PODCAST: The Dalai Lama's Doctor

Solveig Rennan
Welcome to Under-Told: Verbatim. I’m Solveig Rennan for the Under-Told Stories Project. We report from all over the world for PBS NewsHour. We’ve talked to experts and people making a difference in their communities. In this podcast, we’re revisiting those Under-Told stories to share extended interviews we’ve done with changemakers around the world.

72, shaved bald, and draped in flowing maroon robes, Barry Kerzin gently presses his stethoscope to the neck of an elderly Tibetan man. He’s just as gentle with this patient as he is with a much more famous one. His Holiness the Dalai Lama

Dalai Lama
My messenger. You see, go to Japan and go to Mongolia

Solveig Rennan
The Tibetan spiritual leader now calls Kerzin, a tall white California native, his messenger to the medical world, a journey that took a classically trained Western doctor halfway across the globe to become a Buddhist monk.

Barry Kerzin
Don’t just do the wisdom also do the love and the compassion. In fact, do them 50/50. Those were his words. And it was like a lightning bolt really, actually went through my heart.

Solveig Rennan
Our correspondent, Fred de Sam Lazaro, sat down with Kerzin in his tiny abode in Dharamsala, India, in 2015. He told Fred what inspired his mission to bring compassion back into a medical system dominated by technology and the bottom line.

Fred de Sam Lazaro
What brought you here?

Barry Kerzin
Yeah, I keep pinching myself, Fred, I don’t know. The obvious answer is I was teaching at the University of Washington in the School of Medicine. And a friend of mine, Alan Wallace came here in about ’85 for the first mind in life conference. And during that conference, His Holiness made a public request, to that 20 people that he would love to have a Western trained physician come to Dharamsala and interdigitate different healthcare medical systems, not to make them one, but to have all of them available for any one sick person. So if modern allopathic medicine wasn’t working, then maybe we try Unani or Ayurvade, Tibetan Medicine, Chinese herbal medicine, etc. and Alan came back to Seattle, and he called me and he said, I’ve got something for you. And I heard that and I said, wow. And so I then extricated some of my responsibilities and took two months, I think nearly two months off, and came here and talk to the people, you know, around the Tibetan Medicine world here and It seemed to me like a go. I said, Wow, this could be something really special for my life, and something that I could really contribute for the people here their lives. And then I got more involved with Buddhism. And I’ve already been very interested. I got more involved with meditation with 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
What drew you here in particular, as opposed to the many other places you might have gone?

Barry Kerzin
His Holiness, the Dalai Lama? I met him. First time we had a like a personal talk was in 1989, when he publicly was acknowledged for receiving winning the Nobel Peace Prize. And there, I got to talk to him and actually asked for some advice about a meditation retreat. And it I felt like a lightning bolt was going right through my heart, I can still feel it right now. His answer basically to my question was, don’t just do the wisdom also do the love and the compassion, in fact, do them 50/50 Those were his words, you know, wisdom and compassion 50/50. And it was like a lightning bolt really, actually went through my heart. And that was the reason why I wanted to then stay in at least some time longer. I wasn’t thinking 27 years at that time, but I was thinking longer. And I left my post as an assistant professor at the University of Washington, and things were kind of open ended here. I continue to practice medicine. He always encouraged me to keep my credentials and continue practicing medicine. So now for 27 years, it’s been all on a charitable basis. don’t charge anybody anything, and if I know that or don’t have the funds to help them pay off and for their medications. So that was the reason that I, you know, it was it was a heart thing and it wasn’t intellectual.

Fred de Sam Lazaro
You say that he told you not only to do the wisdom, but to do the compassion. Do you have a sense now of what your condition was, if that’s the right word prior to that moment? I mean, what was your approach in life? How was it different from what he was telling you to do?

