Tibetan Medicine

Hi Jeff: Good question. I can only guess that whe...

2010-06-23T15:03:06.510-04:00

Hi Jeff:

Good question. I can only guess that when explicitly Buddhist topics are involved, the Indian dhātus are used. There is no presence of the Chinese five phases system in any Buddhist text that I am aware of.

The only presence of any part of Nag rtsi in a specifically Buddhist text is the 12 animals, which are found in the Dzogchen tantra sgra thal gyur. ChNN argues that this proves the Nag rtsi is not necessarily Chinese.

I think that he is correct in one aspect, the twelve animals themselves originated in Babylon and travelled to China - so it is possible, if one accepts that the sgra thal gyur is an actual translation of a central Asian Indic text [which seems improbable to me at this point], that they made their way into this Dzogchen tantra in Central Asia. But that does not really prove that Nag rtsi is a native Tibetan tradition.

Otherwise, I think the Chinese five phases are entirely connected to the outer sciences of Medicine and Nag rtsi.

pleasure to find such a good artical! please keep ...

2010-06-15T05:15:31.241-04:00

pleasure to find such a good artical! please keep update!!........................................

Intriguing. I look forward to the next part. One q...

2010-06-04T12:58:34.275-04:00

Intriguing. I look forward to the next part. One question: is there a reason why the Chinese system of five elements is used in some places over the Indian dhatu system? Is it a matter of convention or is there a specific reason?

回應是最大的支持^^y~~~甘吧嗲....................................

2010-05-12T19:27:10.699-04:00

回應是最大的支持^^y~~~甘吧嗲........................................

If pen and ink be wit's plough, you don't seem to ...

2010-05-11T08:25:18.982-04:00

If pen and ink be wit's plough, you don't seem to be digging up much dirt recently. And it's past spring planting time. Write for us. Write for us. Write for us.

(I should talk, in a retreat, too!)

Pen and ink is wits plough. .........................

2010-05-06T22:00:05.411-04:00

Pen and ink is wits plough. ......................................................

I wanted to share an incredible source for free ed...

2010-02-12T16:37:13.673-05:00

I wanted to share an incredible source for free educational content, videos, articles, and learning tools. This ayurvedic school has online videos of their classes for FREE! ... to visit the website click on:

http://www.ayurvedaacademy.com

Regards,

Rick Roux

Nice article. It helps explain why I love chai.

2009-12-14T01:18:45.275-05:00

Nice article. It helps explain why I love chai.

It just struck me as I was leaving. We're talking...

2009-12-12T16:05:46.100-05:00

It just struck me as I was leaving. We're talking about gooey stuff. Goo, in fact. Hmmm...

Choler is kholos?

http://tinyurl.com/yd229mh

Which, anyway, is not to say that Sanskrit śleṣman...

2009-12-12T15:49:58.704-05:00

Which, anyway, is not to say that Sanskrit śleṣman is not itself ultimately, in some PIE level, related to the Greek. Just that the Tibetan is not explained by the Sanskrit, and is so much closer to the Greek.

I think there is something about this 'phlegm' connection in this article by the late Marianne Winder, Tibetan Medicine Compared with Ancient and Mediaeval Western Medicine, Bulletin of Tibetology n.s. vol. 1 (1981), pp. 14-15. And I think this article can be found in a PDF here (even if you've likely already read it, I thought some of your readers might find it interesting for addressing Greek-Tibetan medical comparison):

http://tinyurl.com/ybdes9m

Fascinating stuff, Dan. It is interesting to see t...

2009-12-11T10:21:08.630-05:00

Fascinating stuff, Dan. It is interesting to see the way in which Hippocrates discusses phlegm in terms more or less identical to those later found TTM.

Thanks for the article!

M

Dear Malcolm, That's really fascinating stuff. ...

