After seven years experience as a doctor working in hospitals in Australia, New Guinea, and England, I had become convinced that human suffering and happiness are largely rooted in our behaviour, in particular, the attitudes behind our behaviour.

Over two and a half thousand years, Buddhist psychology has been adopted into many different cultures, from the Middle East to the Far East, and from Indonesia in the south to Siberia in the north because it unerringly explains what the human mind is, how it functions, and its underlying role in causing both happiness and suffering.

These Buddhist teachings may have challenged my scientific world-view to the core, but after eighteen months of thorough investigation, I accepted them to be valid. In 1975 I became a monk in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition to learn more, and to incorporate this knowledge into my life as best I could. I saw this big step to be an opportunity to further my medical training through application of the proverb, ‘Physician, heal thyself.’

Although I still have a long way to go on my own path, many have requested me to share with them what I have learned since then; hence this book.

-Venerable Thubten Gyatso

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