Barry Michael Kerzin, M.D. is an American physician and Buddhist monk. He has lived in Dharamsala since 1988 and serves as a personal physician to the 14th Dalai Lama, along with treating people in the local community, free of charge. Following his ordination as a monk by the Dalai Lama in the mid-2000s, he has traveled widely, teaching and offering workshops in which he blends Buddhist teaching and his medical training, emphasizing the spiritual and health benefits of meditation and compassion, with particular reference to altruism in medicine and secular ethics as well as compassion, wisdom, meditation, death and dying and emotional hygiene. He has served as a research subject in neuroscience research into the effects of meditation on the brain.
"Mindfulness," explains Dr. Kerzin, "means to remember, or to remind ourselves how to live a happy life. It is a turning inward to 'check up' on the state of affairs in our mind and heart. Being in the present facilitates this process. Meditation trains us to be more present. The present moment is peaceful. It is calm. It is joyous."
Dr. Kerzin is founder and president of the Altruism in Medicine Institute, and the founder and chairman of the Human Values Institute in Japan. He lectures on compassion, meditation, death and dying, happiness, and secular ethics. Cosponsored by University of Washington Tacoma and Multicare.
Please note the special day and time for this event. Doors will open at 6:30 at the Main Branch entrance on Tacoma Avenue South.
