I wrote the following in my senior year and submitted it as the final paper for a course taught by a Pomona College professor. She said that this topic was very challenging. I hope it can benefit all sentient beings.
Buddhism and Medicine: Karmic Solutions and Spiritual Cultivation for the Body
This paper will first introduce the images and rituals associated with the worshiping two healing bodhisattvas, explicating the relationship between Buddhist institutions, rituals, and myths. Then the paper will introduce Vimalakirti’s use of healing sickness as a metaphor for enlightenment. This connection between the moral and spiritual with the physical wellbeing is extended in Ming Dynasty medical practices. In order to show Buddhism’s moralizing influence on medicine, this paper will also look at the effect of Buddhist medicine in lay and monastic people of the Ming Dynasty. This paper will also argue that medicine is a tradition inseparable from religion. Religion continues to mark its presence in medical diagnoses in modern times.
Section 1
Buddhism is a constantly evolving tradition and adapts to different cultures when it transmits to different places. Medicine is one aspect that changed and expanded alongside the Buddhist tradition. An ascetic religious movement in India generated the earliest Indian medical knowledge. A portion of this movement became known as Buddhism and established the medical knowledge of early Buddhist monasteries. A systemic classification of food led rise to the similar classification of medicine in the Buddhist tradition. Buddhist medical knowledge gradually included rules pertaining to drugs and treatments for specific ailments. Medical knowledge was a regular component of Buddhist scriptures and became part of the standard curriculum in monastic universities. When Buddhism began to spread to other parts of Asia, integral parts of the religious system such as medical institutions and practices also spread. The system of medicine was transmitted nearly in its original form to other parts of Asia through the activity of Buddhist missionaries and pilgrims. Buddhist medicine also influenced other religions in the Indian subcontinent.
In Mahayana Buddhism, the healing of the body permitted the calming of the mind and the cultivation of awakening. The obligation to heal the sick was stipulated in disciplinary codes in the Mahavagga of the Vinaya Pitaka chapters. The followers of the bodhisattva path were said to be able to heal both spiritual and physical afflictions. The monk's role as a healer initially served his fellow bhikkus. According to a Mahavagga story, the Buddha requested monks to take care of a certain sick monk. He declared, “You, O bhikkus, have neither a mother nor a father who could nurse you. If, O bhikkus, you do not nurse one another, who, then, will nurse you? Whoever, O bhikkus, would nurse me, he should nurse the sick.” The new Mahayana movement democratized the monastics practice of medicine. The followers of the Bodhisattva path practiced the healing of both spiritual and physical afflictions through magical utterances and their rituals, as well as transmitted techniques of empirico-rational ayurvedic medicine. This tradition produced monk-healers and Buddhist monastic hospices and infirmaries.
The terms bhaisajya-raja and bhaisajya-samudgata in earlier Mahayana works became the evocative names the two spiritual-healing Bodhisattvas. According to the traditions of Suramgama-Sutra, the two Bodhisattvas were originally accomplished physicians. Through life after life of study and practice of healing abilities, they also cultivated spiritually and achieved a great awakening. The Buddha certified their achievements and gave them initiation names noting their special healing abilities. The Buddha specifically singled out them to perform the principal function of propounding the Buddhist doctrine.
The idea of spiritual healing and the practice of curing by worshiping a deity were assimilated and adapted from indigenous medical ideas current in northwestern India, Central Asia, and China. Buddhist sutras are known for its material power. Buddhists believe that they would be protected from sinking into the dreadful paths of existence in the form of animals or hungry ghosts if they hear the names of the Bodhisattvas. When Sakyamuni revealed the bhaisajya-guru sutra, it deeply affected several fierce spirit-beings (yaksas) that caused diseases. The yaksas took refuge in the Three Jewels and vowed to aid all sentient beings who circulate the sutra. They recommended a simple ritual for invoking the Buddha of Healing in order to cure disease.
In the case of a difficult childbirth, if the mother calls out the Thathagata, her pain will be removed and the child will be born without defect. Another Sanskrit Buddhist text The Sutra of Golden Light contains medical information in the form of chants. The goddess of speech Sarasvati explains a therapeutic method in which bathing should be attended by spells, medicines, and incantations. There were also myths of a type of medicine that whoever sees this medicine will be cured of all diseases.
