A passionate case for alternative medicine with a deep spiritual cast.
This study of Tibetan medicine asserts that compassion is a doctor’s most important qualification.
Yonten, the founder of the Tibetan Healing and Wellness Center in Bangalore, India, and his amanuensis, Weaner, translate and comment on the ancient treatise called the rGyud-bZhi to explain to doctors the Buddhist intellectual foundations of Tibetan medicine. Yonten’s focus is compassion, meaning a visceral empathy for the suffering of sentient beings; this, he says, makes physicians recognize that all life is precious and imbues them with a desire to help others. He recommends that doctors cultivate the “four limitless qualities” of compassion, love, joy, and equanimity by visualizing scenarios in which people suffer and then have their suffering alleviated. Yonten also expounds on Tibetan medical theory, asserting that ignorance is the root of disease and taxonomizing 404 canonical disorders caused variously by karma, spirits—which account for strokes and leprosy—and disturbances in the bodily humors of wind, bile, and phlegm. He offers stray bits of practical advice, enjoining doctors to develop a warm bedside manner, sit up straight, and consult an astrological almanac when compounding medicines; he also suggests naps and drinking boiled water as treatments for headache. Yonten’s enthusiasm for emotionally committing to patients is compelling, and practitioners may find it inspiring. His discussions of the intersection of Buddhist philosophy and medicine are less successful, though, and often bog down in numerological formulas that are too complicated and haphazard to easily follow: “To have a pure intention, one takes six vows [and] two commitments, and upholds three wisdoms.” Also, as appealing as it sounds, Yonten’s vision of Tibetan healing is so radically at odds with mainstream scientific medicine that some readers may find it hard to accept. Still, he and Weaner convey their ideas in lucid prose that veers between evocative aphorism (“a physician without medicines and instruments is like a warrior without any weapons”) and rapturous effusion: “Imagine a world filled with compassion and benevolence, where everyone is smiling and emanating loving kindness like His Holiness the Dalai Lama constantly does.”
A passionate case for alternative medicine with a deep spiritual cast.Pub Date: May 16, 2023
ISBN: 9781948626927
Page Count: 182
Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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