Buddhism and Medicine
An Anthology of Premodern Sources
Edited by: C. Pierce Salguero
704 Pages
- Hardcover
- ISBN: 9780231179942
- Published By: Columbia University Press
- Published: August 2017
$150.00
Pierce Salguero is a leading member of a rapidly growing group of mostly younger scholars working on Asian medical traditions. Many of these scholars are represented in this volume, which is intended as the first of two volumes from Columbia University Press on Buddhism and medicine (the first deals with premodern sources; the second will deal with modern and contemporary sources). Salguero studied traditional Thai medicine in the late 1990s and wrote a series of textbooks on aspects of Thai healing. He subsequently undertook an MA in East Asian Studies at the University of Virginia and a PhD in the History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins. His dissertation formed the basis of his first major academic book, Translating Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). That book’s concern with religion and cross-cultural exchange is characteristic of Salguero’s work. The present book offers many examples, both in Salguero’s own contributions (he is responsible for the introduction and six of the chapters) and those of other scholars. The book’s format is familiar from the Princeton Readings in Religions and similar series. Each of the chapters (sixty-two in all) presents translations of one or more passages from an Asian source, preceded by an introduction and a list of further reading. The translations are in modern English, with minimal technical terms in Asian languages, and are followed by detailed notes. The volume includes a glossary and a list of the geographical locations of the readings. The chapters vary considerably in length: some are only three or four pages long, the longest is over thirty pages. The translations cover most of the traditional Buddhist world. The bulk are from Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese (including works by Korean and Vietnamese authors), Tibetan, and Japanese, but others include Korean, Khmer, Thai, and Mongolian. There are canonical sutras and collections of recipes, spells, and charms made by individual doctors, texts on why monks and nuns should not practice medicine, other texts on how to practice medicine, excerpts from medical manuals from the classical traditions of Asia alongside Tantric practices for driving out ghosts and evil spirits, and much else. As Salguero notes in his clear and helpful introduction, the volume “makes available for the first time a wide range of translations of primary sources from across premodern Asia that exemplify this very multifaceted nature of the historical relationship between Buddhism and healing” (xxii). Some benefits of this mass of material are the multiple connections and contrasts between the readings. The classical analogy between the teachings of the historical Buddha Śākyamuni and a medical prescription comes in many forms. Sometimes the moral is that one should not waste time dealing with worldly illness. Elsewhere, by contrast, practicing the Buddhist teachings is itself seen as a powerful healing technique. Jīvaka, the Buddha’s personal doctor, and Bhaiṣajyaguru, the “Buddha of Medicine,” each appear repeatedly, and the reader can see how they were understood and imagined differently across space and time. Tantric and esoteric medical rituals feature in several chapters. As Michael Slouber points out in relation to snakebite rituals, in the absence of antivenom serum, providing a patient with reassurance and encouraging calm rather than panic, might itself be of real therapeutic value. The same might be said of Andrew Macober’s description of the Japanese ritual response to an epidemic, and other examples. But the therapeutic effect of exorcism for forms of psychiatric illness has been recognized and analyzed at length by medical anthropologists, and the internal manipulation of prāṇa and qi may well have direct physiological effects on the body’s immune system. These last two chapters form part of a fascinating section on “meditation as cure and illness,” with Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, and Thai contributions discussing both how meditation can give rise to illness and how it can be used to balance the body’s elements and so bring about healing. But Robban Toleno gives us something different in chapter 39: a parody in which aspects of Buddhist practice are given quasi-medical descriptions: “Meditation (chan). Its flavour is sweet and its nature is cooling. It pacifies the heart, drives off evil qi, opens obstructions and stagnation, clears the blood vessels, clarifies the mind, benefits the will, halts [the aging of the] facial complexion, and removes distress” (400). Salguero has clearly worked hard to achieve consistency among his highly varied sources, but a few lapses remain. Gregory Schopen provides a detailed and useful discussion of the provenance of the Sūtra of Bhaiṣajyaguru (235-36; 246 n2). In the next chapter, uninformed readers are left in the dark as to whether the text being translated (the Qianshou jing) is an Indian sūtra or a Chinese imitation; we are told only that the sūtra was “produced by Bhagavat-dharma during the Tang dynasty” (252). Some authors give us references to the text edition they are translating, others don’t. Some give the name of the text in the original language, others choose not to. None of this is vital, since it’s mainly scholars who would want to know this information, and they can usually work out the answer for themselves, but it would have been useful to have it included in the volume. The decision to keep the translations as free as possible from Asian languages is justifiable, but it can make it difficult for readers to work out which term is being translated by, for example, the “awakening factors” in chapter 2. The answer, bojjhaṅgā in Pali, doesn’t appear in the chapter notes, the glossary, or the index. These are minor cavils that might be addressed in a second edition. For the present, we can be very grateful for the cornucopia of fascinating material provided by Salguero and his collaborators. Even well-informed scholars will find new and unfamiliar things in this rich and varied collection, and students are likely to encounter many texts to engage their interest and stimulate further study. I recommend this book highly. Geoffrey Samuel is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studie at Cardiff University, and Honorary Associate in Buddhist Studies at the University of Sydney. Geoffrey SamuelDate Of Review:October 2, 2018
C. Pierce Salguero is associate professor of Asian history and religious studies at Pennsylvania State University’s Abington College. He is the author of Translating Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China (2014),Traditional Thai Medicine (2016), and numerous scholarly articles and popular works on Buddhism and traditional medicine in Asia.
C. Pierce Salguero’s recent anthology, Buddhism and Medicine, brings together a number of newly translated premodern sources to demonstrate the centuries-long links between Buddhism and various forms of healing practices throughout East Asia. On November 19th, 2017, at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion in Boston, I had the pleasure to meet with Dr. Salguero to discuss his recent book. –Kirsten Boles, Assistant Editor
KB: How did you become interested in the intersection of Buddhism and medicine?
PS: I came to be interested in this topic through my own experience being in Thailand and spending time in monasteries and meditation centers, as well as in traditional medicine schools. In each of those different communities I saw very strong and deep engagement with the other. When I was in the monastery, I would see monastic doctors using local plants and local traditional medicine to heal monks in the community. Then in the traditional medicine centers, I saw a lot of engagement with ritual, meditation, and other forms of practice. So I became really interested in that intersection between those two fields.
This was before I became a graduate student, so I went into academics with this question: Where did that start? Initially I was interested in tracing the history of Thai Buddhist engagements with traditional medicine, but as I started to investigate that from a more historical perspective, it became clear that those connections actually go way beyond just Thailand. My scope started expanding to Southeast Asia and then started including China, India, and Tibet and then moved farther and farther into the past as I did more reading of the scholarship.
By the time I was done with my Masters degree program, it was pretty clear to me that Buddhism has had a very close relationship with medicine all the way back. The exact configuration of that relationship and how it plays out is different in different cultures and different traditions of Buddhism, but the intersection itself is a common theme. I hesitate to say this is a feature of Buddhism everywhere, but it seems like there isn’t a culture that I’m aware of where Buddhism isn’t in some way connected with medicine or health. Even today in modern Western forms of Buddhism, there’s a fascination with the connection between mindfulness and psychological well-being. So even in what are often characterized as secular forms of Buddhism, there’s still this emphasis on healing and well-being.
KB: This book is about premodern intersections between Buddhism and medicine. In what ways can we see the historical legacy of this premodern relationship in contemporary Buddhism?
PS: This book is the first of a three-volume set: it is an anthology of translations of premodern sources. The second volume is going to be an anthology of modern and contemporary sources, which will include translations of written works as well as transcripts of ethnographic interviews. Then the third volume will be a single-author synthesis of all of that material into a global history of Buddhism and medicine. Both the second and third volumes will focus on modern and contemporary continuities as well as ruptures with the past in terms of Buddhist engagement with medicine. But the final book will tie all of that together into some sort of narrative that I am working on right now. I intend that book to be very readable for wider audiences, not for specialists in Buddhism and Buddhist studies.
