COMPASSION AS REMEDY IN TIBETAN MEDICINE

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.