Summary: Author Stephen Schettini discusses his book, The Novice: Why I Became A Buddhist Monk, Why I Quit and What I Learned. Schettini, as a middle-class Italian Catholic boy, hitch-hikes from his native England to India to become a Buddhist monk in the Tibetan tradition, from 1972 to 1980. He learns to speak and read Tibetan, lives and studies in Sera Monastic University as the only resident Westerner, and is trained at the École des Hautes Études Tibétaines in Switzerland to interpret and teach Tibetan Buddhism to other Westerners. Eight years later, and after a year in a Tibetan refugee camp in Southern India and a prolonged encounter with austere southern Buddhism, he grows disillusioned and abandons his monastic path. Visit TheNovice.ca
