Robert A. F. Thurman is Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University in New York City, where he has taught since 1988. He holds the first endowed chair in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in America. He received Upasika ordination in 1964 and Vajracharya ordination in 1971, both from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Among the foremost Buddhologists and interpreters of Tibet and its Buddhist civilization; he is also an ordained Buddhist layman. He is a cofounder of Tibet House in New York City, a cultural nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the endangered civilization of Tibet. Robert Thurman is the author of Essential Tibetan Buddhism (1996); Inner Revolution: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Real Happiness (1998), Circling the Sacred Mountain (1999), Why the Dalai Lama Matters (2008), and many other original books and translations of sacred Tibetan texts.