When groping to describe Howard Stern’s innate innocence as a youth, especially when his feelings were hurt by his father, I said yesterday that within that period of suffering, you could see Stern’s “inner Buddha.” And last night, a reader wrote: “What’s an Inner Buddha? I think she’s seriously making up terms here.”

True, I was swiftly combining “inner child,” “Buddha nature,” with a smattering of “natural perfection.” Breezy, but I don’t see the crime. I am also clearly under the influence of Lama Surya Das’s book “Awakening the Buddha Within,” a great introductory text to Buddhism. I recently attended a Tibet House lecture where Lama Surya Das himself, one of the foremost Western Buddhist meditation teachers and scholars, encouraged us all to find a Buddha inside everyone on the street (even Howard Stern), or more accurately, acknowledge the Bodhisattva (the committed seeker, or Buddha-in-the-making) in ordinary people who may not so obviously be on the spiritual path.

Seeing any person’s source of suffering is a wonderful way to stimulate your compassion when you’re feeling judgemental and annoyed. For instance, as I studied the Sirius website last night and read the biographies of Stern’s staff people, I noticed that his female sidekick Robin Quivers, who often laughs at Stern’s raunchy antics, was abused as a child by her father. Is she healing herself, or violating listeners? If her natural perfection once seemed lost to her, has she, or can she, relocate it?