In an age of fierce debate over globalization, environmental protection and saving endangered species, we have overlooked the most valuable imperiled resource we have: the diversity of our own kind. The culture of humanity is at risk. Anthropologist and ethnobotanist Wade Davis goes on a spiritual trek through the Himalayas of Nepal, looking at Buddhism as a science of the mind. The journey begins at the Thuptencholing Monastery, home of one of the teachers of the Dalai Lama. Wade then meets up with Matthieu Ricard, a former promising scientist in France who became a monk after he found that science was telling the how about life as a human being, but not the why. Together, they trek to the Solu Khumbu region of the Himalayas, under the shadow of Everest, to have a rare audience with a nun who has been in meditative retreat for 45 years.