, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
For anybody who would like to read a book about Tibetan Buddhist spirituality - this is not about this topic. Unlike most Westerns the author does not join Buddhism in search of mystical experience but enters the path at its most repressed, intellectual and dogmatic - as a Buddhist monk specializing in philosophical debate. Surprisingly, at the same time he is full of rebellion and describes his Buddhist teachers and fellow monks and nuns as incredibly stupid, uncompassionate, sex-crazed and even abusive. The majority of this book deals with the author's friends which are a drug-taking, prostitute-visiting, violent and foul-mouthed bunch who have no interest in Buddhism whatsoever. All in all the author comes across as well-intentioned but incredibly immature.
One of the best, most vivid Buddhist adventure books ever July 2, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I can't say enough good things about this wonderful, exciting book. It has everything in it: vivid descriptions of horrid conditions, cuddly rats, snakes named Mona Lisa, very insightful passages about Buddhist teaching presented in a non-dogmatic way, linguistic trivia and examples, and of course extremely vibrant human characters. You might think that if Tsar, the Bosnia ex-monk who is constantly playing chess, fighting, making love and planning to escape India, is the central character, and he is, that the author couldn't paint others in as realistic a light. And yet he does. Vinnie, the crazy 70-year-old German who pisses on the floor of the kitchen and whose feet are oderiferous in the extreme, comes across in full living technicolor. But surprisingly, the author paints himself as a real human in no-less detail, which was really really neat. I almost feel as if I know him. I certain feel as if he and I share the same common human traits of desire for englightenment, and everything baser. But it is more than that. The book's details and word painting are just staggering. Excellent job! I wish I could read Bulgarian in order to enjoy your other books. You (Mr. Grozni) are one superb author!!!!
 Interesting, but a little disappointing. June 23, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
While the author of "Turtle Feet" is a very talented writer, (when he is describing the beauty of his surroundings, he sometimes verges on the poetic) in this book, he spends way, way too much time detailing the exploits of his manic, foul-mouthed, Bosnian, ex-Monk friend, Tsar. Grozni's religious/spiritual experiences as a novice monk take a back seat to Tsar's theatrics.
People in India - like people everywhere - all share certain human traits. You get a bunch of young men living together in a community (even a Tibetan Buddhist community) and there are going to be some there with bad tempers, some with mental problems, some who swear like sailors, some who love to talk about sex, and some who use drugs. Maybe the author thought it was important to let us know this. But there is so much more that he could have shared with us - things unique to his life in India - that he did not.
While the book offers a glimpse into a far-off world, it left me wishing the author had "waxed poetic" on more occasions and spent less time on his friend's passport/housing/woman troubles.
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