Monday, November 02, 2015

DOCTOR'S ORDERS - Dalai Lama

"Dalai Lama’s American doctor wants more compassion in medicine" PBS NewsHour 10/27/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Before he was a personal physician to the Dalai Lama, Dr. Barry Kerzin never imagined that a professional trip to Tibet would lead him down a decades-long path studying Buddhism and meditation.  Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro talks to Kerzin in India about his feeling that compassion and empathy are essential to medical training.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO (NewsHour):  Sixty-eight-year-old California native Barry Kerzin began his career as a professor of family medicine at the University of Washington.  He never dreamed it would lead to a pro bono house calls thousands of miles away in Tibetan.

DR. BARRY KERZIN, Buddhist Scholar:  I keep pinching myself, Fred.  I don’t know.

(LAUGHTER)

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  He first arrived here after hearing that the Dalai Lama had wanted a Western physician to train traditional Tibetan doctors in modern research methods.

DR. BARRY KERZIN, Buddhist Scholar:  We did a research study.  And we used that pedagogically to train the local Tibetan medicine doctors how to do the research.

And then I got more involved with Buddhism.  I had already been very interested.  I got more involved with meditation and study.  And I ended up extending my stay.  And that’s happened again and again and here I am 27 years.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  He came to India from a life punctuated by pain and loss, at 11, a near fatal brain abscess that required extensive surgery and left a permanent lump on his skull.  His mother died young, and a few years later so did his wife, only in her mid-30s, both from cancer.

Buddhism became a sanctuary under the tutelage of the Dalai Lama, who told him to stay connected to the world.

DR. BARRY KERZIN:  He always encouraged me to keep my credentials and to continue practicing medicine.  Don’t just do the wisdom.  Also do the love and the compassion.  In fact, do them 50/50.  Those were his words.

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