Barry Kerzin
Before that point, and maybe a few years after that point, my life was filled with anxiety. My life was filled with doubt. My life was filled with not really knowing on a deeper level, who I was and what I was, you know, what I was supposed to do here during the time of my life, meeting his holiness, and then following You know, a lifestyle here, trying to go more in terms of wisdom and compassion has opened my heart didn’t happen overnight. And it’s opened my heart to a large degree has brought tremendous peace. And anxiety is pretty much gone. I rarely feel anxiety anymore. And the inner joy inner peace, they’re not all the time, but it’s not a lot of the time. It’s kind of a base or a background. And so it’s it’s moved me along slowly moved me along, to be more compassionate, to learn how to do that, to be less selfish, to be less preoccupied with my own needs. And so that’s kind of been my journey.

Fred de Sam Lazaro
What specifically, you know, what are you doing? That was making you anxious before that was filling you with doubt?

Barry Kerzin
I think illness was the big mover here and Illness involves three. When I was 11, I nearly died of a brain abscess. And I think, you know, going through that I don’t remember being fearful or anxious that much as 11 year old kid, but afterwards very anxious. Then, when I was maybe in my early mid 20s, my mother who I’d been extremely close to, and I always had the feeling that if any major catastrophe happened in my life, my mother would always be there for me. My mother developed a severe form of cancer and nine months later died, and that I felt like the rug of my life had been pulled out from under me then, or just before she died, maybe several years before she died, I met a woman who was spectacular. She was beautiful outside, beautiful inside. And I just feel felt like a whole person being around her. So much of my self doubt. Not all of it but much of it vanished went away. We were together for abou, I don’t know, we were together maybe seven years, eight years, when she was diagnosed in early 30 when she was 30 with a very serious form ovarian cancer, serious form of cancer and it was advanced. When she was diagnosed. Three and a half years later she died. And that send me for in another loop downward. I was reckless. There were several things that I did that looking back were reckless in nature because I love nature and love to spend time in nature. So three or four times I was doing things that were stupid that I wouldn’t have otherwise done. For example, I was rafting in a sea kayak, kayaking in a sea kayak, on a river in the winter, in the very northwest of America, in the Quinalt River Basin. And I was alone. My skirt had been lost. So I didn’t have a skirt on my sea kayak. And I portaged my boat because there was a 90 degree turn. I was going up from Quinault Lake Quinalt, went all going up the river and I was fighting it but I was working as hard as I could. And I came to a 90 degree bend there was whitewater. I portaged, took the boat out, and I hike with my boat above the whitewater, got in. And I thought this would be really neat to run these rapids. Not knowing what I’m doing. I was a sea kayaker. So I tried to do it and there were two logs down. I came and I hit one of the logs and immediately my boat came 90 degrees from the way the water was going, and I immediately the my boat filled up because I didn’t have my skirt. And I rolled and I was upside down. I got out maybe because there was no skirt. I got out but I couldn’t come up. The whitewater was too strong and it was taking me down. I tried as hard as I could to come up to get some air, finally I did. Got some air took me down again. Again, I’m trying to fight to get back up I can finally I can and then the water is finished. Still a lot of turbulence, but I could stay up. And then I remember thinking I’m fine. But then a voice came that said, You’re not fine. If you don’t get out of this river, you’re gonna die. I was probably at that point beyond I was hypothermic beyond shivering. I was very, very cool. And so I’m going down the river, no control, and I see a log kind of coming up like this. All the strength I had I lifted my arms. I grabbed the log. Again, I thought I’m okay. And again a voice said, No. You’ve got to get out of this river you won’t survive. So I went to hand over hand, got to the end to the river. It was about six foot vertical. I said to myself, there’s no way I’m gonna get out of this. Another voice said, if you’re going to survive, you got to get out of this river. It must have been adrenaline I just went into the side was mud and There were some, you know, roots and things that I must have grabbed on I don’t remember. And I got up to the top and got over. It was dark by now. I’d lost my boots I had on my gortex upper and lower was completely soaked, I’m blind without my glasses. At that time I had the full wraparound john lennon glasses wraparounds, they stayed on and then I kind of got myself protected stand up. I mean, middle of nowhere, I don’t know where I’m going to go. If I had to be out that night, none of my gear was with me. I would have froze. So I decided just to walk. And after a while I found a little little path made of gravel. I thought okay, this goes to somewhere. There was a cabin was locked up, nobody there. Then there was a driveway. You know, a dirt driveway I followed it came to finally a road. Small road, no cars, no people. I said to myself, right or left and some kind of intuition. I don’t know. I said go right. I went right. And I’m walking and then I could see a sign that had a reflector and I couldn’t read it. But I knew there was a sign, kept walking and it said Quinault River station quarter mile. I said, Wow, maybe I’m going to be okay. But I had no idea for anybody there. So I walked the quarter mile and I saw smoke coming out of a smokestack. Went in, there were two guys one guy’s name was Rambo, two park rangers, and they took care of me. And they took everything off their fire going, they warm me up, gave me something to wear. And I survived. So that recklessness of doing what I did on the river was because I really didn’t care if I was going to live or die. I wasn’t actively suicidal. But I was reckless. And that happened. There are several other situations in nature just like that, right nearly died. But I didn’t. In this case, they told me I should have died. Because those logs that are laying down are Doug Fir. And they have arms branches coming out 90 degrees. So those things are going straight down and they catch you when you’re down, they’re called widow makers. And they said, you’re really lucky. You were able to come up and survive.

