Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet

Abstract

This book explores medical thought in Tibet and reveals an otherwise unnoticed intersection of early modern sensibilities and religious values in traditional Tibetan medicine. It looks at how Buddhist concepts and values were adapted to medical concerns and highlights important ways in which Buddhism played a role in the development of Asian and global civilization. The book opens with a description of the achievements of Tibetan medical illustration, commentary, and institution building during the period of the Fifth Dalai Lama and his regent, Desi Sangyé Gyatso. It then looks back to the work of earlier thinkers, tracing a strategically astute dialectic between scriptural and empirical authorities on questions of history and the nature of human anatomy. It shows key differences between medicine and Buddhism in attitudes toward gender and sex and the moral character of the physician, who had to serve both the patient's and the practitioner's well-being. It ultimately finds that Tibetan medical scholars absorbed ethical and epistemological categories from Buddhism yet shied away from ideal systems and absolutes, instead embracing the imperfectability of the human condition.