11
Medicine as Impartial Knowledge
The Fith Dalai Lama, the Tsarong School, and Debates
of Tibetan Medical Orthodoxy 1
Stacey Van Vleet
University of California Berkeley
When the bloody Mongol-Tsang war concluded in 1642, Gušri (Gushri) Khan’s
conquest of the Tibetan plateau raised the Gelukpa tradition of Tibetan
Buddhism to power over the Kagyü and Jonang traditions favored by the
defeated King of Tsang. The Qošot Mongol prince turned to the Fith Dalai
Lama Ngawang Lopzang Gyatso (Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, 1617–1682) to
design the institutions for his rule, and one of the hierarch’s irst and primary
ongoing projects was the creation of a state system of medicine. The Fith
Dalai Lama supported medical teachers from family lineages and monasteries
throughout Central Tibet, established new medical institutions at the centers
of his government, Drepung Monastery and the Potala Palace, and ofered an
examination testing physicians on their knowledge of the Four Tantras (Rgyud
bzhi), the root text of theory, diagnosis, and treatment in Tibetan medicine.2 He
1. This research was made possible by support from the Social Science Research Council, the
American Council of Learned Societies, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Special thanks
also to Tashi Tsering of the Amnye Machen Institute, for generously sharing his knowledge of the
source material.
2. These activities are described in Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Za hor gyi ban+de
ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho’i ’di snang ’khrul ba’i rol rtsed rtogs brjod kyi tshul du bkod
pa du kU la’i gos bzang,” in Gsung ’bum/ Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho/, ’Bras spungs dga’ ldan
pho brang gi par khang, vol. 5, 6, 7 (ca, cha, ja), 25 vols., TBRC W294 (Gangtok: Sikkim Research
Institute of Tibetology, 1991); Sde srid sangs rgyas rgya mtsho, Dpal ldan gso ba rig pa’i khog ’bubs
legs bshad bai DUr+ya’i me long drang srong dgyes pa’i dga’ ston, vol. 8, Arura (Beijing: Mi rigs dpe
263
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sponsored a number of medical printing projects, including oicial redactions
of the Four Tantras and other earlier works, as well as new compositions and
Sanskrit translations.3 The Fith Dalai Lama also personally composed new
ritual manuals and prayers for diferent kinds of tantric practices such as the
Medicine Buddha Sūtra liturgy (Sman bla’i mdo chog) and the Yutok Heart Essence
guru practice (G.yu thog snying thig bla sgrub), which he described as providing
an essential Buddhist framework for study of the Four Tantras.4 All of these
activities drew on the model of earlier medical traditions, particularly the Zur
medical tradition (zur lugs) associated with the Fith Dalai Lama’s erstwhile
rivals, the Kagyü hierarchs and the King of Tsang.5 The Fith Dalai Lama,
however, linked his patronage of medicine to demonstrating the benevolent
governance of his new state and to healing the trauma of the recent war.
Praising medicine as a ield of knowledge “undeiled by and unfamiliar with
the demon of sectarianism,” he reasoned that medical treatments “because
they also beneit enemies, make enemies into friends.”6
Among the medical schools patronized by the Fith Dalai Lama, the best
documented is the Sanctuary of Assembled Sages (Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling),
maintained by the Tsarong (Tsha rong) family lineage of physicians. The Tsarong
medical school had previously served the King of Tsang and was located within
his Samdruptsé (Bsam grub rtse) fortress in the Tsang capital of Zhikatsé. In
the early seventeenth century, the Tsarong school had also become associated
with the Zur medical tradition through a teaching lineage passed down from
skrun khang, 2004). For the latter source, in this article I make use of the recent translation by
Gavin Kilty: Desi Sangye Gyatso and Gavin Kilty, Mirror of Beryl: A Historical Introduction to Tibetan
Medicine (Somerville, MA: Wisdom Publications, 2010), unless otherwise noted.
3. Kurtis R Schaefer, “New Scholarship in Tibet, 1650–1700,” in Forms of Knowledge in Early
Modern Asia: Explorations in the Intellectual History of India and Tibet, 1500–1800, ed. Sheldon I.
Pollock (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011).
4. For the most complete collection of these works, see Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho,
Gsung ’bum/ Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho/, 28 vols. (Beijing: Krung go’i bod rig pa dpe skrun
khang, 2009).
5. According to Desi Sanggyé Gyatso, Zur physicians ran a medical school at Tsurpu monastery,
seat of the Karma Kagyü tradition, from the mid iteenth century onwards, and were well known
for preparing precious pills (rin chen ril bu) on behalf of Kagyü hierarchs, including the Karmapa
and Zhamarpa. Desi Sangye Gyatso and Gavin Kilty, Mirror of Beryl, 310, 326–327; Olaf Czaja, “On
the History of Reining Mercury in Tibetan Medicine,” Asian Medicine 8 (2013), 75–105.
6. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Nyang smad bsam don lhun gyis grub pa’i rdzong chen
du tshe’i rig byed gso ba rig pa’i grwa tshang drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi bca’ yig,” in Gsung
’bum/ Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho/, vol. 23 (’a) (Beijing: Krung go’i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang,
2009), 111, 117.
MEDICINE AS IMPARTIAL KNOWLEDGE
265
the Lekshé Ling (Legs bshad gling) medical school at the major Karma Kagyü
monastery of Tsurpu (Mtshur phu).7 Given these ailiations, it is no wonder
that the Tsarong school’s activities were interrupted during the Mongol-Tsang
war. According to the inluential medical history of Desi Sanggyé Gyatso (Sde
srid Sangs rgyas rgya mtsho, 1653–1705, regent and political successor to the Fith
Dalai Lama), “When the reputation of Tenzin Chökyi Gyelpo [Gušri Khan]
began to spread, the [Tsarong] schools were discontinued. However, later when
they were covered by the white umbrella of Buddhist governance of the Great
Fith, they were restarted.”8
The Fith Dalai Lama’s re-establishment of the Tsarong medical school
at Samdruptsé was no doubt intended as a signiicant political gesture of trust
and magnanimity. Nevertheless, state funding and protection was predicated
on the Tsarong school’s adoption of new regulations and a new curriculum,
contained within the monastic guidelines (bca’ yig) for the school, written by
the Fith Dalai Lama in 1676.9 According to the Guidelines (as I will refer to
this document), the curriculum would include both study of diagnosis and
treatments from the Four Tantras, and tantric practices following the Fith Dalai
Lama’s new ritual manuals. Desi Sanggyé Gyatso claimed that the Tsarong
school Guidelines was “instrumental in raising the status of this tradition.”10
However, the Guidelines also represented a signiicant transformation for the
Tsarong medical school. While the Fith Dalai Lama praised medical training
based on the Four Tantras as part of the path of a bodhisattva alleviating the
sufering of others, he was concerned with reconiguring the ritual portion of
the school’s curriculum to conform to a new state orthodoxy. And despite his
disavowal of any relationship between Buddhist sectarian controversies and
the ield of medicine (gso ba rig pa), the Fith Dalai Lama’s Guidelines targeted
7. The Tsarong family medical lineage originated in the 16th century as a branch of the
Gongmen (Gong sman) medical lineage and the Upper Tradition (Stod lugs) of Tibetan medicine.
According to Desi Sanggyé Gyatso, however, ater the lineage-holder Tsarong Tsewang Rindzin
(Tsha rong tshe dbang rig ’dzin, 17th century) studied with a teacher of the Zur, or Lower Tradition
(Smad lugs), from the Lekshé Ling-derived lineage of Jarpo Panchen (Byar po paN chen, 1447–1506),
Tsewang Rindzin “thereby became a follower of that system,” passing Zur tradition practices on to
his subsequent Tsarong lineage. The Guidelines corroborate this picture, referring to Zur medical
tradition practices at the Tsarong school that predated the Fith Dalai Lama’s interventions. See
Desi Sangye Gyatso and Kilty, Mirror of Beryl, 310, 321–322, 533 n. 635.
8. Although Desi Sanggyé Gyatso here mentions more than one Tsarong medical school, the
Fith Dalai Lama only refers to the central school at Samdruptsé. Ibid., 321; Sde srid sangs rgyas
rgya mtsho, bai DUr+ya’i me long, 8:262, my translation.
9. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi bca’ yig,” 110–121, 83 f.