Fred de Sam Lazaro
Do you think you were lucky or do you think there was something else about it?

Barry Kerzin
you know, at the time, I probably would have called it luck. But now, this may sound foolish, and I’m a doctor. I’m a scientist and I think like a scientist, but for many years now I’ve had this feeling and it’s True and it’s been tested, that I’m kind of under this umbrella, or I’m protected and cared for by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. There have been events later, where I could have been in huge trouble maybe died. And I came out of flying colors. I had a pulmonary embolism in Mongolia a year ago, little over a year ago. And the medicine that you need to get yourself better, an anticoagulant coumadin. They told me we don’t have this in this country. I learned later that a few places have it but that’s what I was told. somehow magically, somebody who I’d work with a kind of a students had done business in Beijing. And she heard about this. And she called her student colleague and said, Look, get this stuff sent. Next day, it arrived on a plane from Beijing. coumadin and I got the coumadin and I’m sure this wasn’t just luck. I’m sure that his holiness looks out for me. There are many, many examples of this. So as a scientist, I actually believe this is true.

Fred de Sam Lazaro
That a difficult thing, is that a difficult reconciliation? How long did it take you to get to this point of being a scientist? I mean, all of these, the incident you just described to us was having, you know, happened before I presume you met?

Barry Kerzin
Yes.

Fred de Sam Lazaro
His Holiness. How long did it take you to make it seem like a revelation to you?

Barry Kerzin
I don’t know maybe a couple of decades. But it’s been that way for at least a decade, if not more. I used to say I wear two hats. So sometime, this is the medical hat. This is the Buddhist hat. But I don’t say that anymore. And I do think that our modern scientific knowledge is limited. There are many things we don’t know. And I think there are many things In Buddhist science, that modern science is getting closer to accepting or at least accepting the possibility that they may exist. And so I’m more kind of in that mode

Fred de Sam Lazaro
For example?

Barry Kerzin
The mind. His Holiness mentioned this this morning, you know that the dictum in in neuroscience has been the brain, you know, emotions are all explained in behavior, you know, neuroscience of the brain, chemical neurotransmitters, chemical synapses, etc, between neurons in the brain. And now, some of the top scientists, particularly those that have had a lot of exposure to His Holiness, I starting to say, you know, maybe there is something about mind that separate from the brain, particularly very subtle mental states. They don’t say it’s true, but they’re beginning to entertain the possibility, and they’re starting to research it.

Fred de Sam Lazaro
When you travel globally and you, you know, you flip between several different worlds, how do you view your medical colleagues? How do you feel you’re viewed by medical colleagues you encounter, especially ones that, you know, you’ve known for, for some time before you became a Tibetan Buddhist?

