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Tibet's Ancient Medical Tradition Thrives in India

Tibet's Ancient Medical Tradition Thrives in India

Author: Lisa Tsering
Publication: www.indiawest.com
Date: April 16, 2001

India - A 30-minute hike up from the onion sellers and smoke-spewing busses of Kotwali Bazaar, and midway to the yupscale cybercafes and video parlors of McLeod Ganj a pricey Rs. 100 taxi ride away, the Tibetan Medical and Astrological Institute maintains its quiet, industrial facade while giving little idea of the riches within.

More than the bitter, spherical brown pills, and more than the golden hammers, cups and tubes used for surgery; beyond the complex astrological calculations that accompany each diagnosis and the array of minerals and herbs awaiting the key to release their medicinal powers, within Tibetan medicine lies a component not found in any other of the world's medical traditions.

The "secret ingredient" in the Tibetan doctor's arsenal is spirituality.

"His Holiness the Dalai Lama has said that monks and nuns make better doctors," Pema Dadhul Arya, the director of the Tibetan Medical and Astrological Institute, told India-West recently. Courses in Buddhism and astrology are an important facet of the medical curriculum, and professors continually stress the importance of empathy and kindness.

"It may be the chemical that cures the disease, but it's the power of compassion that helps the patient heal," said Arya.

The institute, founded by the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, in 1961, is considered the most highly respected source for Tibetan medicine and medical training outside of Tibet.

Situated on the side of a mountain with breathtaking views of the Kangra valley below and the sharp, snowy peaks of the Dauladhar range behind it, the TMAI complex of buildings is located below the Dalai Lama's monastery and downhill from the tourist hot-spot McLeod Ganj.

The Dalai Lama founded TMAI, known locally by its Tibetan name, Men-Tsee Khang, as part of his effort to keep Tibetan cultural traditions alive in exile in India, after he escaped from Tibet in 1959 to avoid persecution by the Chinese.

Besides administering to the thousands of Tibetan refugees who continue to arrive in Dharamsala from China-occupied Tibet each year, TMAI has also become a vital health resource for Indians across the country, whether at its headquarters here in Himachal Pradesh, in big cities like New Delhi or in rural locations from Karnataka to Leh.

Through its network of 37 branch clinics throughout India, TMAI provides free or low-cost medical care to more than half a million Indians each year, and provides more than Rs. 5 million worth of free or subsidized medicine. Ninety percent of its patients are Indian, said Arya.

Tibetan medicine's connection to India goes back centuries. The first text book of Tibetan medicine, the rGud-bzhi (pronounced gyu-shee), written during the fourth century A.D. and expressing the wisdom of the Medicine Buddha, was actually in Sanskrit instead of Tibetan, because Sanskrit was the language of sacred texts in Tibet at that time.

Today, Tibetan medicine is often compared to Ayurveda, since Tibetan medicine classifies individuals within three categories, or humors, and uses herbal medicine and diet in its treatment.

The three doshas of Ayurveda are roughly parallel with the humors of Tibetan medicine: Ayurveda's vata, or air, is closest to rLung (prounced loong); pitta, or fire, is called mKhris-pa (tee-pah); and kapha, symbolizing the equilibrium of water and earth, is close to the Tibetan humor Bad-kan.

The two medical systems may be similar in many ways, said Dr. Tenzin Choedrak, the senior personal physician to the Dalai Lama, but there are other aspects of Tibetan medicine that set it apart from any other.

Tibetan medicine relies on astrology, including the twelve animal signs of the Chinese zodiac and five elements of air, water, wood, fire and earth, as an important tool to understand the movement of fluids in the body. And the formulation of medicines, including rare and expensive "precious pills," which may contain gold, silver and even trace amounts of poisons such as mercury, are dependent on the phases of the moon.

In addition, the spiritual aspect of Tibetan medicine - expressed in prayers to the Medicine Buddha and carefully worded mantras - is a vital part of treatment. To the Tibetan doctor, disease is a sign of imbalance between the spirit, mind and body. "Mental poisons" such as attachment, hatred or delusion, can play as important a role in disease as physical factors.

Yet at its core, "Tibetan medicine is a science. It's not shamanism," Dr. Tashi Rabten, founder of the International Tibetan Medical Association in Rye, NY, told India-West by phone. Prayer and astrology may play an important part, but "people get the wrong idea that Tibetan medicine is all about spirituality," he said.