10. Desi Sangye Gyatso and Kilty, Mirror of Beryl, 321.
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what he labeled as heterodox views (log rtog) related to medicine and “drawn
like water from the valley of the Kagyüpa.”11
The Tsarong School Guidelines and Debates of
Tibetan Medical Orthodoxy
Several recent studies have focused on narrative strategies for the invention of
tradition in Tibetan medicine, mainly within the genre of Tibetan medical histories (khog ’bugs, khog ’bubs, etc.)12 However, since Samten Karmay’s inluential
assertion that “happily, [these medical debates] did not involve any sectarian
dogmatic or philosophical views,” subsequent contemporary scholarship has
generally not acknowledged any relationship between Tibetan medical debates
and Buddhist sectarian controversies.13 This perspective owes much to an
argument set forth by Desi Sanggyé Gyatso in his 1703 medical history Mirror
of Beryl (bai DUr+ya’i me long), a text written to defend the regent’s claim of
building on the Fith Dalai Lama’s legacy to create a uniied Tibetan medical
tradition untouched by “the demon of [sectarian] prejudice.”14 Desi Sanggyé
Gyatso’s assertion, however, sparked vehement protest among eighteenth and
11. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi bca’ yig,” 115, 117. Czaja
has also noted a rivalry between the Fith Dalai Lama and the Kagyü tradition in the production
of precious pills; Czaja, “On the History of Reining Mercury in Tibetan Medicine.”
12. Frances Garrett, “Buddhism and the Historicising of Medicine in Thirteenth-Century Tibet,”
Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity 2, no. 2 (2006), 204–24; Frances Garrett, “Critical Methods
in Tibetan Medical Histories,” Journal of Asian Studies 66, no. 2 (May) (2007), 363–87; Janet Gyatso,
“The Authority of Empiricism and the Empiricism of Authority: Medicine and Buddhism in
Tibet on the Eve of Modernity,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24,
no. 2 (2004), 84–96; Olaf Czaja, “Zurkharwa Lodro Gyalpo (1509–1579) on the Controversy of
the Indian Origin of the rGyud bzhi,” Tibet Journal Vol. XXX No. 4 Summer 2005 & Vol. XXXI
No. 1 Spring 2006, 133–54; Olaf Czaja, “A Hitherto Unknown ‘Medical History’ of mTsho smad
mkhan chen (b.16th cent.),” Tibet Journal Vol. XXX No. 4 Summer 2005 & Vol. XXXI No. 1 Spring
2006, 155–74; Dan Martin, “An Early Tibetan History of Indian Medicine,” in Soundings in Tibetan
Medicine: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, PIATS 2003: Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the
Tenth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies, Oxford, 2003., ed. Mona Schrempf
(Leiden: Brill, 2007), 307–25.
13. Samten G. Karmay, “The Four Tibetan Medical Treatises and Their Critics,” in The Arrow
and the Spindle: Study in History, Myths, Rituals and Beliefs in Tibet (Kathmandu: Mandala Book
Point, 1998), 231.
14. Sde srid sangs rgyas rgya mtsho, bai DUr+ya’i me long; Desi Sangye Gyatso and Kilty, Mirror
of Beryl, 494. Hofer’s study of the Jang medical tradition’s fate in the twentieth century also
signiicantly challenged Desi Sanggyé Gyatso’s claim of uniication; Theresia Hofer, “Preliminary
Investigations into New Oral and Textual Sources on Byang-Lugs, the ‘Northern School’ of Tibetan
MEDICINE AS IMPARTIAL KNOWLEDGE
267
nineteenth century medical scholars.15 According to these later scholars, the
systematization of Tibetan medicine had not been just a matter of integrating the medical knowledge of prior traditions, but also of synthesizing their
associated tantric practices. And as with the Fith Dalai Lama’s other projects
of ritual systematization, his medical synthesis was embroiled in sectarian
controversy.16
The relationship between medicine and tantra has also constituted a
central theme of both classical and contemporary scholarship on Tibetan
medicine. Most recently, this relationship has been understood in terms of
epistemological practices generating divergent modes of sensory vs. subtle experience; in terms of tantric practices aiming to generate longevity and vitality
in addition to the ultimate goal of Buddhist enlightenment; and in terms of
ritual practices serving to empower medical practitioners, consecrate medicines, and bring blessings to the wider community.17 But while tantric practices
accompanying medical training, including the Medicine Buddha Sūtra and the
Yutok Heart Essence, have been examined individually, many questions remain
regarding their relationship to each other and their historical development.18
As Frances Garrett has noted, when Tibetan medical historians argued for
Medicine,” in Soundings in Tibetan Medicine: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives, PIATS 2003:
Tibetan Studies: Proceedings of the Tenth Seminar of the International Association for Tibetan Studies,
Oxford, 2003., ed. Mona Schrempf (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 1–37.
15. Brag dkar ba Chos kyi dbang phyug, Dpal ldan gso ba rig pa’i man ngag gi khog ’bubs bsdus
don nyung ngu’i ngag gi gtam du bya ba drang srong kun tu dgyes pa’i rol mo (Dharamsala: Bod kyi
sman rtsis khang, 2012), 78; Dbal mang 02 Dkon mchog rgyal mtshan, “Bla brang bkra shis ’khyil
gyi gdan rabs lha’i rnga chen” (Lanzhou: Kan su’u mi rigs dpe skrun khang, 1987); Lung rigs bstan
dar, “Gso ba rig pa spyi dang bye brag tu dam pa’i chos dpal ldan sman gyi rgyud bzhi’i chos
byung tshul dri med bai TUr+ya’i me long” (Dbu’ chen, 1911), TBRC P4959.
16. Jacob P. Dalton, “The Uses of the Dgongs pa ’dus pa’i mdo in the Development of the
Rnying-ma School of Tibetan Buddhism” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 2002).
17. Gyatso, “The Authority of Empiricism and the Empiricism of Authority”; Frances Garrett,
“The Alchemy of Accomplishing Medicine (sman sgrub): Situating the Yuthok Heart Essence (G.yu
thog snying thig) in Literature and History,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 37 (2009), 207–30; Sienna
R. Craig, “From Empowerments to Power Calculations: Notes on Eicacy, Value and Method,”
in Medicine Between Science and Religion: Explorations on Tibetan Grounds, eds. Vincanne Adams,
Mona Schrempf, and Sienna R. Craig (Berghahn Books, 2011).
18. See Franz-Karl Ehrhard, “A Short History of the g.Yu thog snying thig,” in Indica et Tibetica:
Festschrit für Michael Hahn zum 65. Geburtstag von Freunden und Schülern überreicht, eds. Konrad
Klaus and Jens-Uwe Hartmann, Wiener Studien zur Tibetologie und Buddhismuskunde, Het 66
(Vienna: Arbeitskreis für tibetische und buddhistische Studien Universität Wien, 2007); Garrett,
“The Alchemy of Accomplishing Medicine (sman sgrub)”; and Gyurme Dorje, “The Buddhas of
Medicine,” in Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine, ed. Theresia Hofer (Seattle: University
of Washington Press, 2014).
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the Four Tantras’ origin as either the authentic word of the Medicine Buddha
(Sangs rgyas sman bla) or as a human-authored treatise by the twelth-century
Tibetan physician Yutok Yönten Gönpo (G.yu thog yon tan mgon po), their
texts were “themselves constitutive of authority, not only a relection of it.”19
In a similar manner, traditions of Tibetan medicine became diferentiated
by their particular tantric ritual practices, which venerated diferent primary
medical progenitors, encompassed diferent aims and doctrines, and authorized diferent medical treatments and recipes passed down through family
or teacher-student lineages.
Physicians of the Zur medical tradition, for example, were associated
with the Yutok Heart Essence, a practice attributed to Yutok Yönten Gönpo
but codiied and greatly expanded by Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorjé (Zur mkhar
Mnyam nyid rdo rje, 1439–1475), the progenitor of the Zur medical tradition.20
Ater receiving initiation through the Yutok Heart Essence empowerment (dbang
chog), Zur physicians were authorized to practice both this particular cycle of
tantric texts and proprietary Zur texts of medical treatment, such as Nyamnyi
Dorjé’s Relic of Millions (Bye ba ring bsrel).21 During an empowerment, the practitioner also airmed a set of vows that outlined the correct motivation for
tantric and medical practice according to the tradition. The Tsarong school
guidelines make clear how diferent narratives of medical history provided different templates for daily ritual and medical practice, and supported diferent
interpretations of Buddhist doctrine and ethics. In this sense, Tibetan medical institutions resembled the Confucian medical temple-schools (miaoxue)
described by scholars of late imperial China, where the production of medical
orthodoxy involved regulating medical learning and practice through ritual
frameworks “based on text and lineage, medical theories and popular ideas
and practices concerning illness and healing.”22
In the Guidelines, the Fith Dalai Lama distinguished two aspects of
study within the ield of medicine (gso ba rig pa), the “ordinary practice of
medical diagnosis and treatments such as compound pharmaceuticals” (sman
19. Garrett, “Buddhism and the Historicising of Medicine in Thirteenth-Century Tibet,” 222.
20. Garrett, “The Alchemy of Accomplishing Medicine (sman sgrub),” 223.
21. These texts are linked within the Fith Dalai Lama’s Record of Teachings Received; Ngag dbang
blo bzang rgya mtsho, Thob yig gang+ga’i chu rgyun / Record of Teachings Received: The gsan-yig of
.
