Kelsang Gyatso is a Buddhist monk, meditation teacher, scholar, and author. He is the founder and former spiritual director of the New Kadampa Tradition-International Kadampa Buddhist Union, an "entirely independent" Modern Buddhist order that claims to be a tradition based on the teachings of the Gelugpa tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, although they follow only the interpretations of this text by their guru, which has grown to become a global Buddhist organisation and currently claims to have 1200 centers and branches in 40 countries around the world.