Mediocre Monk - by Grant Lindsley (Paperback)

About the Book

"Funny, perceptive, and deeply personal, Mediocre Monk follows Grant Lindsley's rocky journey toward spiritual growth--one that ultimately leads him to places he never imagined. After the sudden death of a friend, Grant Lindsley abandons his corporate job to train as a monk in one of the strictest Buddhist traditions on earth. Lost and bereft, he believes he can find answers in the mountains of Thailand. He shaves his head and eyebrows, eats one bowl of food a day, and lives in a cave, his solitude punctuated by brushes with snakes, scorpions, and drug smugglers. But Lindsley can't transform himself into the profound guru he envisions--he's hungry, restless, and lacking in the humility that monkhood requires. Eventually, he exhausts himself into moments of genuine growth, but not in the way he expects. Rather than transcending grief and becoming entirely self-reliant, he is surprised to find solace in allowing pain and reopening himself to community. For anyone who has nurtured a fantasy of dropping out in search of answers, Mediocre Monk suggests a reality that is far more complicated--and rewarding."--Amazon.com.

Book Synopsis

"I loved-and to a slightly uncomfortable degree related to--this book."

Charles Bethea, staff writer at The New Yorker

Funny, perceptive, and deeply personal, Mediocre Monk follows Grant Lindsley's rocky journey toward spiritual growth--one that ultimately leads him to places he never imagined.

After the sudden death of a friend, Grant Lindsley abandons his corporate job to train as a monk in one of the strictest Buddhist traditions on earth. Lost and bereft, he believes he can find answers in the mountains of Thailand. He shaves his head and eyebrows, eats one bowl of food a day, and lives in a cave, his solitude punctuated by brushes with snakes, scorpions, and drug smugglers.

But Lindsley can't transform himself into the profound guru he envisions--he's hungry, restless, and lacking in the humility that monkhood requires. Eventually, he exhausts himself into moments of genuine growth, but not in the way he expects. Rather than transcending grief and becoming entirely self-reliant, he is surprised to find solace in allowing pain and reopening himself to community.

For anyone who has nurtured a fantasy of dropping out in search of answers, Mediocre Monk suggests a reality that is far more complicated--and rewarding.

Review Quotes

"If you start reading this book, you are very likely to finish it. If you like rolling your eyes at earnest autobiographies, you won't get much chance to do that here. You will smile a lot, and probably laugh. And you'll come to understand and appreciate what a stealth insight looks like: the small 'OK, got it, moving on' followed, hours later, by the 'Ohhhh, OK.' Read the first page; you'll see." -Allan Filipowicz, clinical professor of management and organizations at Cornell University's Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management

"Honest and intimate, Lindsley's arresting account of his time in the forests of Thailand speaks to struggles at once deeply personal yet universal: love, grief, desire, self-doubt, and the ever-urgent question of how to live this one precious life.