2009-12-11T04:46:29.501-05:00

Dear Malcolm,

That's really fascinating stuff. Very soon a conference paper ought to come out that shows with abundant clarity that one old Tibetan text (the So-ma-ra-dza) derived its entire outline for discussing urinalysis from a Graeco-Islamic text on that subject. The paper is by Ronit Yoeli-Tlalim of the Welcome Institute in London.

So given that there is a wider context for such word borrowings that makes them more worth entertaining, more likely even. I'm no Greek expert, but you do have to keep in mind that 'y' and 'u' are often interchangeable in that language. Thyme is for 'courage' (thumos, perhaps related as has sometimes been suggested with gtum-mo — see Todd Gibson's dissertation of 1991, page 84, where he argues that it means a swirling internal heat in Greece, also), after all.

We have another medical term that probably stems from Greek used in Tibetan (& Mongolian, with slight difference) medicine. It's a fairly well-known idea, at least, that bad-kan descends from the Greek word phlegma (the systemic humour, and not just the stuff we tend to cough up this time of year, as I guess everybody here knows anyway).

http://tinyurl.com/y8ejhfo

Speaking of east-west medical exchange, I think you would find this PDF article entertaining if you haven't seen it yet:

http://tinyurl.com/y9uxv7k

Keep on writing. Cheers!

Dan

Hi Sten: Nice to see your face around -- as to yo...

2009-12-05T09:06:17.751-05:00

Hi Sten:

Nice to see your face around -- as to your question, there is no problem at all with adding a bit of nutmeg if someone has an vāta imbalance, in particular, a vāta-related heart illnesses. It also supports the metabolic heat and so on.

Excellent post, fantastic recipe. An excellent dri...

2009-12-05T08:58:29.517-05:00

Excellent post, fantastic recipe. An excellent drink for the cold season.

Would it be very wrong to add a little nutmeg to the decoction, for the vāta-unbalanced type? Or do you perhaps know some other delicious recipe for calming down the winds?

But that Indian 'Bay Leaf' just has a slight cinna...

2009-11-13T10:05:48.930-05:00

But that Indian 'Bay Leaf' just has a slight cinnamon 'edge' in the taste. Really nice added to dal. Much bigger than your usual bay leaves. Malabothrum / Malabathrum is actually the westernized form of the Sanskrit name Tamala-patra. It was very well known in the Mediterranean world just a few millennia ago. Here's my vocabulary entry for it:

TA MĀ LA generally, tamālapatra, which was known in Roman times as a popular Indian import (for spice and medicinal purposes) which they called Malabathrum (see Hobson-Jobson). It's much mentioned in the Periplus, dating from the 1st century. As suggested by its name, it is practically synonymous with darkness and blackness. In Aśvaghoṣa's Saundarananda (chap. 4, verse 20) a paste made from this leaf is used for making painted designs on the woman's cheeks. Sometimes called the Cinnamon Laurel, it is rather like the common Bay Leaf, but has a cinnamon-like taste, and a strong fragrance (and it's very much larger). Although in fact it sometimes has been (by western writers), it should never be confused with the leaf used in betel preparations, which is correctly called tāmbūlapattra (tambul). For a discussion of the blackness of its flowers, see Helen M. Johnson, Tamāla and Vetra, JAOS 64 (1944) 224.

If I were anyone but me I'd pick some up next trip to Kathmandu. For me it goes without saying.

Shing tsha is the Tibetan word for Cinnamon in gen...

2009-11-12T17:34:42.336-05:00

Shing tsha is the Tibetan word for Cinnamon in general, and specifically, the species identified by bga' ba rdo rje in his materia medica is "Cinnamomum aromaticum", though I am sure that in Southern India where Cinnamomum verum is common, it applies equally to it as well.

Dr. Arya misidentifies it in his book, where he assumes it refers to Cinnamomum tamala, which is commonly called the Indian Bay Leaf (malabathrum, which actually led me to another interesting link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periplus_Maris_Erytraei). The bark is not generally used, but rather the the leaves instead.

