Book Review THE NOVICE Why I Became a Buddhist Monk

THE NOVICE: WHY I BECAME A BUDDHIST MONK. AUTHOR STEPHEN SCHETTINI– BOOK REVIEW BY STEPHEN MONAHAN

Buddha In the Mirror

Why would a middle-class privately schooled Anglo-Italian Catholic boy from rural Gloucestershire England abandon his education, friends, and family to hitchhike by himself across Europe and India to the Tibetan refugee camps in India to become an ordained Buddhist Monk?

The Novice is an amazing Hero’s Journey, of leaving home with only a backpack and a drive for the Truth of life, overcoming near death twice, to finally becoming an ordained Tibetan Monk. And then, abruptly, and unapologetically abandon it all. And to spend his next 20 years living and finding his own learned Truth.

 I was unleashed on the world after a mere eight years of monastic training, supposedly qualified to teach. Others seemed confident in my knowledge, but I knew perfectly well that something was missing. I had come to my teachers for their insights, not their scholarship, and I had no intention of teaching any other way. Almost another two decades passed before I was ready to speak from experience — from what I knew, not what I thought.

Stephen Schenniti

It is wisely said that we learn who we truly are in the mirror reflection in the others we meet along our own life’s journey. What we see and, either like or repel from in others is in Truth a reflection of ourselves.

The Novice is a reflective mirror for today’s society; analogous to Harry Potter looking at himself in the Magical Two Way Mirror and, seeing himself through his parent’s love. And in the older classic, Alice in Wonderland – Through the Looking Glass, learning reflective aspects of herself in the troubled others, trapped deep below in their own rabbit holes.

Stephen Schettini’s writing reminds me of the mesmerizing writing and storytelling of the great John Steinbeck. Perhaps one day this will be a touchstone movie for this generation in search of answers and finding,  “Buddha in the Mirror.”

Stephen shares his learned 15  Truths which I absorbed in essence; That although we can’t live in the stillness of a Buddha in this noisy, non-silent world, we can arise to an open Quantum mind without fixed beliefs and dogmas by active mindfulness reduce, focus and simplify to an un-noisy minimum. Reminding of the Rumi Poem. Meet Me in The Field.

“ Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing, and right-doing, there is a Field. I’ll meet you there. When the Soul lies down in that grass, The World is too full to talk about it”  -Rumi

Rumi

Review THE NOVICE: WHY I BECAME A BUDDHIST MONK by,  Steven Monahan