There are a couple of themes that will run through the second and third volumes. One addresses, as mentioned, modern continuities with and ruptures from the premodern sources across different countries in Asia. Accompanying the modernization of Buddhism, there was also a rethinking of how Buddhism plays a role in health in light of modern medical advances, scientific medicine, and biomedicine. These represent clear ruptures with traditional Buddhist notions of health. But then, on the flip side, there are also a lot of continuities with the past. There are practices that I read about in fifth or six century Chinese texts that are still being practiced today all over the Buddhist world. So, it’s neither ruptures nor continuities, it’s both.
Another theme running through the whole series is cross-cultural exchange. My last book was about medieval China and exchanges between India and China, so I am bringing an interest in cross-cultural exchange to this project as well. The central argument of all three volumes is that Buddhism is a vehicle for the intercultural exchange of medical ideas. As Buddhism spread initially from India to China to Southeast Asia, it brought with it medical ideas. Medical ideas were baked into the Buddhist tradition—in the texts, in the practices, in the institutions. As these Indian notions arrived in China, in Southeast Asia, in Tibet, how each one of those receiving cultures dealt with those Indian ideas was different. But in each case, Buddhism was a catalyst for cultural exchange throughout the premodern period between different cultures in Asia. My argument carries through to the present day, when Buddhism is yet again a catalyst for cross-cultural movements of notions about psychological well-being, mindfulness, meditation, and health. That’s a facet of the continuity I mentioned earlier: the way that Buddhism historically has and continues to play a role in facilitating an engagement with medical ideas.
KB: How did you get the idea to put together these sources for the premodern anthology?
PS: The book came together very organically. For my previous book on medieval China, I looked at a lot of Buddhist texts in medieval Chinese and had done some very rough translations to use in my writing. After the first book was finished I thought about what I could do with this material. It wasn’t quite enough to constitute a book on its own, so I reached out to friends of mine also working on medieval Chinese sources, asking if they had anything they would want to contribute. Next, I reached out to my Japanese colleagues to broaden the focus to East Asia as opposed to just China. I was just asking for anything anyone had sitting on their hard drive, perhaps the side products of other projects, like my own material was. And it turns out, a lot of people have that kind of material on hand, so a lot of it started coming in. The first volume has sixty-two chapters. The second volume, which is coming together now, will bring the total to about a hundred chapters. While some of this material is the result of new translations people did for the book, the vast majority of the sources were material people already had and were willing to contribute.
KB: Any particularly compelling or surprising material discovered during this research?
PS: I have learned so much from my colleagues about all of the regional and local variations in Buddhist engagements with healing and medicine. I love the subject matter, so it was a great learning experience to call upon seventy experts in their various fields and have them tell me what Buddhist engagements with medicine looked like in such diverse times and places.
It’s hard to choose, because there are so many different scholars from different disciplines that contributed. There’s philosophy; there are popular narratives about monks and Buddhists and bodhisattvas healing people; there’s doctrine; there are legal codes. There’s just such a wide variety of material that it’s hard to highlight any one in particular.
There are a few chapters that I think are exceptionally good for teaching, especially for teaching undergraduates. There are chapters that are very interactive. One of them, for example, includes instructions on how to memorize Buddhist concepts using your hand. There is another chapter on how to tell your medical fate according to your birthday, using charts included in the book. With both of these chapters, we have taken images from Chinese documents and translated them so that you can actually follow along. Interactive chapters like this will, I think, be really fun for students.
KB: How do you see this book contributing to the field of Buddhist studies?
PS: I am an interdisciplinary scholar, because while my PhD is in the history of medicine, all of the content that I deal with is Buddhist. I have always sort of straddled this line between two disciplines. I am really interested in how these two disciplines speak to one another and what the history of medicine can say to the history of Buddhist studies and vice versa. The main argument of this series—which I think it is reflected well in the materials contributed to the first volumes—is that you can’t separate the history of Buddhism from the history of medicine. They are so closely intertwined. I hope if there’s one contribution these books make to the field of Buddhist studies it is to illuminate how central healing, the body, medicine, and therapy are to the Buddhist tradition globally.
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