The Buddha's Art of Healing: Tibetan Paintings Rediscovered [Hardcover]

John Avedon (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 1998

The Buddha's Art of Healing provides a rich introduction to the world of Tibetan medicine, a cultural achievement considered by the Dalai Lama to be one of Tibet's most valuable contributions to the modern world. Illustrated with intricate and vivid scroll paintings based on The Atlas of Tibetan Medicine, a seventeenth-century masterpiece that is the foundation of Tibetan medical education, this volume explores pertinent global concerns and contributes profound insights to enhance rather than supplant Western medical science.

The paintings, commissioned around the turn of the century and now in the collection of the History Museum of Buryatia in Russia, are from the only surviving set of medical tangkas outside Tibet. Together they express the high point of an ancient and uniquely effective system of healing based on a combination of precision and intuition. The integration of physical, mental, and spiritual health inherent in this system and its emphasis on ethics and ecological balance are both relevant and timely.

Complementing the paintings are essays by renowned scholars that elucidate the conceptual and theoretical foundations of Tibetan medicine and describe the role of the paintings as mnemonic and meditational devices in the training of physicians. Each of the forty paintings is reproduced as a full-page plate and described in detail with commentary on its visual content and symbolism.

The paintings illustrated in The Buddha's Art of Healing will be seen for the first time in the West in an international exhibition that opens at the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta and travels to the Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C., and other venues.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Tibetan medicine--its ancient knowledge, its pragmatic use of herbs--is gaining increasing attention in the West. This book presents the world's most important collection of Tibetan medical art, an illustrated 17th-century medical text known as The Atlas of Tibetan Medicine, created by the teacher and scholar Sangye Gyamtso, regent of the Great Fifth Dalai Lama. The paintings are currently held by the History Museum in Ulan Ude, near Lake Baikal in Siberia. It is an area of Russia where the Tibetan-Buddhist monasteries that were destroyed under Stalin are now being rebuilt, a reminder of the vast extent of Tibetan cultural influence.

The book is important both as art--the paintings are imaginative and of very high quality--and as the outline of an entire system of medical diagnosis and treatment. Introductory chapters describe the history and foundations of Tibetan medicine, the exciting story of the atlas's salvation from destruction in the 1930s, and the basic theories and concepts that underpin Tibetan medicine. Forty of the most important thankhas that make up the atlas are illustrated and explained in detailed commentaries. Readers discover a work that is more than a treatise on medicine, embodying a total concept of humankind as biological and social beings, combining physical and spiritual attributes in sophisticated ways that are the antithesis of the fragmentation and alienation of modern Western life. --John Stevenson

From Booklist

Tibetan medicine is a long-lived, revered, and successful aspect of Tibetan Buddhism that has, like other Tibetan spiritual perspectives and practices, extended its reach far beyond the geographic and cultural boundaries of the land of its origin. A holistic system, it involves nutrition, herbal medicines, behavioral advice, and sensitivity to seasonal and other cyclic influences, and is every bit as concerned with the health of the mind as with that of the body. Tibetan medicine's fascinating history, an evolution overseen by lamas and their regents, is recounted in this volume's fluid text, which accompanies an extraordinary set of medical illustrations and paintings. Gracefully delineated anatomical diagrams alternate with elegantly composed teaching paintings that present numerous methods of examination, diagnosis and divination, and therapeutic principles for a host of ailments, as well as guides to plants and minerals and their medicinal preparations and uses. Donna Seaman

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Rizzoli (June 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0847820890
• ISBN-13: 978-0847820894
• Product Dimensions: 12.1 x 10.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,698,658 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars For Inquiring "New Investigators" to "Seasoned Pros", January 16, 2001

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"rubntrue2u" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Buddha's Art of Healing: Tibetan Paintings Rediscovered (Hardcover)

What this version lacks is poster-sized illustrations...other than that, you'll find it here. While much time is spent on in-depth detail of information and explanation ranging from historical context and relevance, to the present day continuation of many of the ancient beliefs/practices, the inquiring reader won't have to worry about "treading water" here due to the well-defined, logical layout of the work. Rather than bounce from here to there and back again, the read and "look" is more like an entertaining, well-mapped history book; great lay out, fun, and informative. ;)