Barry Kerzin
I’ll give two answers to that. Two threads. First is in my travels around the world for the last 10 years, often with medical community giving talks, lectures, I noticed the change. Initially, they viewed me with lots of suspicion and who is this guy and not much interest to listen. Now, it’s this has changed tremendously. And doctors, nurses, other health professionals are coming up to me in many parts of the world after a talk, they’re saying, we really need this stuff for ourselves, so we don’t burn out, become depressed, turn to alcohol, drugs and divorce and maybe suicide. So we need it for ourselves to maintain our sanity and maybe even our mental health and happiness, but we also need it for our patients. There’s been a tremendous problem that’s come in the area of trust and the doctor patient relationship. Now, the second strand are people, doctors that know me over this period of time for a long time. And I think initially, they thought I went off the deep end. What are you doing living in India? Come on, you know, how can you stay healthy? You know, why don’t you come back and, you know, you could have a very good life. You could have a very good academic life in medicine. It could have a very comfortable economic life, you know, It’s ridiculous what you’re doing. This happened, by the way more from American doctors than British doctors, British doctors understand the Indian situation much better than American doctors, because of a long history. As I started to grow as an individual, and I don’t claim too much growth, but little bit has changed in me, my close friends who I’ve known for years, particularly doctors, all friends, but now we’re talking about the doctors, they saw the change that happened to me personally. And slowly they start to take notice what’s happened to you. This is neat stuff. You’re smiling all the time. You know, I feel good being around you. You know, you seem to now people are kind of looking at what you’re doing and respecting it, what’s happening here, and they started asking the question and so slowly, I started telling the people I don’t know, but this just kind of how things have developed. So I think over time, those doctors that have known me a long time, are beginning to recognize that there’s something valuable here. It’s not me, but it’s the tradition that I’ve been steeped in, that can help a person grow this way to find deeper meaning in their life.

Fred de Sam Lazaro
You got others who are interested in joining you?

Barry Kerzin
Tremendous amount of others that are interested. Now, that doesn’t mean they’re giving up their family life, their professional life, no. But, you know, we started I’ve started on the founder and president of a of a nonprofit organization that is registered in the United States. It’s globally active and has a 501 c three, and four tax deduction donations. It’s called out Altruism in Medicine Institute and that institute is drawing a lot of people, we don’t have any money. So everybody is working there, including myself, it’s all volunteer, we now have about a dozen volunteers, because they love it. Some of them are professionals, I’ve got doctors doing it, I’ve got super specialist IT people doing it, because they love it. They feel that there’s something meaningful there. So people are starting to join, you know, the cause. So I think that there’s there’s beginning to be a recognition, particularly in healthcare, of where there are cracks in the system. And then we need something to improve and get it back on a good track. So these things I don’t think are the full answer, but they’re probably one of a number of answers that can help medicine get back on track in America and in many places in the world.

Fred de Sam Lazaro
What primarily derailed it in your mind?

Barry Kerzin
That’s a good question. I don’t know, because I’ve been away from a lot. I haven’t lived in America for 27 years now. I think part of it is greed. It used to be that the doctors controlled pretty much what happened, made the decisions in the hospitals, etc. That’s been taken out of the hands of the doctors. It’s been put in the hands of more corporate minded people. I think that’s been one problem. A second problem is, you know, doctors have not been doctors and nurses and all the health care professionals. It’s not part of our education, compassion. And so we all went into this, because we wanted to help. But then once we’re in it, you know, there’s so many other factors economics is one, you have to pay for your education by taking out loans and then when you get out of medical school, nursing school, you have a huge bill to pay. So you’ve got to work to pay back those bills, and then you get more involved with the economic side, you want a second car, a nicer home, a nicer travel, you know, vacation. And so then you start to get, you know, a little bit derailed into the, you know, kind of the economic side of things. So that’s a second factor. I think a third factor is, unfortunately, and I don’t know all the reasons modern medicine has become so stressful for everybody. People are burning out or for not burned out. There’s, you know, they’re highly stressed and depressed and, you know, they don’t feel well anymore about what they do. I think that’s another factor that led to some of the cracks and in a modern medical system

Fred de Sam Lazaro
Do you today pretty much call yourself a renunciate as they say, in India, I mean, have you forgotten all material possessions?

