Completed just four years after his escape from Tibet and four years after completing his religious education, the Dalai Lama's classic text on Buddhist philosophy is a thorough but succinct overview of Buddhist doctrines as they have been practiced in Tibet for a thousand years. Among the many topics the Dalai Lama discusses in his work are the need for religious peace, the path to achieving meditative stabilization, reincarnation, and the importance of kindness and compassion. This invaluable handbook provides a compendium of Buddhist doctrine and practice that is both dense and rich - serving at once as a summation of knowledge and as an invitation to further study.