The 8th century CE Tibetan King Trisong Detsen hosted an international medical conference at the Sam-Ye Gompa (Tib: བསམ་ཡས, Samye Monastery) where he gathered together native Tibetan masters of secular and non-secular sciences, lotsawa (discipled translators), along with scholars and skilled practitioners of the medical systems of China, Dol-po, Greece, Guge, India, Kashmir, Mi-nyag, Mongolia, Nepal, Persia (Sogdiana), and East Turkistan. Post-conference proceedings resulted in a translated synthesization of the differing foreign medical traditions of Indian Ayurveda and Siddha, Græco/trans-Arabic/Persian Unani Tibbia, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), native curative therapies of Iron Age elders of the Qingzang Plateau, mi chos family folk medicine, and indigenous, pre-Buddhist root culture of Bönpo healers of the Himalayas.
[At its genesis, systematization of traditional Tibetan medicine (TTM) was informed and influenced by earlier Bön belief systems, including those observed by Yungdrung, hermits, ascetics, and shamanic invokers existing outside of the monastic construct. Born from this mystifying matrix were medical and veterinary teachings (gSo rig mdo dgu 'bum bzhi, among others) attributed to founder Tönpa Shenrab Miwo, said to be transmissions transcribed in the Zhang Zhung sMar-yig script and transliterated into Tibetan. Scholarly disputation remains unresolved regarding recension and reconstruction of the earliest Bön tantric texts (otherwise known as the Four Volumes of the Healing Sciences) and the protohistory and epistemiology of Bön medicine vis-à-vis evolution of TTM as understood and acknowledged by mainstream Buddhists. Certain botanic medicaments denoted in Tibetan Materia Medica do bear archaic BCE names of Bön origin].
The amalgamated conference compilation of 156 chapters presented to King Detsen reconciled the foreign medical methodologies with Vairotsana's translated Four Medical Tantras said to be originally transmitted by Shakyamuni Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama). Known as Gyud-Shi (Tib: rGyud-bZhi ,Chi: Sibu Yi Dian) – redacted by Tibetan royal court physician Yuthok Yonten Gonpo the Elder, supplemented later in the 12th century CE with revisions and the Yuthok Nyingthig Root Text and Commentary composition of Gongpo the Younger and his disciple Sumton Yeshe zung – these formed the classic, fundamental medical treatise of the Tibetan healing sciences system (gso ba rgba) upon which Gonpo the Elder's 'New Medical School' (Tanadug Institute) was founded in 762 CE.
Forward-thinking bhikkhuni, bhikkus, lamas, and geshes of this era are similarly engaged in scientific and medical knowledge exchange efforts with pre-meds, other undergrads, and faculty teams in fully- formalized East/West collaborations such as those between the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives (LTWA) and Emory University.
Envisioned as a bridge of discourse between the "inner and outer sciences" by Emory College's Dean Robert Paul and the 14th Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), the Emory-Tibet Partnership (ETP) has yielded significant contributions to interdisciplinary scholarly communications, not the least of which is the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives' Emory-Tibet Science Initiative (ETSI). Administered via the College's Program in Science and Society and by the Emory NeuroScience and Behavioral Biology Program, ETSI oversees curriculum development, training materials creation, and instructional model design in the implementation of comprehensive, standardized, sustainable coursework for monastics. Coalescing scientists, science educators, philosophers, physicians, scholars, and Buddhist practitioners from cross-disciplinary fields of biology, religion, physics, neuroscience, behavioral biology, psychiatry, and philosophy, ETSI's pedagogical approach is grounded in principles of problem-based, collaborative, experiential learning, with opportunities for discourse and discovery anchored by field work. The Science Curriculum for Tibetan Monastics introduce advanced-level concepts of cosmology, life sciences, and neuro/cognitive sciences, augmented by mathematics.
This summer, in a new ETSI collaboration, Emory faculty and students undertook an intensive Tibetan Mind/Body Sciences program in Dharamsala, India (residence of the Dalai Lama and location of LTWA). While devotees were lectured in math, philosophy, cosmology, biology, physics, and neuroscience, University students simultaneously explored Buddhist contemplative ethos of mind/body medicine, subtle anatomy, and science of the spirit. Several pre-meds were introduced to aspects of ethnobotany and medical anthropology while collecting botanical samples during their Himalayan field trips – just as the ancients sought out pharmaceuticals and adapted uses and laws of the Materia Medica (Menze-rigpa) based upon regional resources provided by the landscape of the Land of Snow.
