Medicine Buddha

Statue of Medicine Buddha, Sangye Menla (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For Tibetan Buddhists, the practice of Medicine Buddha is something you can do. This connects to a few larger questions:

 

– what is the view of healing?

this happens in the context of body ailments, and especially mental/emotional ailments

in light of the problem of “spiritual materialism,” how much and what kind of healing do we want or need?

is “healing” just some sort of New Age promise, some sort of scheme?

 

– doesn’t this connect to ideas about fixing, transforming, and recognizing?

fixing- there are some big issues that could shorten lifespan, and impede practice- good to fix these, right?

transforming- just as with emotional issues, all issues could be transformed into their positive versions (too much heat into warmth and compassion, too much cold into clarity and precision, something like that)

recognizing- things are essentially good and pure, even illnesses and problems

 

of course, the last two seem at odds, and hashing that out is beyond me at this point

 

– ideas of people as “broken” and needing to be healed, and good and bad sides to this

ideas of people as good, fine, and good and bad sides to this

being too hung up on needing to fix things

being too arrogant about things beings fine

 

– since a lot of this seems very individualistic, what about more social applications of healing?

social problems seem localized in some ways— how do you address this?