"Lama Brought Out The Buddha In Me." (By Christine Wicke - The Dallas Morning News - September 04, 1999.)

The story line:
...Buddhists believe that everyone has a kernel of buddha nature that is compassionate, calm, and able to see the world correctly. Mine was AWOL the day I first saw the Dalai Lama. Five thousands other people appeared completely enraptured as we sat under a big tent in a Southern Indiana field listening to Tibet's 14th Dalai Lama deliver the Kalachakra, one of Buddhism's most revered initiations.
I was hungry. I was cold. I was bored. I twisted in my seat like a peevish child.
I didn't have the buddha nature, and lack of it was making me miserable, just as Buddhists says it will. When the event ended for the day, I stomped away, glad to be free of all that folderol. Later a woman who believes that the ceremony will change her life turned her glowing face to me and asked, "Wasn't it wonderful?" I hated to scrooge her good time. So, very reporter-like, I said, "I don't think I was really into it." "Don't worry," she said, still beatific. "You'll get a blessing anyway."
Sure enough, the angry roiling of my bad nature had calmed considerable by the time the Kalachakra ended. The Dalai Lama has given this important empowerment only three other times in the United States. Dedicated to world peace, the initiation focuses on helping Buddhists develop compassion. Over and over, we heard that dedicating oneself to others is the way to true happiness. After the Kalachakra, the Dalai Lama gave a news conference for journalists from around the world. I was in the front row. When all the questions were asked, the man who Tibetans believe is a god began to shake hands with reporters.
They responded in a most unpresslike way. They squealed and shouted and pushed.
I was about three people away from touching the great man when from behind me came a woman's wail. "I want to shake hands with the Dalai Lama," cried a young Indianapolis reporter.
I turned and there she was, all big-eyed and sad-faced and without a chance of breaking through the wall of people.
"Oh, shoot," I thought. My hand was still extended toward the Dalai Lama, but her voice echoed through me. How could I reach toward a god with the cries of the dispossessed ringing in my ears? Even if he shook my hand, I'd feel like a schmuck.
"Here," I said. "Hurry. You can have my place."
By the time she stepped away, he had moved on. It was too late for me.
"What a dope you are," I thought, watching him leave. "You tossed away your big chance and all for a woman you don't even know." Then the Dalai Lama stopped, turned around and looked at me.
"I want to shake this woman's hand," he said, walking toward me. He leaned far over the table. "It's hard to reach," he said, laughing a little.
His hand was surprisingly large for such a small man. It was rougher and stronger than I expected. The warmth that his palm left when it pressed against mine lingered for a long time.
I'll never know why he turned around. At that moment, I thought only about how kind he was. Later, I wondered whether he overheard the woman's cry and my response. Or, maybe, he merely sensed my bitter disappointment. He is enlightened, after all.
I'll never know for sure. That's how a lot of religious lessons are. You can't prove a thing.
But his action fit perfectly with the Kalachakra's meaning. "Those who give up for others don't get left behind," the Dalai Lama's handshake said to me. "Not at all."

The comment line:
The story was just another simple reminder, in a good sense, that "what goes around comes around." as one always gets, sooner or later, what one pays for.
Religiously speaking, Christians praise their moral value as "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy." (Matt 5:7.)
Scientifically speaking, Newton concluded that once a particle is at rest, it has either no force, or balanced out the sum of the acting forces on it (totalized to zero in other words.) Physics taught us that two forces acting on a resting object must be equal and opposite direction, (Third Newton's law: "To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.")
Taoism calls it "cycle" (what goes out comes back in); Buddhism calls it "karma" (cause and effect where each action produces a corresponding reaction); and Physics calls it "Newton's third law" in which "to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."
It does not matter which word one names it to fit one's own vocabulary. All tends to send out a single message: An act of kindness would be rewarded by another act of kindness in return.
Like the reporter, Christine Wicker, herself, said on her article after the initiation, "Those who give up for others won't get left behind. Not at all."