Barry Kerzin
Yeah, I would say yes and no, I don’t own a home. I don’t own a car. I don’t own a refrigerator. And I can go on and on on that. You know, I do have a little storage locker in the states where I keep some of my stuff. Most of it is books. And that’s the possessions. I do have a little money in a pension plan that from when I worked years and years ago, I owned a house. And many years ago, I sold it and so that money was put in a kind of pension plan. And that’s it. So I’m not a renunciate you know, in the sense that His Holiness mentioned the monk has three possessions. Basically what we’re wearing and a bowl, you know, for our food, I’m not that kind of a renunciate. But I’m certainly much more of a renunciate than all the doctors I know and I feel that I have, renunciation to me is not exactly just giving away all your material possessions. It’s rather detachment. So that if what you have is merely a material possession, or to go like that, no problem, because you’re not attached to it. I see renunciation more like that, sort of have a few things is okay. Have a lot of things is not okay. But to have a few things like I have. I feel it’s okay, because I’m not very attached to these things.

Fred de Sam Lazaro
Can you walk us briefly through the landmarks of that path to where you, you called yourself a Tibetan monk.

Barry Kerzin
Yeah. And I think that does nicely dovetail with the detachment because it is a process and it takes time. So after I met His Holiness in 89, I had much more energy to do meditation retreats and study that included compassion, along with the wisdom. I’ve always loved the emptiness that’s been my original kind of hopes and childhood since age 14. Is Buddhist the wisdom of emptiness. But his holiness, you know, very firmly and powerfully said, you know, compassion and don’t forget the compassion. And so, I’ve been studying, I’ve been doing meditation retreats for decades. Now teaching for a decade, and all of that, you know, you can’t ignore that stuff. You can’t ignore, you know, what do you do when incipient anger comes up, how do you work with it? He’s just leaving and get angry, or do you try to make the commitment, okay, I’m going to try to transform it into, you know, patience, tolerance, or even a loving compassion. So you’re, you’re kind of forced, when you’re doing this stuff for so long, not to be hypocrite. I sort of have to, you’re telling other people to do that work. But you have to do it yourself. And so I tried. I’m not saying I was a very good student I’m not saying I was very successful at it I think I wasn’t. But you know, you keep plugging away and little by little year by year, year by year, you start to make some kind of progress. And so I think that’s happened I don’t get angry very much anymore, it’s rare. Happens, but not much. If it happens, I see it I work with it doesn’t stay along. Same thing with jealousy. I don’t get jealous. Rarely. I used to be much more of a jealous person. I used to be highly competitive. I’m still somewhat competitive, but it’s more now personal competition to better myself, not putting somebody else down. not at the expense of somebody else. So these are things that you just learned, you know, that’s what I teach. And I slowly work on myself. And I think, you know, the practice is incredible the teachings of the Buddha that come down through Nagarjuna and His Holiness the Dalai Lama, are incredible because they work. If you do them they work. And once you start to taste that, that, wow, I didn’t get angry in this situation I would have used to gotten angry. Or, you know, I’m smiling and I’m telling that person: Wow. It’s so wonderful. The success you’ve had didn’t tell us. You start feeling a start seeing that and it’s so little like endorphins. It kind of sucked in you want more of that because it feels good. And you, you feel that your life is more meaningful.

Fred de Sam Lazaro
What were the components of that, that helped you transform that demeanor from being an angry one prone to anger or jealousy, things that you’ve conquered? Mostly?

