This was a wonderful read, quite short, but to the point. My only complaints were that, as with many other esoteric texts that are non-Western based, the author resorted to lingo within the Buddhist tradition. Since I have a poor memory, I'd often pick up the book the next day, or a few days later, and wonder what "tonglen" meant. I'd have to backtrack a few chapters. This happened a few times. The other complaint was that, after about three-fourths of the way in, the instruction seemed to fizzle. I was waiting for some bang-holy-crap moment towards the end, I guess. I was probably biased since I started this book in the middle of a deep and hopeless depression, but by the time I was done with it, I was feeling much better. I would say, however, that a good part of the reason why I was feeling better by about two-thirds of the way in was because this book really spoke to me. It brought me out of the despair I was feeling and forced me to sit and take an honest look at why I was feeling so miserable. When I stopped trying to escape, to numb the pain away, and actually face my fears, my depression, and my sadness, I really felt it. It hurt real bad. But I was able to cultivate kindness towards it and feel compassion for myself. I'm putting the teachings into practice with hope they'll become habit eventually. I took this book out of the library, but I'm going to buy my own copy and reread it regularly. It's full of good things and I highly recommend it to anyone who is going through their own dark night of the soul.