Medicine Buddha : From Myth to Myrobalan – Ep. 169

Traditional Himalayan Medicine or Sowa Rigpa with it’s integration of Galenic, Chinese, and Ayurvedic systems of healing is one of the crown jewels of Tibetan Buddhist Culture with the most potential to help individuals, communities and the global community in a sustainable and long lasting manner.

In this two part podcast Robert A.F. Thurman introduces the Medicine Buddha myth, the role of Buddhist Medicine within Indian + Tibetan History and gives an in-depth explanation of the symbolism of it’s meditative iconography, including the three types of myrobalan plant found in the Medicine Buddha’s bowl.

Podcast Includes stories about Professor Thurman’s early days as studying Tibetan Medicine, Jivaka Komarabhacca, the Buddha’s personal physician and the community’s doctor and an introduction to the different styles and forms of Medicine Buddha practices used in the Yuthok tradition.

Second half of podcast begins with a guided Medicine Buddha meditation and concludes with a special teaching to doctors, health practitioners or anyone hoping to transform, rejuvenate, and improve their relationship to their body.

“Tibetan Medicine 101 : Medicine Buddha : From Myth to Myrobalan – Ep. 169″ of the Bob Thurman Podcast is an excerpt from the Force For Good Class “Medicine Buddha: Buddhist Inner Sciences” held at Tibet House US in New York City on November 29, 2017.

“It is the gift of scientifically as well spiritually enlightened healers, who not only understand what ails us but also know how to help us understand ourselves and become more conscious about our own health and how to sustain it.

First priority for the enlightened healers is awakening us patients to the way our own body-mind complex works in terms we can easily understand. The whole point is to expand our vision of ourselves as beings in a nature that is luckily more beneficial than harmful, especially if we understand how it works.”

  Robert A.F. Thurman Tibetan Book of Health: Sowa Rigpa, The Science of Healing    

‘A Force For Good’ is a Tibet House US course to further the Dalai Lama’s contemporary world initiatives, from His Holiness’ American Institute of Buddhist Studies and Mind & Life Institute science dialogues (Universe in a Single Atom) and His creation of Abhidharma 2.0 through the “Science for Monks” programs, his “secular ethics” (Ethics for the New Millennium and