In Tibetan, the word for Buddhist means “insider”—someone who looks not to the world but to themselves for peace and happiness. The basic premise of Buddhism is that all suffering, however real it may seem, is the product of our own minds.Rebecca Novick’s concise history of Buddhism and her explanations of the Four Noble Truths, Wheel of Life, Karma, the path of the Bodhisattva, and the four schools help us understand Tibetan Buddhism as a religion or philosophy, and more important, as a way of experiencing the world.
Rebecca Novick is a writer who specializes in Tibetan Buddhism, its culture, and the plight of the exiled Tibetans. She has written or edited several books on Buddhism, including Fundamentals of Tibetan Buddhism and Illuminating the Path to Enlightenment, the latter with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
