Medicine buddha

Social History of Medicine, 2020

The second volume of C. Pierce Salguero's Buddhism and Medicine takes the books' editor and contributors' exploration of this complex topic into the modern and contemporary period from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first century. It documents a variety of Buddhist and Buddhist-related practices, history, politics and culture from South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, the USA and the UK to paint a picture of diverse Buddhist influences on health and healing. The book presents examples of how Buddhism's identity as a medicine for human su!ering, with the Buddha, posited as a physician, and its teachings and practices as

Working Paper Series of the HCAS "Multiple Secularities - Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities", 2018

A wide variety of Buddhist writings originating on the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere in South and Southeast Asia were translated into Chinese between the mid-second and the early eleventh centuries C.E. As this material was read, digested, commented upon, and integrated into daily life, Chinese audiences came to be familiar with Buddhism’s basic teaching that overcoming all forms of suffering (Ch. ku 苦; Skt. duḥkha) is its core function. As one of the most obvious forms of suffering encountered in everyday human life, illness was a frequent topic of concern in these discourses. Of particular concern was the question of the relationship between the alleviation of the suffering of illness and the total, final salvation from suffering of all kinds (commonly referred to as Ch. niepan 涅槃; Skt. nirvāṇa; among other terms). This question appears and reappears across the genres of the Buddhist canon. From sūtras (loosely meaning “scriptures”), to disciplinary texts, ritual manuals, narratives, parables, philosophical treatises, and poetry, illness and healing are everywhere in Buddhist literature.

The excerpts below were selected to introduce a number of disparate genres and types of discourses about healing, illness, and cure that are embedded within the Chinese Buddhist canon. They include an excerpt from a monastic disciplinary code concerning the storage of medicines, a scripture with a story of an encounter between a bodhisat-tva and a famous physician, a liturgy dedicated to a major healing deity, an author's advice to doctors from a Buddhist perspective, and a devotional verse that plays on medical metaphors. Taken together, they indicate some of the diversity of perspectives and approaches of Buddhist materials and suggest the potential importance of often-overlooked Buddhist materials for the study of Asian medicine.

One of the panels of the Stepwell monument Rani ki Vav in Gujarat, a UNESCO World Heritage site, shows a unique and rare figure of the healing or medicine King, the Bhaisajyaraja. The unique feature of this figure at Rani ki Vav is that the conch /shankha, a sacred object, is placed down, touching the foot of the deity, a representation not commonly seen in temples. In Mahayana Buddhism, Bhaisajyaguru Buddha is greatly revered, and his Bodhisattva form is called Bhaisajyaraja, the King of healing, who can cure spiritual, emotional, and physical ailments. Bhaisajyaraja Bodhisattva is mentioned in the Saddharma Pundarika or the White Lotus Sutra, whose initial vow was to completely free all sentient beings from their illnesses.

Asian Medicine

The excerpts below were selected to introduce a number of disparate genres and types of discourses about healing, illness, and cure that are embedded within the Chinese Buddhist canon. They include an excerpt from a monastic disciplinary code concerning the storage of medicines, a scripture with a story of an encounter between a bodhisattva and a famous physician, a liturgy dedicated to a major healing deity, an author’s advice to doctors from a Buddhist perspective, and a devotional verse that plays on medical metaphors. Taken together, they indicate some of the diversity of perspectives and approaches of Buddhist materials and suggest the potential importance of often-overlooked Buddhist materials for the study of Asian medicine.

Buddhist Studies Review, 2015

This introduction reflects on some key passages on illness in the P?li suttas, especially as regards the relationship of illness and karma, and whether Buddhist meditative qualities might be seen to alleviate or cure physical illnesses.

Medical History

Yale Journal of Music & Religion, 2022

A book review is presented for Reed Criddle, ed., Chanting the Medicine Buddha Sutra: A Musical Transcription and English Translation of the Medicine Buddha Service of the Liberation Rite of Water and Land at Fo Guang Shan Monastery. Recent Researches in the Oral Traditions of Music 13. Philip V. Bohlman, general editor. Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2020. 77 pages.