Integrative Medicine Case Reports, Volume 1, Issue 2 (July), 2020
Reflections on life-a personal account of interaction with HH Dalai Lama
His Holiness Dalai Lama has given me more than I could ever ask for in this life. I met Dalai Lama in Bangalore, in 1989, at the 1st International Holistic Health and Medicine Conference. There were about a thousand international delegates in attendance for the two-day event.
At the conference, before he began his talk, he walked down the aisles of all the rows of delegates where we were seated. We all stood in respect of his presence as he walked by.
I happened to be standing next to the aisle when he walked right up to me and stopped. He then stared into my eyes, and then, in a deep, booming voice, spoke the following words:
“Do Something for Humanity!”
After that continued to walk on down the aisles of the rows of seats that were occupied by the other delegates, before returning to the stage to begin his commencement address.
When he spoke those words to me, however, his voice and message were so powerful that I staggered back a few steps, and then after collecting myself, the first coherent things that came into my head were my father’s words.
My father used to tell me this: “At the end of the day (meaning the end of each day of your life, as well as the last day of your life), it is not how much money that is in your bank account that will make you truly happy—it is the answer to this question: “What did I do for my fellow man?”
My father was a Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine in Los Angeles, California, USA. He was a very wise and caring physician as well as a gentle and loving father, who practiced and taught medicine for 50 years. In Bangalore, after reflecting on the Dalai Lama’s words, and realizing that they carried the same important message as the words that my father had always spoken to me, I thought to myself.
“So you had to travel 10,000 miles half way around the world to have the Dalai Lama tell you to listen to your father!!” In truth, the Dalai Lama’s words, and energy only reconfirmed the importance of the path that my father had walked before me, now which I was trying to follow with my own two feet. It was a beautiful endorsement of the gift of my father, (even though he had passed away four years earlier) and the wisdom that he had always spoken to me since I was a little boy.
I have already received the Dalai Lama’s blessings, as well as my father’s, and am very grateful to have had both these great teachers in my life.
doi: 10.38205/imcr.010206