Dalai Lamas followers pray for his knee surgery recovery outside ritzy NYC hotel

They’re Tibet-ing on a speedy recovery.Acolytes of the Dalai Lama congregated during the July Fourth holiday outside Midtown’s ritzy Park Hyatt Hotel, where the exiled leader of Tibetan Buddhism is recuperating from knee replacement surgery.Throngs of Dalai devotees, some wearing traditional Tibetan garb and prayer beads, posed for photos and prayed outside the West 57th Street hotel Thursday, walking around the block clockwise as if it were a Buddhist temple.“We believe that if you circumambulate, it’s offering us good luck in our future and in our present also,” said Yonten Dorjee, 40, of Kew Gardens, Queens.“We imagine this as our temple and His Holiness is inside,” Dorjee’s wife, Kalsang Youdon, 45, said.The Dalai Lama arrived in New York City in late June — his first trip to the US since 2017 — to undergo knee replacement surgery at the Hospital for Special Surgery.The 88-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who fled to India in 1959 after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet, has suffered health problems for years.His June 28 surgery was successful and he’s expected to make a full recovery after his discharge a day later, said David J.

Mayman, the chief of adult reconstruction and joint replacement service at the Upper East Side hospital, in a statement.“His Holiness’s personal medical team and office were in constant communication with the surgical and medical staff at HSS,” Mayman said.It’s unclear how long the Dalai Lama will be recovering at the five-star hotel across from Carnegie Hall, where admirers’ have been making daily devotional visits, Gothamist first reported.Existence may be suffering, as the Buddha taught, but the mood outside the hotel has been joyous.The Dalai Lama’s personal cook Tenzin Pasang made an appearance at one point Thursday and was immediately greeted by spectators as though he were Taylor Swift.“I heard that [the Dalai Lama’s] treatments were successful, so that’s why we’re ver...