Buddhists use images as tools for the invocation of the deity in meditation, prayer, and ritual worship. Specifically, images are important for worshiping and invocating the Buddha of Healing. For the healing effect, the ill person must not only mentally or physically construct an image: the image must have the “spirit-force of the Buddha and merge with the viewer. When one’s own body becomes the Tathagata’s body or merges one’s mind with the Divine Mind, the most profound healing can take place.” Entire healing bodhisattva cults were devoted to bhaisajya-guru and the iconography of the deity was established. The cult of the healing Buddhas and bodhisattvas reached its height of popularity in China. Scholars speculate that aesthetic experience intensifies spiritual experience and uplifts the consciousness to aid in the healing process.
Buddhist images emphasize the depiction of light or flames emanating from the form of the Buddha. Special texts of the Buddha of Healing describe that his body can radiate a lapis lazuli effulgence. The Buddha told the bodhisattva Maitreya in a Chinese sutra,
“The Bodhisattva of Supreme Healer is sixteen yojanas tall. He is purple-gold in hue, and his body emits a radiance like the golden color of the rose-apple and sandalwood tree. Within this circle of light [his radiant aura], there are 16 millions of manifestation Buddhas, all having a standard height of eight fee, seated in the posture of meditation upon jeweled lotus blossoms.”
In Hsuan-tsang’s version of the bhaisajya-guru sutra, in the section of vows, the Buddha is described by his name as the “Master of Healing, the Lapis Lazuli Radiance Tathagata.” The meditation text on the two Bodhisattvas of Healing emphasizes the light that emanates dramatically from deities.
The radiance’s color, lapis lazuli, or purple-blue, is another important aspect of deity worship among the Buddhists who wish for health. People of the ancient world regarded the rare, semi-translucent stone-gem lapis lazuli as a potent metal with curative strengths. The emphasis of it found in the bhaisajya-guru sutra, gives the gem a special status in Buddhist spiritual healing. In the Lotus Sutra, The teacher of the dharma is compared to the purity of a lapis lazuli mirror, reflecting all images without distortion. The standard depiction of many Buddha-images’ begging bowls is carved from lapis lazuli. Inside holds the Divine nectar of enlightenment (amrta), which further links the gem with healing powers.
The famous Vimalakirti Sutra also strengthens the connection between the bodhisattva ideal and the healer. Lay Buddhist Vimalakirti also used his own bodily illness to expound the Dharma to thousands of people who went to see him. He uses illness as a metaphor for explaining general suffering in the human realm. “[This body] suffers, it is tormented, a meeting place of manifold ills… This body is plague-ridden, beset by a hundred and one ills and anxieties.” Later in the sutra, Vimalakirti explains to Manjusri that illness arises from attachment to ego.
A bodhisattva who is ill should think to himself: "Now these illnesses of mine all spring from the deluded thoughts, the upside-down thinking and various earthly desires of my past existence. They have no real existence, so who is it who suffers illness? Why? The four major elements come together, and therefore we apply a makeshift name, calling the thing a body... But the four major elements have no master, and the body has no 'I' or ego. And these illnesses too all arise from attachment to ego."
While the ailing bodhisattva has the power to cut off pain or pleasure, yet according Vimalakirti, “he allows himself to feel such sensations.” The bodhisattva never seeks for external extinction of pain, which parallels his or her act to delay enlightenment for guiding all sentient beings. Vimalakirti notes the danger of excessively delivering healing powers based on one’s own experiences. The ailing Bodhisattva that controlled his mind might say, "I have regulated and controlled myself, and now I must regulate and control other living beings!" Vimalakirti argues that “he should simply rid them of their illnesses and not deprive them of anything, merely teaching and guiding them so they can cut off the source of illness.” Vimalakirti also uses illness to explain the Buddhist concept of expedient means (upaya).
“Though the bodhisattva's body may be ailing, he should constantly abide in the realm of birth and death, bringing benefits to all living beings and never giving in to weariness or revulsion. This is called expedient means. He should further view the body and realize that the body is never rid of illness, that illness is never rid of the body, and that this body and this illness are neither prior nor posterior to one another.”
The Vimalakirti Sutra shows that healing metaphor of the bodhisattva runs deep in Mahayana Buddhism in terms of bodhisattva’s role in helping others achieve enlightenment and the method of expedient means.
Similar to Vimalakirti’s teachings, an illness can serve as a major event that propels one onwards towards higher spiritual attainment in the case of the Buddha of Healing as well. Buddhists explain that healings are granted to the ill person’s sincere act of faith in the Buddha of Healing. When hearing the Buddha of Healing’s name, from invoking his spiritual force through calling out his name and from offering ritual worship, “insight arises and causes the person to reform the patterns of his deeds, words, and thoughts.” The healed person thus arises of the aspiration to attain enlightenment (bodhicitta).