Nevertheless, the two most famous Tibetan doctors, Dr. Tenzin Choedrak and Dr. Yeshi Dhonden, a former physician to the Dalai Lama who is now part of a landmark study on breast cancer at the University of California at San Francisco (I-W, Feb. 2), were both Buddhist monks before they became doctors.

According to Arya, Indians most often turn to Tibetan medicine for chronic ailments, such as rheumatism, arthritis, sinus problems and diabetes, rather than for emergency treatment (for which Western medicine is best, say Tibetan doctors). For others, Tibetan medicine provides relief from the pain of the late stages of cancer and AIDS.

Recently, research in collaboration with the All India Institute of Medical Science's department of Diabetes and Endo- crinology has shown a 17 percent decrease in blood glucose levels in some patients with Type 2 diabetes mellitus, and an 18-month study on arthritis in collaboration with Oxford University showed marked improvement in mobility and pain relief.

Dhonden is currently conducting research on metastatic breast cancer with Dr. Debashish Tripathy of UCSF and Dr. Fredi Kronenberg, a consultant from Columbia University.

Some of its formulations have been shown to effectively prevent disease as well: after the Jan. 26 earthquake in Bhuj, Gujarat, TMAI sent a doctor and a pharmacist there for 15 days to combat infectious disease, and doctors sent large shipments of "plague pills" with a pungent scent of Valerian (in Hindi, jalakan) to help curb the outbreak of pneumonic plague in Surat, India in 1994.

Since the fourth century, Tibetan medicine has continued to evolve. "Tibetan medicine is the first integrated system of medicine which incorporates various aspects of Ayurveda, Chinese and Greek medicine and presents the concepts underlying these practices from a Buddhist perspective," explains Dr. Lobsang Rapgay, a trained Tibetan physician who now works as a licensed clinical psychologist on the faculty of UCLA and directs UCLA's Behavioral Medicine Clinic. And since 1990, TMAI has incorporated modern biology and other mainstream sciences into its course work as well.

Most Westerners who make the 13-hour bus ride from Delhi up to Dharamsala overlook TMAI. The more spiritually minded ones spend time at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, a ten-minute walk uphill from the institute; while the bhang-and-yoga crowd stays close to bustling McLeod Ganj. The institute does offer limited training in Tibetan medical principles to licensed doctors from India and the West, but discourages the weekend visitor looking for a "Learning Annex" approach to its highly specialized and complex theories.

But the clinic, and a recently opened museum of Tibetan medicine, are open to all. Inside the new museum are brilliantly colored thangka paintings, surgical tools, herbs and minerals. It's a fascinating side trip for visitors to Dharamsala, once they know where to look.

Tibetan medicine's journey to the American mainstream has been slow going. A Jan. 1, 2001 broadcast on Dateline NBC on cancer treatments being developed by Dhonden and Tripathy sparked interest, as did the First International Congress on Tibetan Medicine held in Washington, D.C., in 1998.

But there is a shortage of doctors and astrologers. The rigorous, five year long training program is given only in the Tibetan language, and the discipline doesn't pay as well as allopathic, or mainstream medicine, explained Arya. Medicine, too, is facing a shortage as Indian herbal suppliers face growing demand, and prices have increased as much as tenfold for certain Himalayan ingredients over the past five years, he said. The population boom in the Dharamsala region has also meant power and water shortages (the local government turns off the electricity district-wide for up to two hours per day), which affects TMAI's ability to produce enough product to supply its branch clinics and doctors stationed in India, Mongolia, Nepal, Bhutan and countries in Europe. And TMAI is not yet recognized by the World Health Organization, said Rapten.

But there are a number of Tibetan practitioners established in the United States, and doctors from TMAI do make the occasional American tour: in January, a TMAI doctor lectured at San Francisco State University and later this year, several doctors will visit Minneapolis from May 6-18 and Chicago from May 21 to June 10. Even more encouraging, TMAI is now raising funds to build its first full-fledged branch clinic in America, the Medicine Buddha Healing Center, near Spring Green, WI.

The progress of Tibetan medicine in the West continues, and if its success in India is any indication, it could one day be as familiar as Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine here. For now, though, its "jewels of wisdom" remain obscure. Says a spokesman for the Spring Green project, "In America, most people don't know anything about it."
 


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