Over the centuries, Buddhist ideas have influenced medical thought and practice in complex and varied ways in diverse regions and cultures. A companion to Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources, this work presents a collection of modern and contemporary texts and conversations from across the Buddhist world dealing with the multifaceted relationship between Buddhism and medicine.
Covering the early modern period to the present, this anthology focuses on the many ways Buddhism and medicine were shaped by the forces of colonialism, science, and globalization, as well as ruptures and reconciliations between tradition and modernity. Editor C. Pierce Salguero and an international collection of scholars highlight diversity and innovation in the encounters between Buddhist and medical thought. The chapters contain a wide range of sources presenting different perspectives rooted in distinct times and places, including translations of published and unpublished documents and transcripts of ethnographic interviews as well as accounts by missionaries and colonial authorities and materials from the contemporary United States and United Kingdom. Together, these varied sources illustrate the many intersections of Buddhism and medicine in the past and how this nexus continues to be crucial in today’s global context.
- Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Early Modernity
- 1. Buddhist Monastic Physicians’ Encounters with the Jesuits in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Japan, as Told from Both Sides, by Katja Triplett
- 2. On Sickness, Society, and the New Self in Early Edo Japan: Soshin’s Dharma Words (Seventeenth Century), by Katja Triplett
- 3. Buddhism and Scholarly Medicine in Seventeenth-Century China: Three Preaces to the Work of Yu Chang (1585–1664), by Volker Scheid
- 4. An Eighteenth-Century Mongolian Treatise on Smallpox Inoculation: Lobsang Tsültim’s “The Practice of Preparing Medicine for the Planting of Heaven’s White Flower” (1785), by Batsaikhan Norov, Vesna A. Wallace, and Batchimeg Usukhbayar
- 5. Psychosomatic Buddhist Medicine at the Dawn of Modern Japan: Hara Tanzan’s “On the Difference Between the Brain and the Spinal Cord” (1869), by Justin B. Stein
- 6. No Sympathy for the Devils: A Colonial Polemic Against Yakṣa Healing Rituals (1851), by Alexander McKinley
- 7. “Enveloped in the Deep Darkness of Ignorance and Superstition”: Western Observers of Buddhism and Medicine in the Kingdom of Siam in the Colonial Era, by C. Pierce Salguero
- Ruptures and Reconciliations
- 8. Three Tibetan Buddhist Texts on the Dangers of Tobacco (Late Nineteenth to Twenty-First Century), by Joshua Capitanio
- 9. Buddhism and Biomedicine in Republican China: Taixu’s “Buddhism and Science” (1923) and Ding Fubao’s Essentials of Buddhist Studies (1920), by Gregory Adam Scott
- 10. Reconciling Scripture and Surgery in Tibet: Khyenrap Norbu’s Arranging the Tree Trunks of Healing (1952), by William A. McGrath
- 11. Healing Wisdom: An Appreciation of a Twentieth-Century Japanese Scientist’s Paintings of the Heart Sūtra, by Paula K. R. Arai
- 12. Mantras for Modernity: Nida Chenagtsang’s "Mantra Healing Is an Indispensable Branch of Tibetan Traditional Medicine” (2015) and “A Rough Explanation of How Mantras Work” (2003), by Ben P. Joffe
- 13. Science and Authority in Tibetan Medicine: Gönpokyap’s “Extraordinarily Special Features of the Human Body” (2008), by Jenny Bright
- 14. “Eat Less Meat to Save the World”: Monk Changlyu’s The Book of Diagnosis and Natural Foods (2014), by Emily S. Wu
- Hybridities and Innovations
- 15. Taiwanese Tantra: Guru Wuguang’s Art of Yogic Nourishment and the Esoteric Path (1966), by Cody R. Bahir
- 16. Making a Modern Image of Jīvaka: “First Encounters with Jīvaka Komārabhacca, the High Guru of Healers and the Inspiration for Sculpting His Image” (1969), by Anthony Lovenheim Irwin
- 17. Gross National Happiness: Buddhist Principles and Bhutanese National Health Policy, by Charles Jamyang Oliphant of Rossie
- 18. Using Buddhist Resources in Post-disaster Japan: Taniyama Yōzō’s “Vihāra Priests and Interfaith Chaplains” (2014), by Levi McLaughlin
- 19. Medicine Wizards of Myanmar: Four Recent Facebook Posts, by Thomas Nathan Patton
- Meditation and Mental Health
- 20. Naikan and Psychiatric Medicine: Takemoto Takahiro’s Naikan and Medicine (1979), by Clark Chilson
- 21. A Contemporary Shingon Priest’s Meditation Therapies: Selections from the Writings of Ōshita Daien (2006–2016), by Nathan Jishin Michon
- 22. Mindfulness in Westminster: The All-Party Parliamentary Group’s Mindful UK (2014), by Joanna Cook
- 23. Medicalizing Sŏn Meditation in Korea: An Interview with Venerable Misan Sŭnim, by Lina Koleilat
- 24. Misuses of Mindfulness: Ron Purser and David Loy’s “Beyond McMindfulness” (2013), by David L. McMahan
- Crossing Boundaries
- 25. Rediscovering Living Buddhism in Modern Bengal: Maniklal Singha’s The Mantrayāna of Rārh (1979), by Projit Bihari Mukharji
- 26. Conversations with Two (Possibly) Buddhist Folk Healers in China, by Thomas David DuBois
- 27. Interview with a Contemporary Chinese American Healer, by Kin Cheung and C. Pierce Salguero
- 28. “We Need to Balance Out the Boisterous Spirits and Gods”: Buddhism in the Healing Practice of a Contemporary Korean Shaman, by Minjung Noh and C. Pierce Salguero
- 29. Among Archangels, Aliens, and Ascended Masters: Quan Yin Bodhisattva Joins the New Age Pantheon, by C. Pierce Salguero
- Buddhist Healing in Practice
- 30. Buddhism and Resistance in Northern Thai Traditional Medicine: An Interview with an Unlicensed Thai Folk Healer, by Assunta Hunter
- 31. Burmese Alchemy in Practice: A Conversation with Master U Shein, by Céline Coderey
- 32. Mental Illness in the Sowa Rigpa Clinic: A Conversation with Dr. Teinlay P. Trogawa, by Susannah Deane
- 33. Biographical Interview with the Tantric Meditator Tshampa Tseten from Bhutan, with a Translation of His “Edible Letters,” by Mona Schrempf
- 34. Japanese Buddhist Women’s “Way of Healing,” by Paula K. R. Arai
- 35. Conversations About Buddhism and Health Care in Multiethnic Philadelphia, by C. Pierce Salguero
- Appendix: Geographic Table of Contents
- Glossary
- References
- List of Contributors
- Index
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