.
.
the Fith Dalai Lama Nag-dban -blo-bzan -rgya-mtsho (Delhi: Nechung and Lhakar, 1970), 412–427.
22. Yüan-ling Chao, Medicine and Society in Late Imperial China: A Study of Physicians in Suzhou,
1600–1850 (New York: Peter Lang, 2009), 2; Reiko Shinno, “Medical Schools and the Temples of
the Three Progenitors in Yuan China: A Case of Cross-Cultural Interactions,” Harvard Journal of
Asiatic Studies 67, no. 1 (2007), 89–133.
MEDICINE AS IMPARTIAL KNOWLEDGE
269
gyi sbyor sde dang dpyad kyi rigs rnams kyi nang thun mong gi lag len) and
practice according to “doctrinal view, meditation and conduct” (lta sgom spyod
pa).23 This distinction supports Janet Gyatso’s identiication of a “distinctively
medical empiricism” among Tibetan scholars of the iteenth century onwards.
The Fith Dalai Lama classiied the Four Tantras irst and foremost, however, as
a tantric text (dang por rgyud yin te).24 In this context the institutionalization
of medicine in Tibet involved more than simply carving woodblocks and
building assembly halls. Desi Sanggyé Gyatso praised the Fith Dalai Lama
as “the King of Medicine, the combiner of lineages” and suggested that the
hierarch’s primary contribution to the ield of medicine involved receiving
transmissions (lung) or authorizations to study from various Tibetan medical
traditions, then passing this authorization on to others through the bestowal
of empowerments.25 What Desi Sanggyé Gyatso did not explicitly mention in
his medical history, however, was the Fith Dalai Lama’s revision of tantric
medical practices in order to create a uniied doctrinal framework for medical
study. As the Guidelines make clear, the Fith Dalai Lama’s new ritual manuals
and supplements sought to create a new state medical orthodoxy by reconciling
the tantric practices associated with diferent Tibetan Buddhist traditions.
In writing his Guidelines for the Tsarong school, the Fith Dalai Lama
combined a doctrinal discussion of the Buddhist basis for medical practice
with a practical discussion of how a medical institution should be run. This
document seems to represent the irst extant example of Tibetan monastic
guidelines written speciically for an institution of medicine, and follows the
broadly standard two-part format described by Ter Ellingson in his foundational study of the bca’ yig genre.26 Central to the irst section of all monastic
23. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi bca’ yig,” 117. Gyatso,
“The Authority of Empiricism and the Empiricism of Authority,” 83.
24. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi bca’ yig,” 114.
25. Desi Sangye Gyatso and Kilty, Mirror of Beryl, 326.
26. According to his autobiography, the Fith Dalai Lama had previously written monastic guidelines for his Drepung medical school. These do not seem to be extant. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya
mtsho, “Rang rnam,” Vol. 1, f. 138a. See Ter Ellingson, “Tibetan Monastic Constitutions: The bca’
yig,” in Relections on Tibetan Culture: Essays in Memory of Turrell V. Wylie, eds. Lawrence Epstein
and Richard Sherburne, Studies in Asian Thought and Religion, v. 12 (Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen
Press, 1990), 207. While Ellingson translates bca’ yig as “monastic constitution” in order to highlight
this genre’s importance as part of a Tibetan monastic legal tradition, I will follow Berthe Jansen’s
translation as “monastic guidelines” in order to capture their “provisional and contemporary”
rather than permanent nature. Berthe Jansen, “How to Tame a Wild Monastic Elephant: Drepung
Monastery according to the Great Fith,” in Tibetans who escaped the historian’s net: studies in the
social history of Tibetan societies / edited by Charles Ramble, Peter Schwieger, Alice Travers., eds. Charles
Ramble, Peter Schwieger, and Alice Travers (Kathmandu, Nepal: Vajra Books, 2013), 111–39.
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guidelines was an interpretation of basic Buddhist soteriological principles
and Buddhist monastic dicipline (Vinaya). The second section outlined speciic
instructions for communal conduct and socio-economic organization within a
given monastic group. Ellingson distinguished two main Buddhist orientations
among monastic guidelines, towards religious communities that were primarily “philosophical” or “ritual/tantric.”27 At the Tsarong medical school, the Fith
Dalai Lama acknowledged the presence of both renunciant monks and tantric
lay practitioners; however, his Guidelines displayed a concern consistent with
other tantric communities targeting “arbitrary distortions of [their] authentic
traditions.”28 In particular, the Fith Dalai Lama sought to reform the Tsarong
medical tradition through regulation of the school’s tantric ritual practices,
and by imposing a common code of learning and conduct for all medical
students. Here I will begin by examining the latter aspect of the Guidelines.
Social life and Monastic Discipline at the
Tsarong Medical School
The Guidelines laid out regulations for the social life of the Tsarong medical school that emphasized discipline, diligence, and order, from meals and
inances to the appointment of leaders and the restriction of movement.29
Salaries (of unspeciied amount) were to be distributed by the district leader
(rdzong sdod) to the teacher and from time to time to students. Residence
buildings were shared, depending on the size of the dwelling, between ive
and eight people. A house leader was entrusted with the keys to the assembly
hall and kitchen, and the elders of each residence appointed a junior teacher
“so that there will not be carelessness and wastefulness about the house.”30
Mealtimes were irmly ixed, with a caretaker (spyi gnyer sprel po) and teamaker (ja ma) in charge of distributing tea, butter, and noodle soup according
to calculations from a register. Except for the acceptance or rejection of meat,
27. Ellingson, “Tibetan Monastic Constitutions,” 217.
28. Ibid. A similar mix of monks and tantric lay practitioners could be found at the Nyingma
monastery of Mindroling under the Fith Dalai Lama; see Dominique Townsend, “Materials of
Buddhist Culture: Aesthetics and Cosmopolitanism at Mindroling Monastery” (Ph.D. Dissertation,
Columbia University, 2012).
29. The regulations for conduct and social life reviewed in this section can be found at Ngag
dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi bca’ yig,” 118–121.
30. Ibid., 119.
MEDICINE AS IMPARTIAL KNOWLEDGE
271
the students were told, “do not argue about your own tastes.”31 Absences due
to illness needed to be excused by the disciplinarian (dge skos), and students
were told not to ask to visit the village except under exceptional circumstances, when they needed to ask permission from the district leader. If they
did leave the school, they were required to make (and fund) tea for the entire
assembly as a penalty. Within school grounds, the Guidelines presented a tidy
picture of a school running on a set schedule, according to the timekeeping
of a sundial and the sound of a gong. Students were expected to walk quickly
to the assembly hall, and were cautioned not to play “idle board games like
Go” during the aternoon break.32 At night, they were to stay quietly in their
rooms for meditative relection in darkness. In general, the Fith Dalai Lama
wrote that students should “speak openly and purely, without wandering or
idle chatter, which is distracting. If this happens, one hundred prostrations
should be imposed.”33
Besides the proscription of board games, quite a few other speciic
regulations of conduct and renunciation were laid out for the medical students.
First and foremost, the Fith Dalai Lama speciied that residences should
be kept “meticulously pure… if there are laymen, they should not bring
women and beer, since these are meaningless and distracting.”34 The purity
of residences also included possessions, which should be kept to a minimum.
Clothing should be appropriate, with monks wearing robes (zla gam) as a
sign of ordination and laymen also wearing appropriate dress (phya ma tse)
in crimson. It was speciied that robes should not be white or multicolored,
a sign of lay tantric and oten sectarian identity (the Kagyü, in particular,
being sometimes associated with the white cotton robes of the tradition’s
progenitor, Milarepa).35 As an interesting concession, the Fith Dalai Lama
added that it was not wrong to wear earrings or other “proud” and “auspicious”
ornaments.36 Perhaps these ornaments marked a lay physician’s status and
might inspire conidence from patients. Students were exhorted, however,
not to carry a knife or other weapons and to “abandon the crude behavior
of Tartars” (hor ’dra rtsing spyod) for a gentler lifestyle—an ironic and perhaps
self-conscious choice of words considering the Fith Dalai Lama’s own allies.37
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.
36.
37.
Ibid.
“mig mangs rgyal gling dmag ’khrugs sogs bag med kyi rtse mo,” Ibid.
Ibid., 120.
Ibid., 119.
