My Mentor — with Dr Jamed Doty and myself self

2 months post surgery by Dr. Doty — with Abby Tamara

I was so sorry to hear about James's passing. He was such a vibrant and caring person. I  had the absolute pleasure of working with him at Gulfport Memorial Hospital when he started our neurosurgical program and I was an ICU nurse. He was an excellent surgeon who gave excellent care to his patients and treated everyone with dignity and respect. RIP!

I first met Jim Doty in 2005 when the Dalai Lama visited Stanford, hosted by the Office for Religious Life and the School of Medicine. We became good friends as the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) was founded at Stanford in 2008, with Jim as its director, and as we worked together, with lots of others, to bring the Dalai Lama back to campus in 2010. Family connections developed in fascinating ways thereafter too. Nothing was more important to Jim than his wife and children.

Jim was brilliant, funny, talented, driven, caring, and utterly unique. Somehow, he was a committed atheist as a scientist and a deeply spiritual person as a Buddhist practitioner at the same time. He said that neurosurgery was his profession, but that compassion was his hobby. He was physician, teacher, scholar, entrepreneur, philanthropist, author, and guru. He breathed in deeply, and breathed out expansively, with all of us as his beneficiary.

He always helped me think and feel far outside the box. Nothing was set or static for Jim. He personified creativity as he made connections between ideas, people and things. He could be intellectually rigorous and emotionally vulnerable at the same time. I remember him beginning to cry as he told a story of himself reluctantly giving money to someone on the street only to be thanked poignantly by this young man and his mother later. He personified how medicine, science and technology benefit humanity in his work as a neurosurgeon and clinical professor while at the same time he insisted that true medicine must address the whole person as precious human being. He always reminded others that life was an ongoing inquiry into ultimate meaning and purpose, with service to others at its center. I hope your vision and your love will never be extinguished in us, Jim.         

We send our deepest condolences. 

Jim will be dearly missed. I loved all the times I spent with him.

Love from Ellen and Scotty 

I offer tender comfort to the loved ones of Dr. Doty as you navigate this loss. My heart joins the sadness of so many who grieve his loss and celebrate his life. His generosity and compassion changed the trajectory of my life. I am grateful he was on my life path, and as I continue to educate others about the power of compassion, I will always do so in his memory. May peace and light support you, Elizabeth S

Dear Masha and Family, I will always remember Jim as the guy who took up the entire hallway walking in the office suites in the Embarcadero-with a huge smile, shaggy hair, a keen interest in details and no shortage of opinionated energy.  That office space in The Embarcadero is where I was lucky to be present  when he first met my dear friend Masha.   I will never forget how he turned his head so fast to watch her walk in, and out-I thought he might need intensive chiropractic treatment. He was decidely smitten, for decades, with good reason.  I shall never forget the sweet love I saw bloom between two strong people who embody the words passionate, loving, creative and intelligent.  To love! To bravery! To never forgetting that he will be here, still, filling the hallways and our hearts with his true nature. 

Dark Apartment Escape Room — with Teague, Noah, Alex, Jim, Masha and Dagan