Tibetan Buddhist Medicine is a traditional holistic                                                           system of healing that goes back at least 2500 years. It evaluates symptoms, looks for the causes of disease, and incorporates herbs and foods as its medicine. Tibetan Buddhist Medicine’s herbal medicine cabinet includes plants, metals, gemstones, and even boiling water.

In addition, Tibetan Buddhist Medicine uses meditation, visualization, teachings, and mantra as forms of medicine. These “medicines” help to heal physical, mental, and emotional symptoms and diseases, but they also address the psychological and spiritual causes of disease and suffering. Karma, especially the fruition of negative karma, is greatly considered when looking for the causes of disease. Cause and effect, past life issues, and internalized negative emotions, called the Sleeping Dragon, are looked at as possible causes of disease and suffering.

Meditation, visualization, teachings, and mantra                                                                     are also tools used to address and free us from the three roots of disease, suffering, and cyclic existence, the cycle of rebirth into this realm. These three roots of all disease and suffering are: ignorance, desire, and anger.  At the center of Tibetan thangka, or wheel of life, paintings are three animals, each springing from the other’s mouth. These three animals represent the three roots of disease and suffering: The pig represents ignorance. The rooster represents desire or attachment. The snake represents anger or fear. Each of the three roots feeds off of and springs from one another. Each of the three roots of disease and suffering are both the cause and the result of each other.

Through practicing meditation and visualization, studying teachings, and chanting mantra we can strive to attain what Tibetan Buddhist Medicine considers the ultimate antidote for all disease and suffering – Love and Compassion! By understanding ourselves through self-reflection and self-awareness we can expand and open up our hearts to see the True Self. When our hearts are open we can heal ourselves from within and heal others by spreading love and compassion with-out.

All forms of meditation and all teachings, Buddhist or not, are medicine. Mantra can be an especially powerful medicine because it is both a meditation practice and a visualization practice. The Medicine Buddha Mantra in particular is said to be a great healing aid for all healing processes: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

I learned from a Lama that if we chant the Medicine Buddha Mantra while looking at or visualizing the Blue Medicine Buddha 10,000 times, we can heal ourselves from all disease and suffering. Let’s get started!

Teyata Om Bekandzay Bekandzay

Maha Behandzay

Radza Samudgate Soha

Om the Great Eliminator of all pain and suffering (the Medicine Buddha), supremely illuminated One!

To listen to the Medicine Buddha Mantra, click here.