Last weekend, in a panel discussion hosted by the Zen Practice Group on Buddhism and Medicine, four panelists spoke on the topic of Tibetan medicine and the push to Westernize this traditional Eastern approach to medicine. The panelists included Dr. Kunchok Gyaltsen, a Buddhist monk who practices medicine in the Kumbum Tibetan Medical Hospital; Theresia Hofer, a social and medical anthropologist; Eric Jacobsen, a medical anthropologist in the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School; and Barbara Gerke, a visiting professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College.
Gyaltsen opened the discussion by explaining the religion of Buddhism and how it came to Tibet. He described Tibet as a “laboratory of human inner peace” in searching for the enlightened state of being. He defined Buddhism as a religion that seeks to bring people to a higher state of enlightenment in which there is no happy or sad, no good or evil-just emptiness-and the feeling of being content.
“Once this state of enlightenment is reached,” he said, “the individual is able to separate the self from emotion and see the world with more clarity.” He explained the path to finding this state of enlightenment in learning within the self and studying existence within one’s own body and through self learning, understanding the nature of existence in the world. Full understanding of the study of Tibetan medicine builds off this central idea. Buddhism is a way of life and not a strong belief in an all-creator.
Gyaltsen then described the practice of Buddhism as a part of Tibetan Medicine. He explained that they are one in the same; practicing Buddhism in Tibetan medicine guides the holistic understanding of the body and mind. He cited his journey to U.S. to study Public Health at UCLA that taught him to apply medicine to a wide range of people rather than to the individual patient.
The second panelist, Theresia Hofer, told of her experiences with a Buddhist doctor in Tibet where she learned about the relationship between spirituality and medicine in Buddhism. The steady privatization of medicine in Tibet and government efforts to separate religion from medicine do not necessarily fit the Eastern way of life. Hofer quoted the doctor who reiterated that, “by seeing patients, [he ] practice[s] [his] religion.” She spoke of “seeing patients in a Buddhist way” as a goal being accomplished rather than a job to reach an end goal. In conclusion, she emphasized the importance of questioning what appropriate health care is and for whom the medicine is working.
The third panelist, Eric Jacobson, outlined problems within clinical trials forAsian medicine. Namely, difficulties exist when accounting for the effects of blessing upon the medicine. Many of the medicines used in Asian traditional medicine are blessed by a lama , but these blessings are not all quantifiable Jacobson also discussed the difficulty of explaining the concept of a placebo control in the clinical trials to the patients.
The last panelist, Barbara Gerke, referenced the use of Chulen in Buddhist practices to highlight the relationship between religion and medical practice. Gerke mentioned that Chulen is an “essence extraction” used in Buddhism to focus on meditation instead of food preparation and consumption. However, Western influence has altered the definition of Chulen such that Chulen has become supplemental vitamin-like pill that can be sold to the public.
The audience was surely enlightened that day.