(Photo: © Ajay Pillarisetti. Courtesy of Emory-Tibet Partnership, Emory) LTWA and ETSI expanded the Sager Science for Monks Program (which included introductory biophysics, math, computer workshops) and now offers the Sager Science Leadership for Tibetan Monastics (SSLTM) program. This June past, LTWA organized the 1st Science Exhibition by Monastics, presenting interactive projects of ETSI and SSLTM participants. Students from Drepung Monastery presented distinctions and correlations between Buddhist texts (San: Abhidharma-kosha, Tib: chos mngon pa mdzod) which expound on sense power and perception of manifested phenomena in relation to sound source, vibrations, waves, and the mechanism of hearing. Fellow truth-seekers from the same Drepung Monastery discerned dialectical challenges to prevailing "big bang" and quantum fluctuation theory within the cosmologic precepts as taught in the Kala-chakra (དུས་ཀྱི་འཁོར་ལོ, time-wheel, time-cycles) texts - yet discovered agreement with lesser-established modern scientific theories of multiple universes and space particles within the same tantric texts. The Zhang-Zhung group from Menri Monastery demonstrated scientific properties and nature of light in accordance with Dzogchen teachings and tantric texts within the Bön tradition. Inspired by Mendeleev's periodic table of chemical elements reduced to quantum particles, exhibitors from Saakya Dhongag Choeling Monastery generated a comparative Buddhist table of elements of subtle consciousness as constituent factors in the experienced world in keeping with the Abhidharmasamuchaya (Compendium of Higher Knowledge).
(Photo: ©Theresia Hofer. Courtesy of Wellcome Trust Images Collection.
Tibetan doctor with an old copy of a Gyu Shi ("Four Tantras") and a book on compounding medicines, which was composed by the previous generations of his medical family lineage and takes into account the locally available materia medica, Tibet Autonomous Region, China, 2003.
Released under Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial No-Derivatives version 2.0 licence, England & Wales.)
Further contributing to cross-continental medical and scientific knowledge transfer, L TWA maintains world-wide manuscript exchange projects such as with the Gorky Scientific Library in Leningrad. It disseminates information on doctors and medical practitioners, medical history, and medicinal plants in its annual Tibetan Medicine publication. Under Directorship of LTWA's Geshe Lhakdor, its Research and Translation Department conducts intensive 3-months-long translation training sessions year-round (its current cycle ends this October). Its Seminar on Science Terminology (ཚན་རིག་གི་ཐ་སྙད་ཕབ་སྒྱུར་ཚོགས་འདུ) has generated a science textbook (produced by Emory University professors and Buddhist translators who hold degrees in life sciences, engineering and philosophy) in the Tibetan and English languages and a contemporary science glossary introducing into contemporary Tibetan lexicon concepts such as electromagnetism, climate change, cloning. LTWA produces Science Journal, a bi-annual Tibetan/English publication of translations of in-depth articles on neuro-biology, foundations of science, solar system, and meterology. Published quarterly, its Science Newsletter presents short articles, stories, and facts about science and science-related subjects. Section features include news, cosmology, physics, biology, scientists' biographies, and articles along the science/Buddhism paradigm. ETSI and ETP organized the 1st International Conference on Science Translation into Tibetan (ICSTT) at Emory this past March, expecting to further extend discourse while developing translational techniques in this developing field.
(Provided here is a list of LTWA desiderata in an appeal for donated titles for its Foreign Language Reference (in- and out-of-print), University Dissertations/Theses, and Journals collections. http://www.ltwa.net/Support_edited.html. Many medical and sciences works are denoted).
Driven by forces internal and external to Tibet (political exigencies," biomedicalization", medical tourism, epidemiological vicissitudes, insurance approval for complementary/alternative therapeutics, and health market globalization), momentum is rapidly accelerating in the worldwide adoption and adaptation of TTM. TTM formulae have been manufactured for years in Switzerland (covered by health insurance), Denmark, Lithuania, and Latvia. Evidence-based clinical studies, formalized coursework, controlled experiments in cancer, hepatitis, diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular function, hypertension and other afflictions have been conducted by universities, medical schools, and hospitals of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Virginia, Texas, Miami, Toronto, Austria, Scotland, Italy, China, Russia, Japan, and elsewhere. As of this month, India's Medicine Central Council has accorded legal status to the TTM system. China has issued an international call for paper presentations at its March 2010 TTM conference. "Biomedicization" and modernization of TTM is not welcomed by all, won't be a cure-all, nor necessarily will it be cohesive or even comprehensive, and vigilance should be maintained with a view towards mutual benefit. But as ailing, aging populations face the frontiers of tomorrow, we'll all be drawing from the waters of very ancient wells. Ostensibly, the way forward is back.
LaVerne Poussaint
Plutonic Research & Knowledge Teams Intl (PRAKTI)
Email: laverne.poussaint@deepmed.net
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