The Dalai Lama

                                                     The Dalai Lama

            The Dalai Lama was in America.  He went to a world-famous medical center for a check-up and some routine procedures. 

            After the nurse took his vital signs and weighed him, she scribbled a note to the doctor and led the Dalai Lama to an examination room.  The doctor came and chatted with His Holiness for a quarter of an hour.  After the consultation, the physician wrote his note in the Dalai Lama’s file.

            The next morning, a bald American dressed in the robes of a Tibetan monk called upon the doctor.  The doctor had a busy schedule, but one of the attorneys in the legal department asked him to make time for the meeting. 

            The American monk said that he was the Dalai Lama’s personal assistant.

            He said: “I read the chart last night and I have a concern.”

            The doctor was irritated. 

            “You don’t have any business reading someone else’s chart,” the doctor said. 

            The bald American dressed like a monk said that he had already cleared that subject with the Clinic’s legal department.  “I have a valid authorization,” the Dalai Lama’s assistant said.

            “Mister, you’re not a doctor and I still don’t think you’ve got any reason to be snooping,” the doctor said.

            “Be that as it may,” the monk said, “we have a concern.”

            He paused and smiled in a way that was meant to be reassuring.

            The monk continued: “You wrote down your clinical impressions.  Very good.  But for number three, after the first two medical concerns, you seem to have written: ‘Slightly depressed.’  You physicians have tricky handwriting.  But that’s what it looks like.”

            “This will be typed, transcribed in type,” the doctor said.

            “Of course,” the American monk said.  “And we appreciate that.  We just have some concern about you suggesting that the Dalai Lama is ‘slightly depressed’.  Do you see?”

            “No,’ the doctor said.  “That was my clinical impression.”

            “Could you consider using some other wording?” the Dalai Lama’s assistant asked.

            “My impression was, and remains, that he was slightly depressed.”

            The monk frowned: “The Dalai Lama does not become depressed.  He was contemplative.”

            “Contemplative?”

            “Could you write ‘contemplative’ for ‘slightly depressed’?”

            The doctor shrugged: “You want the chart to be changed to read ‘slightly contemplative’?”

            “Oh no,” the monk said.

            “What do you want?”

            “Just change ‘slightly depressed’ to ‘contemplative’.”

            The doctor shuffled the papers on the table.  “I don’t think so.  ‘Slightly depressed’ is a medical impression.  ‘Contemplative’ isn’t a medical category at all.”

            “I understand your scruples,” the monk said.  “But really we must insist.  We are talking about a world-historical figure.”

            The doctor stood up.  He had published papers in scores of medical journals and presented those ideas at many international conferences.  Three years earlier he had led a seminar in his specialty in Geneva for a half-dozen selected post-graduate students.  The doctor had completed his internship and training before Board Certification at Johns Hopkins.

            “I’m not going to falsify a medical record,” the doctor said.

            “You’re being unreasonable,” the monk responded.

            “This discussion is finished,” the doctor said turning from the monk.

            The monk scowled.  “I have to say: there will be consequences.”

            The doctor whirled about on his heel to face the little bald American monk.

            “Is the Dalai Lama threatening me?” he asked in a loud voice.

            The monk looked right and left.   Then, he said: “Do you see His Holiness in this room?  I don’t see him anywhere around at all.”

            The doctor slammed the door as he left the conference room.

            I wrote this short story and it was published in a little literary magazine.

            About a month after the story appeared, I received a letter from the legal department of a world-famous local medical clinic.  The letter suggested that my story had libeled the clinic.  The lawyer who had written the letter demanded that I “withdraw (my) libel” by arranging for all copies of the magazine to be gathered and destroyed.  The attorney added: “This should not be unduly difficult since the circulation of this periodical appears to be very small.”

            I wrote an indignant letter back to the lawyer refusing to participate in actions that I characterized as “unreasonable censorship.”  “It is obvious,” I wrote, “that the story is purely fictional and, certainly, can’t be taken as any sort of representation of facts.”  In addition, I stated my opinion that the Dalai Lama, an advocate of human freedoms, surely would support my position.  I sent a copy of the letter, with the short story, to the Dalai Lama in care of his foundation in Boulder.

            About three weeks later, I received a call from a man who said that he was a personal assistant to the Dalai Lama.  He asked to meet me in Starbucks a few blocks from my home.

            The Dalai Lama’s assistant was a short, stout man with a shaved head.  He was wearing a suit with a saffron-colored scarf at his throat.

            After we exchanged greetings, the Dalai Lama’s assistant told me that he had received the letter and a copy of my story.

            “Frankly, His Holiness is concerned,” the assistant said.  “In your story, you represent him to be slightly depressed.  His Holiness, despite his sympathy with the sufferings of all beings, is never depressed.  He is an optimist.  He agrees it would be better to characterize his mood as ‘contemplative.’ “

            ”But, surely, he is not going to support this attempt to muzzle me?”  I asked.

            The assistant had come to the meeting in a BMW with a Colorado license plate.  The car was parked right outside and I looked at the sun gleaming in its chrome.

            “His Holiness thinks the clinic has a good point,” the Dalai Lama’s assistant told me.

            “But it’s a matter of human rights,” I said.

            “His Holiness would prefer that you not trivialize issues of human rights by reference to this matter.”

            I shook my head.  “It’s fiction,” I said.  “A short story.” 

            The little bald man with the saffron-colored scarf under his chin said: “You are an artist.  But you have written something that is untrue.  It’s a lie that the Dalai Lama could be ‘slightly depressed.’  His Holiness thinks that an artist owes an obligation to always speak the truth.”

            I agreed with him by nodding my head but didn’t speak.

            “I know you’ll do the right thing,” the Dalai Lama’s assistant said.