Jampa MacKenzie Stewart, The Life of Gampopa (Snow Lion Publications, 2004), 119.
Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi bca’ yig,” 121.
Ibid.
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Correct clothing, the hierarch wrote, would ensure that “the three doors [body,
speech, and mind] will not be distracted by others during the thoughts of
refuge and bodhicitta.”38 Yet these dress regulations would also have worked
to build a uniform community and to efectively circumscribe contentious
displays of identity.
It is diicult to know how much resemblance this ideal vision of life
at the Tsarong medical school bore to lived reality; furthermore, there is no
explicit mention of what discipline was being newly imposed. The details of
prohibited and regulated activities, however, give us a fascinating glimpse into
life at the medical school at the moment that these Guidelines endeavored
to change it. Of particular concern to the Fith Dalai Lama was the extension of monastic discipline, notably celibacy and the renunciation of alcohol
and extraneous possessions, to the lay medical students at the school. These
restrictions, as well as those on clothing, talking at night, leaving the monastery, and rough behavior, all referenced the standards of classical Buddhist
Vinaya discipline. More speciically, however, these regulations seem designed
to change the character of the Tsarong medical school by requiring resident
students to abandon displays of previous sectarian ailiation and to adhere to
common codes of order, renunciation, and dress. Surely another goal of such
discipline would be to discourage potential disputes and bad blood that might
still bubble up within this fortress of the defeated King of Tsang.
The Medical and Ritual Curriculum of the
Tsarong Medical School
In addition to his strict expectations for monastic conduct, the Fith Dalai
Lama laid out a detailed calendar, daily schedule, and curriculum for the
Tsarong medical school, covering both the study of diagnosis and treatment
and proper ritual practices. The school’s annual calendar consisted of two
sessions, summer and winter, and four remaining months in the intermission
for dharma retreats (chos mtshams byed pa) when monks should return to
their own local monasteries with “no distractions besides study.”39 During the
regular sessions, morning study began at daybreak with a teacher stimulating
the students into action with the smoke from a warm ire.
38. Ibid., 120.
39. For the regulations of the ritual calendar and curriculum described in this section, see Ibid.,
118–121.
MEDICINE AS IMPARTIAL KNOWLEDGE
273
The basis of the daily curriculum was memorization of the Four Tantras,
and students were divided into ive classes “according to their abilities, sharp
or dull,” with those in the highest level class memorizing six or seven lines
per day and in the lowest level class memorizing only one or two lines.40
The Guidelines required students to study alone in their residences until the
noon meal, when they were tested on their memorization. Every ten days the
head teacher gave a special test, and a inal round of examinations was set for
the end of each session, so that the students would not forget what they had
learned during their intersession break. Such regimes of memorization were a
fundamental technique in the beginning stages of broader Tibetan Buddhist,
and especially Gelukpa, monastic curricula; they also existed among previous
medical traditions.41
The Guidelines make clear that students at the Tsarong medical school
were also meant to learn the practical application of the Four Tantras’ methods of diagnosis and treatment. In the evening the students reconvened in the
school’s assembly hall for ritual practice and to receive medical instruction.
The teacher was irst required to chant the liturgy (’don cha) and each subject
of study in succession, before giving “the crucial points of explanatory commentary and quintessential instructions” (’grel bshad man ngag gi gnad) on
medicine according to the students’ abilities.42 As an example of these instructions, the Fith Dalai Lama mentioned teaching the calculation of pharmaceutical compounds (sman gyi sbyor sde), advising that each “should be treated
as appropriate.”43 The Guidelines did not give a great deal of attention to this
practical part of the curriculum. Nevertheless, despite evidently varying degrees
of ability and motivation, it seems that the Tsarong medical school students
had the opportunity to learn both the scholastic basis of medicine and at least
something about its practice.
While instruction on the Four Tantras clearly constituted a major part of
the Tsarong school curriculum, this medical training was embedded within
a framework of liturgical and ritual practice. In fact, this ritual portion of
the curriculum constituted the Fith Dalai Lama’s primary focus within the
Guidelines. Regarding the school’s schedule, the Fith Dalai Lama carefully
noted that in addition to the daily assembly, every iteen days
40. Ibid., 119.
41. Georges B.J. Dreyfus, The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Buddhist Monk
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Desi Sangye Gyatso and Kilty, Mirror of Beryl,
288–289.
42. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi bca’ yig,” 120.
43. Ibid.
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STACEY VAN VLEET
the speciied liturgical texts should be read with excellent voices by the appointed chant-leader (dbu mdzad) and teachers, [and these should be] arranged
in an orderly presentation by the disciplinarian (dge bskos), who is in charge [of
seeing] that nothing is prolonged or omitted.44
The Guidelines therefore not only required the Tsarong students to
adhere to speciied ritual texts, but also to their precise wording and form. In
a greater gesture of severity than shown so far, the Fith Dalai Lama continued
that “any monk or layperson who transgresses [this curriculum] with textual
traditions that cause disputes of mouths and hands should do one hundred
prostrations, and present a community tea ofering of ixed amount.”45 Clearly
the delineation of these ritual practices represented one of the most important
of the Guidelines’ regulations, and just as clearly, this delineation represented
a potential matter of dispute between the Fith Dalai Lama and the Tsarong
medical students.
A clue to the nature of this dispute can be found by comparing the
exactitude required for ritual practice with that required for examinations on
the Four Tantras at the Tsarong school. According to the Guidelines, students
should be tested on their memorization of a speciic edition of the Four Tantras,
the controversial new print redacted in 1662 by the Fith Dalai Lama’s court
physician Jangngö Nangso Dargyé (Byang ngos nang so dar rgyas, d. 1677).46
While successive editions of the Four Tantras claimed to correct the empirical
laws of their predecessors, each print also interpolated ritual frameworks associated with their sponsors through opening verses of praise and closing verses
of dedication.47 The Fith Dalai Lama’s new oicial edition was based on the
irst-ever xylographic print of the Four Tantras, created at Dratang Monastery
by the Zur tradition luminary Zurkhar Lodrö Gyelpo (Zur mkhar Blo gros rgyal
po, b. 1509). In his medical history, Desi Sanggyé Gyatso famously argued that
the new edition of the Four Tantras was not a “trustworthy reference,” and
criticized both his mentor the Fith Dalai Lama and Jangngö Nangso Dargyé
for their partiality towards the Zur tradition.48 In particular, Desi Sanggyé
44. Ibid., 119.
45. Ibid., 120.
46. Ibid., 119. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Rang rnam,” Vol. 1, f. 330a.
47. These verses can be compared in the critical edition of the Four Tantras prepared by the
Gansu scholar Bstan ’dzin don grub (Bstan kho), ed., Dpal ldan rgyud bzhi, 2 vols., Rgyal khab
krung lugs gso rig do dam cus mi rigs sman gzhung dpe sna dag bsgrigs (Beijing: Krung go’i bod
rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2005).
48. Desi Sangye Gyatso and Kilty, Mirror of Beryl, 335.
MEDICINE AS IMPARTIAL KNOWLEDGE
275
Gyatso criticized Jangngö Nangso Dargyé as an “ordinary physician” whose
preference for “his father’s cup” led him to exclude the contributions of another
major medical tradition, the Jang (Byang), from the Fith Dalai Lama’s state
medical system.49
According to the regent, the rivalry between the Jang and the Zur medical traditions was tied to rivalries among Tibetan Buddhist traditions. While
the Zur medical tradition had developed institutional ties to the Kagyüpa and
later the Gelukpa orders, the Jang medical tradition held ties with the Jonangpa
order, especially during the appointment of Jang physician Lhünding Dütsi
Gyurmé (Lhun sdings Bdud rtsi ’gyur med, 16th–17th centuries) as court physician to the Jonang hierarch Tāranātha (tA ra nA tha, 1575–1634).50 According to
Desi Sanggyé Gyatso, “the belief that the Jang and [Zur] traditions held different positions, and so on, came to my great lama [i.e., the Fith Dalai Lama]
while he was busy reprimanding Künga Nyingpo,” i.e. his rival Tāranātha.51
Desi Sanggyé Gyatso himself inluentially argued that there was not much
diference between the two medical traditions. In terms of medical practices,
he wrote, diferences in geographic specialization between the Zur and Jang
traditions had led to some diferences in the identiication of plants. But in
terms of “the primary topics of the literature” (i.e., Buddhist ethics, epistemology, and practice), he continued, “any path depends on an earlier path, and in
that sense there were no diferences.”52
Many later scholars, both Tibetan and foreign, have taken Desi Sanggyé
Gyatso’s argument at face value and accepted his characterization of the Jang
and Zur medical traditions as basically similar except for some empirical
details. In keeping with the regent’s overall polemicism within his medical
history, however, his argument here worked to obfuscate the nature of earlier
medical debates.53 By focusing on their shared basis in empirical medical
practice and downplaying diferences related to their accompanying tantric
Buddhist traditions, Desi Sanggyé Gyatso was able to carve himself a place
as a lay expert of Tibetan medical scholarship. His strategy also solidiied the
foundation for Tibetan medical systematization, and the regent claimed to
49. Ibid., 334.
50. Ibid., 289.
51. Ibid., 334–335.
52. Ibid., 335.
53. His polemical attitude is discussed in detail by Janet Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist
World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2015).
