Tibetan medicine is a confluent trinity of the Indic, Hellenic and Sinic traditions of medicine wherein the spatial tangents have met and harmonized. The Diamond Healing illuminates the living order of Tibetan wisdom to bring a universal frame of reference to replace the broken image of mechanical notions of the 19th century.
The book will usher in a new understanding of Indo-Tibetan medicine. It summons its intrepid readers to explore further shores of this transcendent system, which is a holistic approach viewing the individual as a healthy being in body and mind while disease indicates a disturbance of this homeostasis. Tibetan medicine treats the individual as a whole in which the physical and trans-physical faculties combat the disequilibrium of his total being. Contemporary science has gone a long way to establish that the universe is non-material, matter is energy, space is real and processes are as valid as facts, and that the principle of complementa-rity validates the subjective content of human experience.
Tibetan medicine is a unique and holistic system of healing. It has been continuously practiced for over a thousand years, but has still to take its place in the history of medicine as we know it in the West.
This volume presents for the first time a comprehensive introduction to the arcane Tibetan art of healing. The author has provided a well-documented, original and detailed study of Tibetan psychiatry, the world`s oldest system of medical psychiatry. Translated here--for the first time in English--are three fascinating chapters about mental illness from the rGyud-bzhi, the ancient and most important Tibetan medical work. Reproductions of the rare Tibetan texts are also included. Supplementing these translations are extensive explanations of Tibetan psychiatric theory and treatment drawn from the author`s research and interviews with Tibetan refugee doctors in India and Nepal. Great care has been taken to identify over 90 pharmacological substances used in Tibetan psychiatric medicines, and these are listed in an appendix along with their English and Latin
botanical names.
Deeply researched and clearly written, this work will be of interest to both scholars and general readers in the fields of Buddhist studies, holistic healing, Oriental medicine, transpersonal psychology, ethnopsychiatry and medical anthropology. |
