Sat, 04 Apr 2009
The Three Humors
Last Sunday Amchi Thubten Tsering gave another talk on Tibetan Tibetan medicine, this time focussing on the description of a healthy person. Here are my notes from his talk.
Today I will navigate through the main principles of Tibetan Medicine. Tibetan medicine was taught by Medicine Buddha and shares the same philosophy as Buddhism. The main cause of suffering is ignorance, or not knowing. Many negative emotions develop based on ignorance and these result in bad health. Loving kindness and other positive emotions are healing. But I covered this last time.
Without understanding its principles one cannot understand Tibetan medicine. The are energies functioning in our mind and body. There are three of these and they are called wind (lung), bile (tipa), and phlegm (baken). The wind is like a horse that the mind rides. The inner wind is related to breath, but it is different. It is the vital force that connects the mind and body. Bile controls our bodily heat and gives color to the body. Phlegm is responsible for stability of the body, induces sleep, and lubricates the body.
It takes five years to learn Tibetan medcine. It is based on four tantras: the root tantra, the explanations tantra, the oral transmission tantra, and the dignostic tantra. It is explained through the analogy of three trees which have 400 something leaves. The first tree is the explaination of the healthy body. The three trunks of this tree are the humors, physical constituents, and excretions. The three humors have been mentioned.
The three humors have five subdivisions each. The five winds are the life sustaining wind, ascending wind, descending wind, secret wind, and fire combining wind. The life sustaining wind is located in the crown of the head. Its main functional areas are nose, throat, and chest. It controls speech, saliva, burping, and so on. The ascending wind is located in the chest. It controls respiration and the lungs. The secret wind controls the circulation and hydrological systems, and muscles. The fire combining wind controls digestion. The downward voiding wind controls expulsion of feces and urine.
The first sort of bile is digestive bile. In Tibetan medicine digestion is divided into three parts. The upper part is controlled by the decomposing phlegm, the middle by the digestive bile, and the lower by the fire combining wind. The second sort of bile is the coloring bile. It controls skin color and tone. The third bile is determining bile and is located in the heart and allows us to distinguish between sense impressions. The fourth is seeing bile. It controls clear vision. The last is the complexion clearing bile.
There are five types of phlegm. The first type is supporting phlegm. It is located in the brain and supports the other four types of phlegm. The next is decomposing phlegm and assists digestion. The third type is experience phlegm and controls taste. The fourth is satisfaction phlegm and controls satiation. The fifth is connective phlegm and lubricates the joints.
The second trunk is the physical constituants. There are seven leaves on this trunk. They describe the stages of separation of the pure and impure elements in digestion. The first stage is the nutritional essence, Then it passes into blood, then flesh, then fat, then bone, then marrow, and finaly the regenerative fluids. The waste products are separated from these by the fire combining wind and expelled by the donward expelling wind.
The third trunk has three leaves for the three waste products: feces, urine, and perspiration. There are two flowers and three fruits on this tree. The first flower is freedom from disease and the the second is a long life. The thrre fruits are religious practice, health, and happiness.
Negative emotions that are held onto manifest first as anxiety, then depression,and then serious psychological problem. Desire causes wind imbalance. Anger causes bile imbaance. Laziness causes phlegm imbalance. To combat negative emotions we should cultivate positive emotions like loving kindness.