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STACEY VAN VLEET
have gained the Fith Dalai Lama’s approval to incorporate the Jang tradition
into the state medical system.54 Still, the Fith Dalai Lama continued to follow
his own approach to medical systematization. In the context of the Fith Dalai
Lama’s distinction between the “ordinary practice” of medicine and practice
according to “doctrinal view, meditation and conduct,” his insistence on precise
adherence to approved ritual liturgies and the oicial edition of the Four Tantras
relects his efort to systematize medical traditions by systematizing their ritual
practices into a new state medical orthodoxy.55
Instituting a new Medicine Buddha Sūtra ritual practice
In 1673, three years ater Desi Sanggyé Gyatso approached the Fith Dalai
Lama to expand the state medical system, the hierarch wrote a new manual
for the Medicine Buddha Sūtra ritual practice entitled Ofering Liturgy for the
Seven Sugatas: The Wish-fulilling King.56 This ritual manual shared a basic format
with a Medicine Buddha practice previously authored by the Jonang hierarch
Tāranātha, also venerating the Seven Sugatas or the Seven Medicine Brothers.57
According to an eighteenth-century Gelukpa medical historian, Tāranātha had
earlier attempted to create medical structures “that combined the Jang and Zur
traditions so that they were impossible to separate.”58 This earlier attempt at
ritually integrating the two major Tibetan medical traditions likely represented
one major aspect of the Fith Dalai Lama’s above-mentioned disapproval of
his rival from the Jonang tradition, and perhaps lay beneath the Fith Dalai
Lama’s initial favor towards the Zur tradition over the Jonang-ailiated Jang
54. Desi Sangye Gyatso and Kilty, Mirror of Beryl, 335.
55. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi bca’ yig,” 117.
56. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Bde gshegs bdun gyi mchod pa’i chog bsgrigs yid bzhin
dbang rgyal/,” in Gsung ’bum/ Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho/, vol. 15 (ba), 28 vols. (Beijing: Krung
go’i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2009), 453–534.
57. Rje btsun tA ra nA tha, “Sman bla mched bdun,” in Gsung ’bum/ Rje btsun tA ra nA tha, vol.
15, 23 vols. (Sichuan: ’Dzam thang bsam ’grub nor bu’i gling gi par khang, 2000), f. 57b—59b.
Further comparison of the Medicine Buddha ritual supplements of Jetsun Tāranātha and the Fith
Dalai Lama may shed light on the Fith Dalai Lama’s criticisms of the Byang medical tradition.
For discussions of the Sūtra of the Seven Sugatas (Tib. ’Phags pa bde bshin gzhegs pa bdun gyi sngon
gyi smon lam gyi khyad par rgyas pa zhes bya ba theg ba chen po’i mdo) in the Chinese and Tibetan
medical traditions, see Raoul Birnbaum, The Healing Buddha (Boston: Shambhala, 1989); and
Gyurme Dorje, “The Buddhas of Medicine.”
58. Dbal mang 02 Dkon mchog rgyal mtshan, “Bla brang bkra shis ’khyil gyi gdan rabs lha’i
rnga chen,” 246.
MEDICINE AS IMPARTIAL KNOWLEDGE
277
medical tradition. The Fith Dalai Lama’s own Medicine Buddha Sūtra liturgy
manual was central to his vision for the Tsarong medical school, as well as for
his wider efort to create a new state medical orthodoxy.
The “speciied liturgical texts” listed by the Fith Dalai Lama for the
Tsarong medical school’s ritual curriculum represented an amalgamation of
prayers and tantric practices important to Tibetan medical traditions as well
as within general Tibetan Buddhist monastic training.59 The Fith Dalai Lama
borrowed two liturgies common within the general Gelukpa curriculum and
other Tibetan Buddhist traditions, including the Twenty-one Praises of Tārā,
a deity associated with compassion and enlightened activity, and the Heart
Sūtra, part of the Perfection of Wisdom literature focusing on ethics and the
bodhisattva motivation of beneitting others.60 The remainder of the Tsarong
school’s ritual practices included Medicine Buddha and Yutok Yönten Gönpo
lineage supplication prayers (sman bla dang g.yu thog yon tan mgon po sogs
brgyud pa’i gsol ’debs); prayers of bodhisattva aspiration (smon lam tshigs bcad);
a ritual cake (gtor ma) ofering to Zhanglön (Zhang blon), the protector deity of
medicine; and the Amitāyus deity incantation (dhāran. ī) of longevity; together
with “whatever auspicious prayers and Dharma practices are appropriate.”61
The Fith Dalai Lama’s autobiography mentioned one such additional practice,
a long-life prayer (ring ’tsho) for the school’s primary teacher, Tsarong Tseten
Dorjé, written by the Fith Dalai Lama “in order to establish this at [Tsarong’s]
medical school.”62 Long-life prayers, which the Fith Dalai Lama dedicated
to various contemporaries, worked to demonstrate the hierarch’s sincerity in
supporting teachers from various non-Gelukpa traditions, who in turn adopted
his newly designed ritual framework.
The Guidelines also speciied that three times a month, the Tsarong school
assembly should complete a full Medicine Buddha Sūtra liturgy (sman bla’i mdo
chog).63 The Fith Dalai Lama’s autobiography mentioned establishing this new
practice at the Tsarong school a few days before completion of the Guidelines
“according to the method of the painter Chöying,”64 likely Chöying Gyatso
59. These texts are listed at Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi
bca’ yig,” 120.
60. The editions of these practices are not speciied. For more on the Gelukpa curriculum, see
Dreyfus, The Sound of Two Hands Clapping: The Education of a Buddhist Monk.
61. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi bca’ yig,” 119.
62. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Rang rnam,” Vol. 3, f. 69b.
63. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi bca’ yig,” 120.
64. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Rang rnam,” Vol. 3, f. 2a.
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[Chos dbyings rgya mtsho, active ca. 1640s–1660s], the court painter of the First
Panchen Lama at the major Geluk monastery of Trashilhünpo in Tsang.65 A
painting provided reference or support (rten) for the contemplative visualization
of the Medicine Buddha and his retinue during the ritual. For inancial support,
the ritual would rely on income from the tithing families of Serkhyim Tashi
Chöding Monastery (Ser khyim dgon Bkra shis chos sdings) in the Namling district
(Rnam gling rdzong).66 Further inancial support was apportioned in 1678, when
“utensils (mchod chas) were provided for holding the Medicine Buddha Sūtra ritual
every seven days in perpetuity.”67 This gesture guaranteed that there would be
no excuses for the Tsarong school not to perform the practice according to the
Fith Dalai Lama’s speciications every week.
On both a daily and weekly basis, therefore, the veneration of the
Medicine Buddha according to the Fith Dalai Lama’s ritual system provided a
public display of the hierarch’s beneicience in patronizing a medical school to
beneit the erstwhile enemy territory of Tsang. Given the feelings of guilt the
hierarch expressed over his part in the Mongol-Tsang war, perhaps the ritual
might also be viewed as a public display of atonement.68 Above all, however,
the public performance of the Medicine Buddha Sūtra ritual demonstrated the
Tsarong school’s loyalty and adherence to the new state medical orthodoxy. A
special Medicine Buddha Sūtra ritual dedicated for the Fith Dalai Lama’s long
life in 1680 demonstrated this latter aspect even more clearly.69
65. Chöying Gyatso was a proponent of the New Menri style, and undertook other projects for
the Fith Dalai Lama including wall paintings in the Potala Palace in 1648. See David Paul Jackson,
A History of Tibetan Painting: The Great Tibetan Painters and Their Traditions (Vienna: Austrian
Academy of Sciences Press, 1996), Chapter 7; Karl Debreczeny, The Black Hat Eccentric: Artistic
Visions of the Tenth Karmapa (Rubin Museum of Art, 2012), 257–258; David Paul Jackson, The Place
of Provenance: Regional Styles in Tibetan Painting (Rubin Museum of Art, 2012), 57–62. My thanks
to Karl Debreczeny for these references.
66. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Rang rnam,” Vol. 3, f. 2a.
