A few years ago, I attended a conference and sat down with Dr. Barry Kerzin, who is the personal physician of the Dalai Lama, the holy leader of the global Tibetan Buddhist movement. I wanted to understand his role as a healer in the context of genocide prevention and the broader Tibetan resistance.
After studying and practicing medicine in the United States, Barry began a new spiritual journey when his wife unexpectedly died. He decided to move to Dharamsala, India, to practice Buddhism and meditation and committed to a holistic form of healing beyond traditional Western medicine.
After providing free medical care to many of the Tibetan lamas in the area, the Dalai Lama sought him out. Barry’s life changed forever, and he began a new journey studying and medically providing for the Dalai Lama, whom Barry affectionately refers to as “my teacher.” I found the story of Barry’s life and mission to heal particularly striking in the broader context of the ongoing genocide against Tibetan Buddhist followers.
For decades, the Chinese Communist Party has targeted the Dalai Lama and his followers. In 1995, the pronounced 11th Panchen Lama, or second-highest leader in Tibetan Buddhism, who was just six years old, was kidnapped as a prisoner of conscience and has been missing for 30 years.
The definition of genocide extends beyond just the mass killing of people for their national, ethnic, racial or religious identity. The U.N. Convention on Genocide Prevention also clearly describes the forcible transfer of children as genocide. We see this in Russia’s deplorable invasion of Ukraine and in the targeting of Tibetan Buddhists by China.
Josh Rogin wrote in The Washington Post, “Using both inducements and threats, Chinese authorities have moved three-quarters of Tibetan children inside China into what Tibetans call ‘colonial boarding schools,’ designed to deprive them of their cultural identities and to cultivate loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party. Students are taught almost exclusively in Chinese and barred from practicing their religion.”
This is genocide on two fronts: physical and cultural.
While cultural genocide is not clearly defined in the U.N. Convention, in many ways it has equal consequences to the physical crimes of genocide. Cultural genocide can desensitize whole communities to atrocities, shutter concerned neighbors into apathy, and motivate good people to self-censor and stay silent out of fear of being targeted.
In the last 10 years, cultural genocide and technology have become tools to perform mass atrocities out of sight from broader society, allowing the erasure of entire identity groups to be done without resistance.
In the case of Tibet, the CCP is using a “highly intrusive surveillance and monitoring system that even collects their DNA without proper consent.” The CCP is also deploying this technology against Uyghurs both inside its borders and abroad.
In spite of years of targeting, the Dalai Lama and his followers continue to protest, resist and work tirelessly to raise awareness with the international community. Their hope to stop the genocide is linked with a motivation to prevent future genocides against others who become the victims of genocide because of their faith, such as Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar.
Cultural genocide can desensitize whole communities to atrocities, shutter concerned neighbors into apathy, and motivate good people to self-censor and stay silent out of fear of being targeted.
In this broader context of genocide and the plight of Tibetan Buddhists, I couldn’t help but reflect on what peace and healing mean to a man who works to heal the Dalai Lama.
When I sat down with Barry to ask him more about his life and vision of peace, his answers reflected the philosophy of Buddhism, a personal conviction to practicing the healer’s art, and insights into how we can disrupt the cycle of genocide and create genocide resistance.
Rachel Miner: What can you tell me about your role as the personal physician to the Dalai Lama?
Ven. Dr. Barry Kerzin: Caring medically for His Holiness the Dalai Lama is unlike any other person I’ve taken care of medically. I know that he knows what’s best. Still, I am asked to do the doctor thing to the best of my ability.
I’ve learned from him, and doing practice that he has taught me, that there are many levels of healing. Modern medicine mostly takes people that are sick or have statistically “abnormal” numbers on lab tests and tries to move them to “normal” again lab tests and symptoms.
Healing goes much further than that. To move someone from wherever they are to a state — and we don’t have good terminology for this — a state of thriving, a state of flourishing, a state of joy, a state of well-being — that term has been used in so many different ways, it’s become diluted — but ultimately, a state of joy. And so in all my interactions with people, I try to nonverbally communicate that joy.
RM: Do you see yourself as a healer?
BK: I’m not actively seeing myself as a healer, no, but I also recognize that healing goes both ways. I receive healing from others, of course. But there is a way of healing. It involves trying to be as clear and as pure as you can. You can’t always do it. You do it to different levels. But try to be as pure and clean as you can with your motivation.
Make sure you’re there to help someone. You’re concerned about their well-being. You’re acting on that — if they want. You don’t impose. And that motivation is very, very important. If the motivation isn’t reasonably well aligned with goodness, with compassion, with benefit, with healing, then things, regardless of the action, can be a little bit off the mark.
