Tulku Thondup Rinpoche, an esteemed author and teacher, was born in East Tibet and studied at the famed Dodrupchen Monastery. In 1958 he settled in India, where he taught at Indian universities for many years. He came to the United States in 1980 as a visiting scholar at Harvard University. For the past two decades he has lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, engaging in translation and writing on Tibetan Buddhism, particularly the Nyingma teachings, under the auspices of the Buddhayana Foundation. Among his books are The Healing Power of Mind, which has been published in seventeen languages, and Boundless Healing, in twelve languages.

This collection of fifteen articles and talks by Tulku Thondup constitutes a manual on how to transmute the situations encountered in daily life, whether external or internal, into spiritual disciplines and experiences. Among the topics covered are: The fundamental principles of Buddhism. The practice of meditation as a means of arousing compassion. How suffering can become a more powerful tool than happiness in achieving enlightenment. The symbolic significance of holy places, temples, statues, books, and other spiritual artifacts.