For different people, the Dalai Lama means different things. For some, this means that I am the living Buddha, the earthly embodiment of Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. For others, it means that I am God the King. In the late 1950s, this meant that I was vice president of the Standing Committee of the People's Republic of China. And when I went into exile, I was called a counter-revolutionary and a parasite. But all this is not what I think myself . For me, the Dalai Lama is just a title denoting the position I hold. I myself am just a person and, in particular, a Tibetan who decided to be a Buddhist monk. It is as an ordinary monk that I offer the reader the story of my life, although this is not a book about Buddhism. I have two main reasons for this: First, an increasing number of people are showing interest in learning anything about the Dalai Lama. Secondly, there are certain historical events that I want to tell you about as their direct witness.