Hi M, I'm always trying to improve my Tibetan voc...

2009-11-12T16:32:20.110-05:00

Hi M,

I'm always trying to improve my Tibetan vocabulary. Is shing-tsha the Tibetan word for cinnamon or for cassia (and by cassia don't you mean a particular variety of cinnamon, or do you mean an entirely different species?)

My enquiring mind wants to know. Excuse the confusion. I love that yogi tea. I never boil it, just steep it.

Yours, D

In general, as I mentioned, this tea for supportin...

2009-11-11T09:30:39.853-05:00

In general, as I mentioned, this tea for supporting one's metabolism -- one can reduce the heat in it by excluding pepper. Apparently, from the point of view of Chinese medicine, clove is cooling and even though it is listed as warming in Tibetan medicine, it also actually grouped among a trio called the three cooling herbs i.e. bamboo manna, saffron and clove. Clove, as mentioned in the main post is used to control the life wind. If cardamon is added to these two herbs, it is used to remove heat from the lower region without damaging the heat of the kidneys and so forth.

So if this preparation is too warming, you can make it without pepper and and add couple of strands of saffron when you are heating it up with however much milk you like.

Hi Malcolm, One more question....so if i read cor...

2009-11-10T17:53:09.345-05:00

Hi Malcolm,

One more question....so if i read correctly, can i use this tea to cool the body?
I have been told that i have too much heat by chinese doctors.
I do eat a lot of chillies (the thai kind for the most part) and prefer my food very spicy.
Thanks.

Hi UDPN Boiling milk, any milk, lightens it. Un...

2009-11-10T15:43:31.336-05:00

Hi UDPN

Boiling milk, any milk, lightens it.

Unhomogenized milk is better than homogenized milk, because the fat molecules in homogenized milk pass undigested into the blood stream, and lead to various problems.

You can store it in the fridge.

M

I gave it a try and I'm now in my second pot! than...

2009-11-10T15:22:04.135-05:00

I gave it a try and I'm now in my second pot!
thank you for this recipe.
How long can you store it for? and is it ok to put in the fridge (for storage)?
I drink tazo chai (bag) and noticed that the ingredients are the same with the exception of star anise.
Also....you mentioned about boiled raw milk. I have Unpasteurized, whole foods is not selling raw milk anymore but I did not boil it. I just pour some in the tea and sweeten it with honey.

Hi Anita: It is true that Cassia contains 10 time...

2009-11-08T19:25:09.976-05:00

Hi Anita:

It is true that Cassia contains 10 times the amount of courmin than true cinnamon. The reason for the identification here is two-fold, one most people confuse the two plants with one another and do not the difference.

The second reason is that in Tibetan materia medica it indeed Cassia that is identified rather than true cinnamon, which would have been historically more difficult for Tibetans to obtain. There is little doubt that in Ayurveda, true cinnamon would have been the ingredient of choice.

So, if you can afford true cinnamon, it is best to use; but in the amounts of cassia being consumed by having a cup or two of Yogi Tea a day, I think there is little danger of toxicity.

Finally, true cinnamon is not that easy to come by in the United States, and I wanted to clarify for people that the spice they call cinnamon, is actually something else.

Thanks for reading,

M

Malcolm: About the cinnamon in your Yogi Tea, whic...

2009-11-08T16:30:12.502-05:00

Malcolm: About the cinnamon in your Yogi Tea, which I'm keen to steep up asap, I thought that Ceylon cinnamon was the easiest on the Liver and best for balancing blood sugar, that although Cassia smells lovely, it can be toxic, as well as too much of Chinese cinnamon...the Latin names of which escape me right now. :)

and there is the element of surprise

2009-11-07T15:20:24.365-05:00

and there is the element of surprise

Cool! :) What a precious visit from this doctor.

2009-10-07T16:38:07.193-04:00

Cool! :) What a precious visit from this doctor.