Dalai Lama means different things to different people. For some, this means that I am a living Buddha, the earthly incarnation of Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. To others it means that I am the "God King". In the late 1950s, this meant that I was the vice president of the Standing Committee of the People's Republic of China. And when I went into exile, they called me a counter-revolutionary and a parasite. But none of this is what I think myself. For me, “Dalai Lama” is just a title denoting the position I occupy. 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 by no means a book about Buddhism. I have two main reasons for this: firstly, more and more people are showing interest in learning about the Dalai Lama. Secondly, there are certain historical events that I want to talk about as a direct witness.