TACOMA — Dr. Barry Kerzin, personal physician to His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, will visit the University of Washington Tacoma on Thursday, May 2, 2013, and give a talk entitled “Expanding Compassion in Our Communities.”
Dr. Kerzin has a significant connection to UW and the Puget Sound region: before he became a Buddhist monk and moved to Tibet, he was an assistant professor of family medicine in the University of Washington’s School of Medicine.
Dr. Kerzin annually travels around the world to India, Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, North America, Europe, Ukraine and Russia teaching meditation and introducing audiences to the role that compassion plays in happiness and health. He also continues to practice medicine, treating the Dalai Lama and other high Tibetan lamas, as well as poor people wherever he travels.
As part of his mission to shed light on the relationships between western and eastern views of medicine and the mind-body connection, he has been the subject of several studies on long-term meditators. In one project, his brain was scanned by an MRI while he was meditating: significant activity occurred in the left prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with happiness.
Through his teaching, Dr. Kerzin flips the typical understanding of the connection between health and happiness. Clearly, being healthy can contribute to a general feeling of well-being and happiness, but, more importantly, according to Dr. Kerzin, attaining a state of happiness can positively affect one’s health and well-being.
In his talk, Dr. Kerzin will emphasize the role compassion plays in achieving happiness, and how honesty, respect and trust are the building blocks of compassion. There will be an opportunity for questions and answers.
Attendance at Dr. Kerzin’s talk is free, but registration is required.
What: Dr. Barry Kerzin – “Expanding Compassion in Our Communities”
When: Thursday, May 2, 2013, 6:30 p.m.
Where: William W. Philip Hall, UW Tacoma
Register: tacoma.uw.edu/Kerzin (free, but registration is required)
About the speaker: Dr. Barry Kerzin received his BA degree in philosophy from UC Berkeley and his MD from USC. While serving as an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine, he was ordained as a Buddhist monk by the Dalai Lama. He is a Fellow in the American Academy of Family Practice, and a Diplomat in the American Board of Family Medicine. He is a consultant to the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, Germany, and is the founder and chairman of the Human Values Institute in Japan.