Confessions of a Tibetan Doctor
A book review by Tenzin Nyinjey
My Life My Culture
By Dr Lobsang Wangyal
Translated by Buchung D. Sonam and Dhondup Tsering
Ridak Publisher, Dharamsala, PP. 281, price not mentioned
My life My Culture is the autobiography of Dr. Lobsang Wangyal la, who dedicated his whole life to the cause of Tibet by serving as personal physician to His Holiness the Dalai Lama, spiritual and temporal leader of six million Tibetans. The book, which is jointly translated by Buchung D. Sonam and Dhondup Tsering, is divided into two parts. The first part concerns the early life of the author, in which he narrates in vivid detail how he became physician through sheer combination of undying passion, hard work and perseverance; his initial training as a medical student under the tutorship of Khenrab Norbu, a famous medical scholar and personal physician to the Great Thirteenth Dalai Lama; his rigorous imprisonment by the communist Chinese who accused him of “splitting the Motherland and colluding with western imperialists”; and finally after overcoming torture and starvation of the madness called Cultural Revolution how he decided to leave Tibet and come to India on pilgrimage that took him to many sacred Buddhist sites, including Dharamsala, seat of the exile Tibetan administration and residence of the Dalai Lama. It was here at the heart of Tibetan Diaspora, after seeking an audience with His Holiness, that he decided not to return to Tibet, so as to practice his medicine more widely and freely.
Part two of the book contains all the lectures Dr. Wangyal la gave on Tibetan medicine when he went on a whirlwind tour to Europe and America in the late eighties and early nineties, visiting countries like Norway, Sweden, Czechoslovakia and the United States. Traveling for the first time to the west, he came across and interacted with people from all walks of society – most of them practitioners of modern medicine. The tour was a good learning experience for him as it broadened his own horizons and gave him the rare opportunity to share his vast experience as a practitioner of an age-old medical tradition. It was in the west that he came to know about many solutions Tibetan medicine has to offer to ailments about which modern science seems to have no idea at all. Regarding this Dr. Wangyal writes: “Once a patient named Catherine Aarsen brought her husband for treatment. He had suffered severe spinal injury in a car accident, and western doctors diagnosed his injury as beyond treatment. I diagnosed him and identified his problem as a type of nervous disorder (tib. rtsa .kar). I told him that Tibetan medicine had treatment for his injury, which involved taking herbal medicines…. Further diagnosis gave me confidence that the application of moxibustion would get to the root cause of the problem… After the patient’s consent I burned a cone prepared from a medicinal plant between his fourteenth and sixteenth vertebrae. As moxibustion performed, pearls of sweat poured down his forehead. When the fire finally died, I cleaned the spot and helped him stand up. Surprisingly he stood up and was able to take a couple of steps towards the window. He was amazed at the sudden improvement and said ‘I feel no pain’.â€ÂÂÂ
The book also describes at length the relationship between Tibetan medicine and Buddhist philosophy and gives an overview of Tibetan medical tradition, whose original source, the author claims, can be traced to the teachings of Sakyamuni Buddha. Readers are told that without a firm footing in Dharma and Tibetan language, one can never hope to learn the art of Tibetan medicine. They are provided with vast information and knowledge on links between Tibetan medicine and astrology, formation of foetus, causes of diseases and how such diseases are diagnosed by doctors using traditional Tibetan means. Apart from these, the book also reflects upon interesting and hitherto-untouched subjects such as dreams, death and the very tricky nature of mind.
While reading the book, I personally felt that it has got everything that is beneficial and handy to students and researchers who take a keen interest in Tibetan culture, particularly in Tibet’s ancient system of healing. For me, there is not a shred of doubt that it can also give a new direction in the field of research on psychology, giving us new hope to cure severe mental afflictions such as clinical depression and schizophrenia. Buchung D. Sonam and Dhondup Tsering deserves a huge round of applause for taking up the enormous challenge to translate the whole book into English, using simplest of prose that makes it such an easy and interesting read. Indeed, it will be a fitting tribute to the contributions of late Dr. Lobsang Wangyal la if this book is read by students of medical science, and more so by those who wish to pursue a career in Tibetan medicine.