Compassion as Remedy in Tibetan Medicine: Healing through Limitless Compassion

This translation and commentary on an ancient Tibetan Buddhist text helps readers grasp the essence of healing and teaches healthcare practitioners how to develop limitless compassion, a quality that is essential—as our current healthcare situation makes starkly clear. Compassion as Remedy is a quietly revolutionary book about healthcare, ethics, and spiritual practice delivered as a commentary on a 2,500-year-old Tibetan text—the rGyud-bZhi (The Four Tantras), which is the guiding treatise for Traditional Tibetan Medicine. This book, which is a translation of “The Physician Chapter” of rGyud-bZhi, helps readers grasp the essence of healing and teaches healthcare practitioners how to develop limitless compassion, a quality that is essential—as our current healthcare situation makes starkly clear. Moral development and the practice of compassion should be of great importance to all medical practitioners and “The Physician Chapter” provides detailed instructions, drawn from a millennia-old culture and tradition that is attracting increased attention. Although many books have been written about Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and more, there are very few approachable books regarding the unique features of Tibetan medicine and spiritual and meditation practice. By integrating healthcare with spiritual practice, Compassion as Remedy provides guidelines for ethics, along with suggestions for developing wisdom and compassion. Throughout the world today, both medical practitioners and their patients are increasingly curious about holistic healing traditions, seeking to find natural, organic, and noninvasive remedies with few side effects. This book shows that compassion itself is a source for the alleviation of suffering. Dr. Yonten includes examples from his clinical practice, drawn from cross-cultural perspectives and neuroscience, giving readers a rare view of compassion as remedy. In the words of His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, one of Dr. Yonten’s teachers, “The ideal physician is one who combines sound medical understanding with compassion and wisdom.”