The Buddha is often referred to in Buddhist scriptures as the Great Physician and his teachings or Dharma are often compared to a prescription which if followed will cure illness and suffering. The traditions of the Buddhist healing deities is connected with teaching the Law in the Lotus Sutra, a key text that dates to the first century B.C.E. The highest forces of the invisible realms respond to the teacher of the law, with unlimited protection, strength, and comfort. The “Teacher of the Law” is directed towards the Bodhisattva King of Healing, and healing is thus closely related with the teaching of Divine principles. The teacher is the vessel that conveys the Law to those who are “ill” and the Law heals.
Section 2
According to the Avatamsaka Sutra, those who have created negative karma by killing will suffer two consequences: “frequently suffering from illness” and “having a shorter life.” Buddhist teachings, especially those found in East Asia, indicate that negative mental emotions “such as greed, anger, and ignorance” exacerbate or even cause physical illnesses. The purification of these emotions can in turn lead to healing. Negative mental afflictions were interpreted in terms of behaviors such as killing, stealing, improper sexual activity, drinking. Karmic retribution of these actions includes illness and disease. Descriptions of the mental root of illness also can be found in a late Ming text entitled “Chanting for Ill Monastics” (Bingseng tichang). Buddhist explanations for various sorts of illnesses tended to converge. While people’s bodies may seem to be either strong or weak, ultimately, however, there is no inherent reality to anyone’s body—all bodies are “empty.” Therefore, “there is neither illness nor cure; there is no cure because there is no illness. Illness does not reside in the head; illness does not reside in the stomach; illness does not reside in the ear; illness does not reside in the eye; illness does not reside in the hand; illness does not reside in the foot. As long as one realizes that everything is originally empty, then there is nothing to be attached.” The solution also was also simple: “Chanting for Ill Monastics” claims that the Medicine Buddha (Bhaisajya-guru) responds to the entreaties of everyone. He “does not need to feel the pulse, nor ask about symptoms. He simply provides a dose of coolness, and [a method by which] all troubles may be resolved through concentrated cultivation (dhyāna and samadhi).” Given this view of illness, monks and nuns were often encouraged to regard illness as part of their religious practice.
Monastics’ attitude toward Buddhism also spread to the lay community and acted as an effective method for preaching. Buddhist temples and Buddhist monk-doctors in the Ming Dynasty offered medicinal help, often free of charge. Buddhist medicine also placed a much greater emphasis on the mental and karmic origins of illness than other medicine traditions in China at the time. Many Ming women specifically believed that illness could be relieved if not cured by activities that worship the Buddha, which includes “repeating the name of the Buddha, chanting sutras, carrying out rituals of confession, making donations, following a vegetarian diet, abstaining from killing animals and releasing living creatures from captivity.” Scholar Chen Yu-nü argues that Ming Dynasty women from all levels of society found in Buddhist notions of the karmic sources of illness a plausible explanation for their suffering. Ming Dynasty Buddhist teacher Yunqi Zhuhong also argued that “improper thinking [is the root of] illness,” and advocated chanting the name of the Buddha for healing purposes: “Chanting the name of the Buddha is [the best] medicine; chronic illnesses cannot be cured by pills and doses. This view of illness offered a viable explanation and helped alleviate the distress of people who suffer from incurable illnesses. As a result, wealthy and elite women who suffered from serious diseases sought alternative methods of secret prescriptions or religious prayer. While some women became Buddhists, others became nuns in order to cure herself or her family members of diseases.
Scholars have noted that illness ironically became one of the few ways in which women enjoy a relief from social pressures. Buddhist medical traditions also offered women the opportunity to exercise agency through actively self-treatment in the form of religious practices. While mainstream “rationalist” medicine treatments shunned upon Buddhist methods, for both monastic and lay women, Buddhist medicine often offered an important alternative. For example, orthodox literati doctors refer to wandering monk-doctors who were not affiliated with any particular temple and would be willing to treat a woman in her home as “worthless doctors.” Yet in face of social and familial pressures, Ming Dynasty women had fewer means by which they could achieve a measure of psychological relief than men. Buddhists who preached medical services successfully cultivated Buddhists who practiced the aforementioned religious practices to purify the mind. While this may not cure the illness it could make the suffering bearable. Many Buddhist practitioners still believe that illness is a result of past deeds (karmāvarana) and that illness can serve to strengthen one’s religious practice to this day. Some devout believers may fail to seek medical treatment and exacerbate a minor illness.
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