Buddhism and Medicine; Chinese Traditional Medicine; Meditation; Tibet; Rinpoche, S.; 心靈=Spiritual
摘要
Your Holiness, eminent doctors and scholars, ladies and gentlemen, it is a great honor for me to address you today at this International Congress on Tibetan Medicine. What I shall endeavor to do is to explore, very briefly and with my limited understanding, the spiritual and mental dimensions of healing within the Buddhist tradition of Tibet. I will speak from my own experience of what I know to be effective in the West. Of course, whatever I do understand I owe to the infinite kindness of my masters, especially Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö, Dudjom Rinpoche, and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, who embody so perfectly the wisdom and compassion of the Buddhist path. The ancient science of Tibetan medicine is rooted in the teachings of Buddha, and the essence of these teachings is the central importance of the mind. The Buddha1 said: “Commit not a single unwholesome action, / Cultivate a wealth of virtue, / To tame this mind of ours— / This is the teaching of the Buddha.” He also said: “We are what we think. / All that we are / Arises with our thoughts. / With our thoughts we make the world. / Speak or act with a pure mind— / And happiness will follow you.” The mind is both the source of happiness and the root of suffering. At the same time it possesses an extraordinary capacity for healing, it also plays its part in making us ill. But how exactly can the mind provoke physical illness? The Four Tantras, the authoritative sources for Tibetan medicine, are quite explicit: Here is an explanation of the general cause of all illness. There is but one single cause … and this is said to be ignorance due to not understanding the meaning of “selflessness”. Now for the specific causes: from ignorance arise the three poisons of attachment, hatred and closed-mindedness, and from these, as a result, are produced disorders of wind, bile and phlegm.