67. Ibid., Vol. 3, f. 84a.
68. Samten Karmay, Secret Visions of the Fith Dalai Lama (London: Serindia Publications, 1988);
Derek F. Maher, “Sacralized Warfare: The Fith Dalai Lama and the Discourse of Religious
Violence,” in Buddhist Warfare, eds. Michael K. Jerryson and Mark Juergensmeyer (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2010), 77–103.
69. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Rang rnam,” Vol. 3, f. 211a. This ritual presaged the
long-life or irm-feet (zhabs brtan) rituals that would be performed for various political igures,
especially the Qing emperors, within later medical colleges. Gray Tuttle, “Tibetan Buddhism at
Wutai Shan in the Qing: The Chinese-Language Register,” The Journal of the International Association
of Tibetan Studies 6 (December 2011): 163–214.
MEDICINE AS IMPARTIAL KNOWLEDGE
279
The Tsarong Lineage, the Yutok Heart Essence, and the
Controversy of Medical Progenitors
The Fith Dalai Lama’s emphasis on the Medicine Buddha Sūtra ritual of the
Seven Sugatas, which had not previously existed in this form at the Tsarong
school, contrasted with his de-emphasis of the Yutok Heart Essence, a tantric
practice that the Tsarong family lineage had inherited from the Zur medical
tradition.70 The Guidelines acknowledged the Tsarong lineage’s earlier practice
of the Yutok Heart Essence, and ultimately authorized its continuation by
arguing that if practiced properly, “the secret Medicine Buddha sādhana of
Lord Yutok brings blessings from the lineage of the sages.”71 At the same time,
however, the Medicine Buddha Sūtra ritual seems to have now taken precedence
over practice of the Yutok Heart Essence. The Guidelines did not speciically
mention the Yutok Heart Essence among the school’s required ritual practices,
although its authorization could have fallen within the convenient category
of “whatever auspicious prayers and Dharma practices are appropriate.”72 Most
likely, this tantric cycle was practiced privately in contrast to the frequent and
public practice of the Medicine Buddha Sūtra ritual.
The Fith Dalai Lama also instituted a hierarchy between these practices
through several of his writings, which privileged veneration of the Medicine
Buddha over veneration of Yutok Yönten Gönpo. The Guidelines relected this
hierarchy through a historical argument for the Four Tantras as the authentic
Word of the Medicine Buddha rather than as a composition of Yutok Yönten
Gönpo. According to the contemporary medical scholar Yang Ga, this defense
of the root medical text’s divine authorship was an argument generally shared
by the Jang (or Upper) medical tradition, while the Zur (or Lower) tradition
generally privileged the role of the human medical progenitor Yutok Yönten
Gönpo.73 Zurkhar Lodrö Gyelpo, the most famous medical scholar of the Zur
70. For literary analyses of the Yutok Heart Essence, see Garrett, “The Alchemy of Accomplishing
Medicine (sman sgrub)”; and Frances Garrett, “Tapping the Body’s Nectar: Gastronomy and
Incorporation in Tibetan Literature,” History of Religions 49, no. 3 (February 2010), 300–326. Garrett
has situated the Yutok Heart Essence within a Nyingma literary framework, while acknowledging
the need for further research because of the limited number of source texts available. All known
editions of the Yutok Heart Essence cycle date to ater the turn of the eighteenth century (and the
interventions of the Fith Dalai Lama); Ehrhard, “A Short History of the g.Yu thog snying thig.”
71. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi bca’ yig,” 115.
72. Ibid., 119.
73. Yang Ga, “The Sources for the Writing of the ‘Rgyud bzhi’, Tibetan Medical Classic” (Ph.D.
Dissertation, Harvard University, 2010).
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STACEY VAN VLEET
tradition ater its founder, gained notoriety for classifying the Four Tantras as a
treatise (bstan ’gyur) “secretly” authored by Yutok Yönten Gönpo—a position
that Janet Gyatso has noted “always connotes the deepest truth.”74 But while
Zurkhar Lodrö Gyelpo’s argument for Yutok’s authorship has been taken
as a sign of historicist thinking, it also supported the legitimacy of the Zur
tradition’s Yutok Heart Essence guru practice (Skt. guru sādhana, Tib. bla sgrub).
As a guru practice, the Yutok Heart Essence relied on meditative identiication
with Yutok as a tantric master in order to accomplish the practitioner’s aims.
Gyurme Dorje has also distinguished the Yutok Heart Essence vis-à-vis “the
orthodox fountainhead” of practices venerating the Medicine Buddha, for
its “advanced meditative techniques of the generation and perfection stages”
and for upholding Yutok’s “pure visionary experience.”75 Historical arguments
identifying Yutok Yönten Gönpo as the main igure responsible for the Four
Tantras’ codiication created the narrative structure for the Zur tradition’s
unique Yutok Heart Essence tantric practices, which were inherited by the
Tsarong school.
For the Fith Dalai Lama also, the Four Tantras’ origin was not just
a matter of history. In the Tsarong school Guidelines, the Fith Dalai Lama
declared the Four Tantras unequivocally the “sacred word of the King of
Medicine [Medicine Buddha]” (sman rgyal gyis bka’ stsal), and speciically
rejected the idea that the text could be a composition of Yutok Yönten Gönpo.76
The Guidelines states:
Many people assert that the Four Tantras is a treatise written by Yutok Yönten
Gönpo, but in this tradition the lineage of Yutok actually includes the King of
Medicine [Medicine Buddha] as principal within the man. d. ala, so it seems this
[assertion] is nothing but an oral tradition.77
Not only did the Fith Dalai Lama disparage arguments for Yutok’s authorship
of the Four Tantras as “nothing but an oral tradition,” he collapsed historical
narrative and ritual structure with the assertion that the Medicine Buddha
should be considered the principal igure within the same man. d. ala as Yutok
Yönten Gönpo. This assertion was mirrored within two supplemental works
that the Fith Dalai Lama wrote for the Yutok Heart Essence practice, including
74.
75.
76.
77.
Gyatso, “The Authority of Empiricism and the Empiricism of Authority,” 91.
Gyurme Dorje, “The Buddhas of Medicine,” 142, 150.
Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi bca’ yig,” 113.
Ibid.
MEDICINE AS IMPARTIAL KNOWLEDGE
281
a lineage supplication prayer and an activity manual (las byang) entitled the
Wish-fulilling Tree.78 The lineage prayer referred to Yutok as the human manifestation, or guise (mi yi rnam rol), of the Medicine Buddha, while the activity
manual called Yutok inseparable (dbyer med du) from the Medicine Buddha
and identiied him as an emanation of the Medicine Buddha’s speech.79 While
identifying these two medical progenitors together, these works defended the
Medicine Buddha’s status as the primary progenitor of the Tibetan medical
tradition. In the process, the Fith Dalai Lama also defended the deity’s primary ritual status and supported the creation of an integrated but hierarchical
ritual framework for the Medicine Buddha Sūtra liturgy and the Yutok Heart
Essence guru practice.
At the same time that he promoted the Medicine Buddha Sūtra ritual,
therefore, the Fith Dalai Lama authorized the continuing practice of the
Yutok Heart Essence among his Zur physicians. By identifying the Medicine
Buddha as the primary progenitor of Tibetan medicine, however, the Fith
Dalai Lama created a narrative framework that privileged veneration of the
Medicine Buddha through the Medicine Buddha Sūtra ritual over veneration of
Yutok Yönten Gönpo through the Yutok Heart Essence practice. The Fith Dalai
Lama also sought to reform the Yutok Heart Essence practice through his new
ritual manual. In his colophon to the Wish-fulilling Tree, the Fith Dalai Lama
remarked that he had “condensed the many words” of the Yutok Heart Essence
practice, and rewritten unwholesome (mi bde ba’i) sections.80 Nevertheless,
the hierarch stated that he had kept the main part of the tantric cycle since
“perhaps it contains blessings,” and that he had endeavored to assimilate “all
the new and old secret mantra teachings without mixing the traditions.”81 In
this way, the Fith Dalai Lama presented the Yutok Heart Essence as a lawed
but redeemable practice, and his own revisions as a necessary reform to the
Zur medical tradition. He also expressed a desire to reconcile “all the new and
78. The Fith Dalai Lama wrote the Wish-fulilling Tree in 1648 at the request of his court physician
Jangngö Nangso Dargyé; Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “G.yu thog snying thig gi las byang
dpag bsam ljon shing/,” in Gsung ’bum/ Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho/, vol. 28 (a), 28 vols. (Beijing:
krung go’i bod rig pa dpe skrun khang, 2009), 57–70.
79. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “G.yu thog snying thig gi brgyud ’debs smon lam,” in
Gsung ’bum/ Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho/, vol. 18 (tsha) (Beijing: Krung go’i bod rig pa dpe
skrun khang, 2009), 357; Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “G.yu thog snying thig gi las byang
dpag bsam ljon shing/,” 57.
80. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “G.yu thog snying thig gi las byang dpag bsam ljon
shing/,” 70.
81. Ibid.
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old secret mantra teachings” of Tibetan Buddhism—in other words, the tantric
systems of the Nyingma, or Old Tradition, and the New Traditions (Gsar ma)
including Sakya, Kagyü and Kadam (predecessors of the Gelukpa)—within
his state medical system.
Teaching the View vs. Teaching the Methods:
The Fifth Dalai Lama’s Medical Exegesis
The Guidelines’ opening discussion sheds further light on the relationship
between historical narratives and doctrinal debates in the production of medical orthodoxy. The Fith Dalai Lama began the Guidelines by classifying
medicine among the ive major ields of Buddhist knowledge and within the
framework of the Great Vehicle path of a bodhisattva.82 Echoing one of the
earliest Tibetan medical histories, the Soaring Garuda, he wrote, “The ive subjects are grammar and logic that refute proponents of wrong views, manufactures and medicine that [provide] care for others, and interior knowledge that
is omniscience itself.”83 Paraphrasing Shantideva, an Indian Buddhist scholar
oten referenced within the Gelukpa tradition, the Fith Dalai Lama further
argued that the interior knowledge (nang rig pa) of Buddhist realization is not
a suicient goal for the Great Vehicle path because “bodhisattvas must pursue
learning to achieve the welfare of other beings, [and] particularly the ield of
medicine.”84 Here the Fith Dalai Lama argued unequivocally that in caring
for others, medicine fulilled one of three main Buddhist educational goals
and constituted an essential component of the bodhisattva path. Moreover, by
characterizing medical treatment as a material demonstration of the bodhisattva ideal, the Fith Dalai Lama sought to characterize his medical patronage
as a demonstration of legitimate governance.85 However, the Great Vehicle
framework held implications for the tantric portion of the Tsarong medical
curriculum as well. In light of the range of possible aims for ritual practices
82. On the Soaring Garuda (Khyung chen lding ba), see Garrett, “Buddhism and the Historicising
of Medicine in Thirteenth-Century Tibet,” 213. On the ive ields of knowledge (rig gnas lnga) in the
Fith Dalai Lama and Desi Sanggyé Gyatso’s governance activities, see Schaefer, “New Scholarship
in Tibet, 1650–1700.”
83. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi bca’ yig,” 112.
84. Ibid.
85. Kurtis R. Schaefer, “Textual Scholarship, Medical Tradition, and Mahayana Buddhist Ideals
in Tibet,” Journal of Indian Philosophy 31 (2003), 621–41; Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World.
MEDICINE AS IMPARTIAL KNOWLEDGE
283
accompanying medicine, the Fith Dalai Lama’s argument served to warn
physicians not to undertake these practices only to achieve insuicient goals
such as interior knowledge.
In the next section of the Guidelines, the Fith Dalai Lama explicitly
discussed a distinction between beneicial methods of medical treatment, and
the wrong views or heterodoxy that might accompany medical practice. The
Fith Dalai Lama approached the problem of heterodoxy by describing the
three medical traditions that are presented as precursors of the Four Tantras
within the root medical text itself.86 In the Guidelines, these three traditions are
associated with the earliest origins of medicine in India and with three major
Hindu deities.87 The Fith Dalai Lama acknowledged that this association of
Tibetan medical heritage with non-Buddhist deities and doctrines presented a
problem for the classiication of medicine as a Buddhist subject. With regard
to this problem, he cited a stone pillar from the Tibetan imperial period that
read, “Even though these Vedic traditions are false, some among the Tradition
of the Great Treatises [Buddhism] still teach them. If anyone asks, in general
and in particular they are a fable.”88 Nevertheless, despite the falsity of the Vedic
traditions’ doctrinal and ritual frameworks, the Fith Dalai Lama argued that
“in a wider sense, all the life-sustaining methods of medicine are not unsuitable
to advocate.”89 Through this distinction between the wrong views of some
medical traditions and their suitable methods, the Guidelines pointed to how
medical knowledge from heterodox systems could still be incorporated within
an orthodox context. In doing so, the Fith Dalai Lama provided a crucial
basis for the synthesis and institutionalization of Tibetan medical traditions.
The Guidelines further discussed the authorization of non-Buddhist medical knowledge through a story of the Tibetan imperial ruler Tri Songdetsen,
who was said to have invited various foreign physicians from India, China, and
Central Asia to his court in the eighth century. The Fith Dalai Lama described
these foreign physicians translating medical texts at Samyé monastery “with
faithful hearts,” collaborating with Padmasambhava (the Central Asian adept
86. See Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World, 149–150.
87. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi bca’ yig,” 113. The Fith
Dalai Lama associated the lha’i lugs with the medical text Gso dpyad ’bum sde and the god Brahma
(taught the medical text by the Buddha), the drang srong gi lugs with the disciples of Indra (brgya
byin) and the Caraka Sam
. hitā and the phyi rol pa’i lugs with the matted-hair disciples of Shiva
(dbang phyug chen po).
88. Ibid.
89. Ibid.
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credited with bringing Buddhism to Tibet) and Tibetan assistants.90 Although
the foreign physicians and their treatments were not explicitly Buddhist, the
Dalai Lama wrote that
Because the Tibetan king, ministers and subjects all listened with respect, some
[Tibetans] became life-giving physicians themselves, and all the black-haired
Tibetans honored them. How is this not the bestowal of life? All the black-hairs’
deities were ierce, but they also paid homage, and so the title Lhajé (lha rje),
“king of deities,” was bestowed [on the physicians].91
Dating from a fourteenth-century medical history, this narrative famously
explained the origin of the title Lhajé for physicians of high esteem.92 The term
quite literally invoked the ritual superiority of physicians to ierce indigenous
Tibetan deities, at a time when Buddhism was still taking root. Remarkably,
this story reversed the usual formula of medicine as a Buddhist missionary
activity par excellence, and instead the Fith Dalai Lama depicted foreign (and
likely non-Buddhist) physicians receiving honor from Tibetans. This narrative
directly tied the Fith Dalai Lama’s own patronage of new medical translations—by Indian scholars working with his court physicians—to the glory
of the Tibetan imperial period.93 In this context, the hierarch’s commentary
served to authorize the circulation of medical methods between non-orthodox and orthodox contexts, and in turn to encourage innovation in medical
knowledge.
The heart of the Fith Dalai Lama’s work in the Guidelines, however,
is a detailed doctrinal argument for how the Four Tantras should be studied
within an integrated ritual framework drawing from the tantric systems of
both the Nyingma tradition and New Traditions—in other words, across the
spectrum of Tibetan Buddhism. “In terms of the hidden aspect of the lineage,”
the Fith Dalai Lama stated, the Four Tantras should be practiced as both the
“generation of the ‘four empowerments’ according to the various lineages of
the Medicine King,” a reference to the Highest Yoga Tantra (anuttara yoga
tantra) class associated with the New Traditions, and also as the “system of
the Heart Essence of the Great Perfection” associated with the Nyingma
90. Ibid., 115.
91 Ibid., 115–116.
92. This episode is irst recounted in the medical history of Brang ti Dpal ldan ’tsho byed (14th
century). See Garrett, “Critical Methods in Tibetan Medical Histories,” 370.
93. On these Indian medical scholars at the Fith Dalai Lama’s court, see Schaefer, “New
Scholarship in Tibet, 1650–1700.”
MEDICINE AS IMPARTIAL KNOWLEDGE
285
tradition.94 The Fith Dalai Lama went on to argue that although the Four
Tantras was sometimes considered an Action Tantra (kriya tantra), the lowest
class of tantra according to the New Traditions, “there is no need for the
weariness” of this classiication, “since it belongs among the Supreme Nectar
of Life class of tantras, in the eight classes of [Nyingma] Mahayoga.”95 In this
way, the Fith Dalai Lama presented the Four Tantras according to a framework
that uniied the tantric systems of the New Traditions and the Nyingma
tradition, while classifying the Four Tantras in the New Traditions’ system as
the highest rather than the lowest division of tantra. The Guidelines speciied
that this framework provided authorization in particular for correct practice
of the Yutok Heart Essence or “the secret Medicine Buddha sādhana of Lord
Yutok.”96 More generally, however, the Fith Dalai Lama’s exegesis provided an
integrated foundation for all tantric practice at the Tsarong school, according
to his new ritual manuals.