Barry Kerzin
Yeah. I think it’s a combination of meditation. And also, as His Holiness calls emotional hygiene. Not suppressing the destructive emotions like anger, jealousy, pride, attachment, greed, selfishness, not suppressing them because that doesn’t work. Because those just come back and blow up and they’re worse. But rather Actually, it’s like you churn butter is start with cream. It keep turning and turning and turning pretty soon. all you’ve got is butter. If you look for the cream, you can’t find it, there’s no residual of cream. So the cream was totally transformed into butter. So that’s the kind of process we’re talking about where jealousy. You know, when you do successfully transform it into, you know, appreciation or feeling joy about the other person’s success. There’s no residual, the residual of their jealousy it’s totally transformed.

Fred de Sam Lazaro
Can you talk little bit more about meditation how you started and share with people who do not practice meditation, how you know in a way that we can understand how you began and just talk about meditation and its impact in your life?

Barry Kerzin
Myself, and I think this is true for many people, our orientation is outward. I always used to be very involved with planning, worrying about the past I should have could have done this differently. I should have done this. I should have done that. Guilt, worry, anxiety. The more you meditate, you automatically come and spend more time in the present. When I’m not in the past, and I’m not in the future. And I’m in the present. There’s a tremendous joy. There’s a tremendous deep relaxation. There’s no room for anxiety. There’s very little room for doubt. self doubt or doubting anything. I mean, you still have a very healthy inquiry? You know, you’re not sure about this, you want to explore this, you don’t know that that’s there. But kind of the destructive self doubt and doubting others, negative judgment stuff. There’s no room for that when you’re more, spend more time in the present.

Fred de Sam Lazaro
That’s where it begins. And then it goes deeper.

Barry Kerzin
Yes, it goes deeper primarily in compassion and wisdom. So compassion, you know, the stepping stone is kind of empathy, in order to feel what the other person is feeling that takes it out of ourself, into the other person. So it’s wonderful. But if we leave it there, we burn out particularly in professionals, particularly health professionals burnout, because we own so much pain. So then we have to move on to compassion, to feel to, to feel happy about helping another person, but that compassion is tinged with pain, because we’re feeling a little bit, the pain of the other person, but we’re not being overwhelmed, we’re not owning that. So that’s the next step if you will, stepping stone, and then another stepping stone is helping without expecting anything in return. So now, you know commonly in relationship we say, or we may not say this, but it’s kind of, you know, known to both parties, all of you if you love me, or you help somebody and you’re expecting a thank you, or a smile or something in return. So the next step is helping without any expectation for anything in return. The basis of that is recognizing the commonality that we all share. We’re normally caught up in differences, all the differences and we forget the commonality and the commonality is that none of us wants to hurt, we all want to feel well. And the more we remember that the more we practice this little bit more advanced level of compassion, helping just because the other person wants to be well.

Fred de Sam Lazaro
And, and your own inner peace comes as a result

Barry Kerzin
Exactly. As a result of that, you feel happy, you feel inner peace. Now, if you did it with that motivation, it would be a very selfish, it would be compassion, but it would be a low level, a very selfish kind of compassion, if you did it because it makes you feel good.

But as a byproduct?

As a byproduct, you feel marvelous. You feel there’s deep meaning in your life you go to bed, often feeling very happy. You wake up feeling very happy. You feel you haven’t you you’ve touched a sense of real deep meaning in your life. And so I call that a win/win situation.

Solveig Rennan
our interview with Barry Kerzin was originally featured in our story called The Dalai Lama’s Doctor, which aired on PBS news hour on October 15, 2015. To check out the full story, go to under told stories.org This episode was hosted by me Solveig Rennan and produced and edited by Simeon Lancaster. The interview was conducted by our director Fred de Sam Lazaro. Our next few episodes will explore bringing water access to the Navajo Nation,

George McGraw
we’re looking at about 70,000 people without access to water sanitation,

Solveig Rennan
and how Edna Adan is caring for the mothers and babies of her motherland.

Edna Adan
I don’t think I could have gone to a PhD course to learn how to do this. I think it’s life has taught me

Solveig Rennan
you can find every Under-Told: Verbatim episode, virtual reality 360 experiences and our entire library of Under-Told news reports from around the world at under told stories.org. Under-Told: Verbatim is brought to you by the Under-Told Stories Project based at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. As always, thanks for your support.