Cataract Chronicles-25 years
As I celebrate my 25th year volunteering as an eye surgeon in Southeast Asia. I am delighted to share photos and stories about the vision challenges and the people and cultures of India, Nepal, Cambodia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Vietnam. - Dr. Gary Barth
Chronicle 15 - Cutting my Teeth on Medical Charity Work: There are no more deserving people than the Tibetans
In 1977, the Direct Relief Foundation asked me to work as a General Practitioner at the Delek Hospital in Dharamshala.
I lived in a room at the hospital and ate in the mess hall for the Dalai Lama's refugees who resided around his home in exile in the foothills of the Himalayas. The stories that I heard from the monks who accompanied the Dalai Lama on his flight from Chinese-occupied Tibet still make me cringe.
The Dalai Lama was the most generous and welcoming man I have ever met. I had previously seen him at his home in 1971 with a group of 18 students. I had such a positive experience with him then that I immediately said “yes” when out of the blue Direct Relief asked me to volunteer.
As an active and invited volunteer physician, I had extraordinary access to him. For instance, I had the remarkable privilege of having a private interview with him in his living room with just a translator present.
After many discussions, he gave me one of the most inscrutable answers I have ever heard in response to my query about the relative merits of studying in California with a Japanese Buddhist teacher or waiting for the arrival of an English-speaking Tibetan Buddhist teacher.
To answer my question, he gave me a Zen “koan”-like response: “I think the Tibetan view of emptiness is bigger.”
That answer was prescient; I had written my Willams College Senior Thesis on the central Buddhist concept of Emptiness.
What a turnabout answer! How could something without form, emptiness, have
comparable dimensions to another tradition’s view of emptiness???
I have since been back to be with him in his exile home in India.
It was again a remarkable privilege to spend four days with him, this time at a non-medical conference.
He had invited a cross-section of Western-born Buddhist Meditation teachers. The focus of the 10-day conference was on teaching Buddhist meditation to Westerners. I attended as the attendant for Sonoma County’s Zen Master, Kwong Roshi.
Certain key differences exist between Tibetan and Western norms. One of Buddhism's three core tenets is that there is no Self; it is all continuous, co-dependent origination.
Therefore, the West’s emphasis on the ego, transference, and counter-transference are stumbling blocks.
His Holiness was hindered by the 2600-year tradition of a devout woman being ascribed a less important role than the newest male monk. During one of the presentations, he accepted a tissue from an Italian woman monk during her talk about gender discrimination. He was so moved he started to cry. It was an enormous privilege to spend time in his presence again.
