Turtle Feet

“In order to understand something clearly, one must first give it up.”

I said something similar to one of my best friends in Dharamsala the week before I left. While I knew I would miss India like crazy – and I was right – I experienced so much that I knew I needed to leave to let it all soak in.

I picked up Turtle Feet at a small bookstore in Majnu ka Tilla, the Tibetan colony in Delhi. It jumped out at me because I had been thinking a lot about my monk friend, his life, and the community’s expectations of monks. The front flap of Turtle Feet included a line about demystifying monks’ lives. Perfect food for thought.

Back in Montreal, when I finally sat down to read it, my first impression was that the author, Nikolai Grozni, was a stupid injie (Westerner) who took his vows to become a monk without fully understanding what it meant. His friends were the epitome of the Western tourists I hated in Dharamsala, oblivious to the culture and community around them and disrespectful without even being aware of it.

But as I read, I discovered that the author was slowly learning lessons that gave him a deeper understanding of the community – many lessons I myself had to learn. In one chapter, Grozni writes about meeting Tsar, a Western monk who smoked and was always hanging out with girls. At first he seemed interested in Tsar because he was a fellow Western monk who wasn’t afraid to still act however he wanted. But by the end of the chapter, Grozni realized that he was being judged by the community for hanging out with someone who had such a bad reputation.

Reading about the difficulties Grozni encountered on his spiritual quest for the truth made me think more about my own struggle to understand the Buddhist ideas of emptiness and impermanence. The more I have read about Buddhism, the more I have felt like a stupid Westerner who has been taught to hang on to people and experiences, be miserable missing them when they were gone, and to deeply fear death. In comparison, my Tibetan friends seem to be able to cope much better with life’s changes. I keep trying to override the worldview that is deeply engrained in me, but the process is making me realize how difficult it is to change my fundamental beliefs when they are the basis of my actions and reactions on a daily basis. I have also realized that until now, I have not chosen those fundamental beliefs, I have merely soaked them in from my surroundings. I took some comfort in knowing that I am not alone in my struggle; even as a monk who was studying Buddhist texts with learned teachers, Grozni also seemed to be grappling to understand Buddhism through the worldview from his childhood.

Grozni’s descriptions of Dharamsala are so vivid. He describes the bustle of the town, the packs of dogs and beggars, and being surrounded by the Himalayas so precisely that I felt again what it was like to be there. It made me miss the fresh air and the night sky and the million sounds I could hear from my bed in the morning, and even the damn monkeys.

At a time when I was painfully missing India, Turtle Feet helped me realize that Dharamsala will never be the same as it was during the year I was there. Many of my friends have left, our lives have changed, and our experiences have changed us. At the same time, I know that Dharamsala will always be there and will probably always evoke a sense of awe in those who visit it.