DALAI LAMA - Comment on Humanity

He is so very right.  We really do have to learn to LIVE.

BUDDHISM - The Next Dalai Lama

"Meet the Minnesota 9-year-old destined to be a Buddhist spiritual leader" PBS NewsHour 10/27/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Like any 4th grade boy, Jalue Dorje enjoys soccer, swimming and Pokemon cards.  But unlike most 9-year-olds, he is believed to be -- and confirmed by the Dalai Lama himself -- the reincarnation of an eminent senior lama who died nine years ago.  Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  The tradition of rebirth is a central Tenet in the Buddhist religion.  And when spiritual leaders, or lamas, die, there's an elaborate process of identifying their reincarnation.

It's usually an infant.  One such young lama was identified a few years ago far away from his Himalayan roots.

Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports from Minnesota.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, Special correspondent:  They are chants more likely heard in a Himalayan monastery than a working-class Minneapolis suburb.

But it's here in Columbia Heights, Minnesota, that 9-year-old Jalue Dorje begins the day in a routine of Tibetan Buddhist mantras, coached by his father.

A bit later, there are house calls from volunteer teachers in modern Tibetan, in the calligraphy of the ancient scriptures.

THINLY WORSER, Teacher:  He has really motivation to learn and especially — even I know him, he's tired, but he says, no, I'm not tired.  I want to continue, you know?

So that also motivated me also to teach him.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  It's a fitting trait, because Jalue Dorje has been recognized as a reincarnation of Takshem Karma Yongdu Choekyi Nima, an eminent senior lama, or spiritual leader, who died nine years ago.  He would be the eighth reincarnation of the first Takshem lama, who lived in the 16th century.

In Tibetan tradition, the process of recognizing a reincarnate varies, depending on circumstances.  Spiritual masters divine from a variety of signals.  In the case of Jalue Dorje, it was the dream of a senior monk who had visited Jalue's home in Minnesota, which is home to some 3,000 Tibetan-Americans, the second in size only to New York.

In that dream, tigers roamed in every room of Jalue's house.  It was a critical clue in the search for the Takshem Lama's reincarnation.

THINLY WORSER:  The Takshem lamas, they used to wear skirts of the tiger skin.  Then I also thought, oh, it might be, you know, because Takshem lama was passed away year before, and everybody was trying to find out his reincarnation.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  The question of whether that reincarnation is indeed Jalue Dorje went all the way up to the Dalai Lama, spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism.

THINLY WORSER:  Then His Holiness' prediction was the same, and many other high lamas, and so he was confirmed.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  In the old days, the boy would be moved to a monastery in Tibet, or now in India, where the Dalai Lama and thousands of followers have lived in exile since 1959.

However, the Dalai Lama suggested that Jalue's monastic education be deferred until he's a bit older.  The spiritual leader has emphasized that Tibetans, or all Buddhists must reconcile their traditional belief system with the modern world.  .

DALAI LAMA:  I always appealing we Buddhists should be 21st century Buddhists.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  For Jalue Dorje, that means immersion in ceremony and scripture, on one hand, and, on the other, a fairly typical 21st century Minnesota upbringing.

Soccer and swimming are favorite pastimes, as are more sedentary ones, isolated in headphones and a laptop computer.  All this will soon change drastically in a Himalayan monastery perhaps in a couple of years, though an exact date has not yet been determined.

After about 10 years in India, he is to return to Minnesota as a spiritual leader.

When you grow older and you've completed your studies, what do you think you'll be doing for people?

JALUE DORJE:  I will be praying for them.  I will be chanting for them.

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.

DALAI LAMA - On Compassion

"Dalai Lama urges universal teaching of compassion" PBS NewsHour 10/6/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  The Dalai Lama had long kept up a demanding schedule, crossing the globe for speaking engagements until doctors recently told him to slow down.  Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro sits down with the 80-year-old spiritual leader to discuss his hopes for spreading peace and winning autonomy for Tibet, as well as why he says he’s not sure there’s a need for a next Dalai Lama.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  As Pope Francis visited the East Coast a few weeks back, another world religious figure, the Dalai Lama, was in Minnesota, where doctors at the Mayo Clinic advised him to cut short his own tour of the U.S.

Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro recently sat down with the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism at his exile home in India.

A version of this story aired on the PBS program “Religion & Ethics Newsweekly.”

FRED DE SAM LAZARO (NewsHour):  Until doctors recently told him to slow down, the 80-year-old Dalai Lama had kept a breathless pace.  In just a few weeks last summer, he was at a music festival in England, a presidential library in Houston, and a sold-out stadium near Los Angeles.

There is perhaps no world figure today with a more diverse face of fans.

Why are you so popular globally?  Why are you a rock star?

DALAI LAMA:  I don’t know.  I never pay attention about that, why people praise me, why, why.

CROWD (singing):  Happy birthday to you.  Happy birthday.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  And he said he’s not concerned about another matter that is many minds, who will succeed him, or, as he’s increasingly said in recent years, whether anyone will.

DALAI LAMA:  Many people showing interest about the institution of Dalai Lama.  For me, not much interest.

(LAUGHTER)

FRED DE SAM LAZARO:  That’s significant.  Like the familiar laugh, his role as Dalai Lama — the world’s best known Buddhist leader — has been central to who he is, the reincarnation of Dalai Lamas going back six centuries, leader of a fabled once-upon-a-time country high in the Himalayas.

He fled with U.S. help to India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Tibet’s annexation by Mao Zedong’s revolutionary People’s Republic of China.

Today, at his home base in Dharamsala, India, he still keeps a full schedule.  It begins early each morning as a diverse crowd lines up for a chance to meet him.

Many are from the tens of thousands of Tibetans who followed him and settled in India, where the Dalai Lama set up a secular Tibetan government in exile and later took on a mostly ceremonial role.