Sun, 17 May 2009
The Doctor's Story
Amchi Thubten Tsering visited our group and told the story about how he first got interested in Tibetan medicine. He came down with malaria and was put in an allopathic hospital. Allopathic treatment didn't help, he only got worse. A Buddhist nun offered him a Tibetan "precious pill." He took an infusion of it every morning and slowly regained his health and weight. So when he graduated from high school, he went to the Tibetan Medical Institute in Dharamsala and asked for a job. He got a job compounding Tibetan medicine and later selling them. He was asked to attend the Institute as a student and agreed. The coursework was based on memorizing the four medical tantras. Many of his fellow students were monks and had no problems with this, as memorization is also part of monastic education, but he struggled with it. So he went out in the woods each evening reciting the texts in order to memorizing. So he finished and got his degree and now he's in Washington>
