Marco Pallis (1895-1989) was a Renaissance man: a gifted musician, composer, mountaineer, translator of "perennialist" works and a widely respected author on Tibetan Buddhism. Pallis travelled extensively in the Himalayas, where at first he climbed mountains and, later, studied Buddhism from Lamas within the tradition.

From 1936 onwards, he was a practising Buddhist with the Tibetan name of Thubden Tendzin. This book is a selection of his most important writings on Tibetan Buddhism, backed by his universalist approach to religious belief. Pallis focuses on the Tibetan tradition but situates it in the wider context of the perennial wisdom and the spiritual life which this entails. He provides the keen observations of a Westerner as he makes sense of spiritual practices, moral systems, modes of dress and other traditions that are often hard to understand unless described by an open and seeking soul. Pallis was just such an observer and the traditional world of Tibet that he encountered comes to life in much greater intelligibility for Western readers.