Finally the Fith Dalai Lama situated the Four Tantras within an exposition of the Middle Way (Madhyamaka), a doctrinal position that Gelukpa
scholars oten debated with the scholars of other traditions. Nevertheless, the
Guidelines presented the Fith Dalai Lama’s interpretation of this doctrine as
a universal ethical framework for medical practice, arguing that “the Middle
Way is an unobstructed view beyond all concepts of too little, too much or
the wrong kind.”97 The Fith Dalai Lama speciically mentioned cultivating
the positive mental qualities of the four immeasurables (loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity), avoiding “the ten nonvirtues [of]
madness, derangement, impropriety, wrongdoing, etc.” with the help of taking
uncorrupted vows, and practicing “the path of the Six Perfections [generosity, discipline, forbearance, diligence, meditative stability, and discriminating
knowledge] with a resolve towards bodhisattva-hood.”98 The Six Perfections
were presented here as positive behavioral disciplines, which the Fith Dalai
Lama explained speciically in reference to the practice of medicine:
Forbearance is to tolerate the expressions of lethargy, toil, cold, hunger and
sickness. Diligence is the efort of treating sick people without laziness. Meditative stability is thinking about the contemplation of medical treatment. Dis-
94. “sman rgyal rigs ’dus kyi dbang bzhi bskyed … rdzogs pa chen po’i lam zab mo’i snying tig gi srol,”
Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi bca’ yig,” 116.
95. Ibid.
96. Ibid., 115.
97. Ibid., 116.
98. Ibid.
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criminating knowledge is the arising of certain knowledge of healing through
medical treatment.99
Not only did the hierarch exhort physicians to demonstrate diligence
by treating sick people without laziness, he deined the study of medicine as
the contemplation of medical treatment and subsequent arising of certain
knowledge of healing, seemingly a reference to the attainment of medical
knowledge through empirical observation. In this way, he argued, “the blessing
of the medicinal substances will be bestowed.”100
While the Fith Dalai Lama presented his exegesis as universal and “the
aspiration to highest enlightenment [as] an unmistaken door,” he added that
“entering the door of other vehicles is unnecessary.“101 The tension inherent
in this latter statement derived from the Dalai Lama’s distinction between
“ordinary practices” of medicine and practices along with “doctrinal view,
meditation, and conduct”; he went on to disparage unnamed “elders who
make mudrās to others with whatever sort of mental concepts.”102 While mudrās
refer to symbolic ritual gestures (such as the hand positions of deities in
paintings and statues), the term also literally translates as “seals”—making
it also possibly a dismissive reference to the tantric system of the Great Seal
(Mahāmudrā) greatly linked to the Kagyü tradition and practiced by the controversial Zurkhar Lodrö Gyelpo.103 To support his own argument, the Fith Dalai
Lama quoted Zurkhar Nyamnyi Dorjé on the importance of practicing tantra
for the sake of others: “Surely the point of this existence is not only to attain
the higher realms and liberation! If one does not rely on laws and the Tantric
Vehicle (Vajrayāna) for the sake of others, these will not be attained.”104 Since
the progenitor of the Zur medical tradition himself made such a statement,
the Dalai Lama argued, “even if there are points of doubt [among Zur and
Tsarong lineage practitioners] I think they will dissolve of their own accord.
If not they are doubts of attachment drawn like water from the valley of the
Kagyüpa.”105 This is the Fith Dalai Lama’s most explicit reference to the main
99. Ibid.
100. Ibid.
101. Ibid.
102. Ibid., 117.
103. In discussing the correct tantric framework for the Yutok Heart Essence, Desi Sanggyé Gyatso
mentioned Zurkhar Lodrö Gyelpo’s commitment to the Great Seal system and accused the Zur
scholar of seeking to discredit the Nyingma Dzokchen (Rdzogs chen) system. Desi Sangye Gyatso
and Kilty, Mirror of Beryl, 309.
104. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi bca’ yig,” 117.
105. Ibid.
MEDICINE AS IMPARTIAL KNOWLEDGE
287
target of his medical reforms: those Zur medical practitioners still inluenced
by the Kagyü Buddhist tradition of his rivals.
Conclusion: Medicine as impartial and useful knowledge
In the opening verses of the Guidelines, the Fith Dalai Lama wrote that
his motivation for patronizing the Tsarong school arose from “beholding
the unsurpassed git of immortality [given by the ield of medicine] to all
beings irrespective of tradition, and the desire out of the highest intention of
liberation to establish [this ield] in both Ü and Tsang.”106 Repeatedly, the Fith
Dalai Lama characterized medicine as a type of non-sectarian or impartial
knowledge, and expressed his aim to heal the trauma of the recent MongolTsang war through his patronage of the King of Tsang’s former medical school.
Still, at the same time he attempted to “beneit enemies, [and] make enemies
into friends,” the hierarch also appropriated Tsarong technologies from Tsang
for his state medical system.107 What is more, the dual dimensions of medical
training point to a potential problem with teaching this knowledge impartially.
The Fith Dalai Lama’s appeal to medicine’s material methods of treatment as
universally and empirically beneicial constituted a very diferent sort of claim
than the appeal to a uniied tantric framework for medicine as impartial with
regard to sectarian belief.
The Fith Dalai Lama compared “the king of medicine in human form”
Yutok Yonten Gonpo to “a great tree of amrita medicine that is the wealth
of all beings impartially, endowed with inconceivably marvelous qualities,”
and depicted Yutok’s activities and lineage as spreading in all directions of
Ü-Tsang.108 As the inheritors of Yutok’s tradition, the Dalai Lama listed major
Drangti, Jang, and Zur tradition igures, and he characterized the head Tsarong
medical teacher Tsarong Tseten Dorjé as a “holder of the old Brahmanical
Snowland lineage of the important Tsarongpa physicians from Upper Tsang.”109
106. Ibid., 118.
107. Ibid., 117.
108. Ibid., 118.
109. “gangs can tshangs pa rgan po’i brgyud ’dzin mkhan/gnad rigs ’tsho byed gtsang stod tsha rong pa/”
The list of those inheriting Yutok’s tradition includes Rigs ldan chen po Rnam rgyal grags bzang,
Brang ti pa yab sras, Byang sman ’Tso mdzad mtha’ klas pa, Zur mkhar chos rje Mnyam nyid rdo
rje, Mtsho smad mkhan chen shA kya dbang phyug, and “the peerless” Byar po paN chen; Ibid.,
111.
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STACEY VAN VLEET
In this way, despite the polemics that had resulted from the relationships
between various medical traditions and diferent Tibetan Buddhist traditions,
the Fith Dalai Lama modeled inclusivity, presenting the Four Tantras as belonging equally to all Tibetans and indeed to all beings. The Fith Dalai Lama also
referred to Tsarong Tseten Dorjé as a friend who, being “on the excellent path,”
acted as the “impartial and clear-minded” teacher of many at his “school holding the knowledge of truly vanquishing death.”110 By identifying medicine as
an impartial ield of knowledge and Tsarong Pöntsang as an impartial teacher,
however, the Fith Dalai Lama himself assumed the role of the highest arbiter
of impartiality.
The Fith Dalai Lama’s exegesis created a narrative framework for his
new versions of the Medicine Buddha Sūtra liturgy and Yutok Heart Essence practice, bracketing the diferences between Tibetan tantric systems and attempting to encompass them within a state medical orthodoxy. In particular, while
authorizing Zur tantric and medical practices at the Tsarong school, the Fith
Dalai Lama targeted “wrong views” that he attributed to the Zur tradition’s
connections to the Kagyü order. To enable the impartial transmission of medical knowledge across Tibetan and foreign contexts, the Fith Dalai Lama put
forward a creative distinction with regard to the nature of medical knowledge. He separated wrong views and faulty tantric frameworks attributed to
heterodox traditions, which could be refuted, from their medical treatment
methods, which could still be suitable to practice. What made these medical
methods suitable to practice, he argued, was a reliance on correct bodhisattva
motivation and ethical discipline. The Fith Dalai Lama’s approach is remarkably reminiscent of seventeenth century (in other words, contemporary) British
natural philosophers such as Robert Boyle, who also bracketed metaphysical
concerns in order to get on with the work of empirical observation and to
claim that his indings were not a challenge to the Church.111 The Fith Dalai
Lama’s framework for medical study, however, cast empirical knowledge concerning human bodies and the natural world as not just useful knowledge
within the mundane world, but as beneicial knowledge in the dual Buddhist
sense of both mundane and ultimate beneit.
110. Ngag dbang blo bzang rgya mtsho, “Drang srong ’dus pa’i gling gi bca’ yig,” 111.
111. Steven Shapin and Simon Schafer, Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the
Experimental Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).
MEDICINE AS IMPARTIAL KNOWLEDGE
289
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