If your motivation is good and you’re skillful — sometimes that’s a big “if” — then you can be on the mark and people can receive the benefits.
RM: How does the Dalai Lama model leadership?
BK: Setting by example, for leadership and healing, is very, very important. And the Dalai Lama does that — maybe the best.
He now has large audiences with people in Dharamsala. And often, people bring sick, old, dying family members, many times in a wheelchair or being supported. They can’t walk on their own, and he goes and spends time with them. And there’s hundreds, even thousands of people as he’s walking into a temple to give a teaching.
He goes up … He’ll often hug them. And you can feel that he’s sending this healing and loving energy to them. Often, there are tears rolling down their eyes, down their face. He does that always — say he’s traveled somewhere and we’re walking in or out of a large venue — he often has to go through the tunnels just for security or whatever, and there’ll be workers there. Usually, they clear it out, but there’ll be some workers that inadvertently come. He’ll talk to them, he’ll say hello, he’ll give a greeting, he just always does that.
When he leaves a hotel after he’s been somewhere, he calls in all the security people — take photos — calls in all the people that have cooked for him — take photos — calls in all the people that have cleaned the floors and the rooms for him — take photos.
I mean, that’s standard for him. He doesn’t really differentiate based on wealth, or social standing, or family background or all that stuff — race, gender, sexual identity — that stuff doesn’t have much importance to him. He sees people as people. And that’s something incredibly beautiful, and when you’re around it, you just get welled up with joy, and often tears start rolling down your face, tears of joy.
RM: What should the world understand about genocide prevention?
BK: On the prevention side, which is more where I get involved, that’s kind of more my world — once there are atrocities happening, it’s something that I can’t do that much about, usually — but the prevention side is about training people and especially young people.
Give them a toolbox for when they get upset and angry, so they don’t have to turn to violence — rather, a choice between external or towards themselves, internal.
Love is the prevention. And love is complicated. When we say “love,” people often think romance or sexuality. But there’s a side of love that’s intimacy. There’s a side of love that gives without expectation of anything in return — so-called unconditional love. So, regardless of conditions, we show that love — just because. That doesn’t come easy, and we usually don’t start there — some people are there, but most people are not — so we start with little things.
RM: What does Buddhism teach about love as genocide prevention?
BK: The word actually for love or compassion in Sanskrit is “karuna.” And karuna has a whole kind of platform. It has a whole sort of panoply of aspects.
It involves generosity — these are things we can train in, to be more generous. Most people think, “Gotta give money,” yeah, that’s good — but there’s so many other kinds of generosity. Giving a smile, as you’ve just done. Saying hello to somebody. Acknowledging if they’re in pain and acknowledging their pain. Giving shelter or food. Calling someone when you have a trusting relationship: “You just seem down the last couple of days. I am available if you want to talk.”
Then there is‚ we sometimes call it an ethical discipline, to be honest, to be and have integrity — not to be hypocritical, because if we do any of that stuff, then it’s hard to really love because people think there’s some strings there or something.
Then patience or tolerance in lieu of when we get upset, in lieu of reacting with anger — and we’re not suppressing the anger, but we’re learning ways to recognize the anger early. You’ve read about this: methods to apply to reduce and eventually eliminate those feelings when we’re at an early stage of anger, in addition to developing patience and tolerance and then a form of diligence, or not giving up.
If we set this habit to just back out when the road gets a little bit tough, then we’ll never be able to complete the stuff, particularly good stuff. So do not give up.
Then to concentrate — doesn’t the mind have power? When we’re constantly distracted, the power of the mind gets diminished each time it gets interrupted. Then we don’t have the momentum. To borrow a physical analogy of velocity times mass, like a huge energy comes in or like the bullet train in Japan. You can’t stop on a dime because it’s got momentum. So, (we need) to develop that mental momentum through concentration and avoiding or minimizing distraction.
And then lastly is wisdom, and these are all part of karuna. We call compassion “love” — it’s much broader than how we understand those terms, compassion or love, in English. The fifth aspect of wisdom is to see ourselves as we really are. And that means to develop a regular contemplation — looking inside, trying to discover who we really are. That’s a lifelong endeavor. It’s helpful to read and to get some background on how to move forward on this. These are all parts of what we call compassionate love or karuna, which is how we teach to prevent people from getting into hate and then hate crimes.
Rachel Miner is the founder and CEO of Bellwether International, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to disrupting the cycle of genocide and creating genocide resistance.
Ven. Dr. Barry Kerzin is an American-trained physician and Buddhist monk. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Pittsburgh, adjunct professor at HKU and honorary professor at the Mongolian National University of Medical Sciences.