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The Buddha As the Greatest Healer: the Complexities of a Comparison

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The Buddha As the Greatest Healer: the Complexities of a Comparison THE BUDDHA AS THE GREATEST HEALER: THE COMPLEXITIES OF A COMPARISON PAR PHYLLIS GRANOFF* I. THE BUDDHA AS SUPREME HEALER It is well known that the Buddha was often compared to a physician; indeed in many texts he was called the greatest physician of all.1 This comparison was deeply embedded in Buddhist discussions of the nature of suffering; suffering is a disease, the cause of which must be under- stood and removed, just as the cause of ordinary physical ailments must be understood and countered. The fact that the same metaphor occurs with equal strength in medieval Christian Penitentials suggests its power as a description of the process of salvation.2 I would like to begin this * Lex Hixon Professor of World Religions, Department of Religious Studies, Yale University. 1 The Jains could say the same of the Jina. See the Upamitibhavaprapañcakatha, ed. Peter Peterson, Calcutta: Baptist Mission, 1899, pp. 1211-1215. For references to Buddhist sources see Paul Demiéville, “Byo” in the Hobogirin, Troisième Fascicule, Paris: Adrien Maisonneuve, 1937, p. 224-265 and Kenneth Zysk, Asceticism and Healing in Ancient India, New York: Oxford University Press 1991. Wilhelm Halbfass, Tradition and Reflec- tion: Explorations in Indian Thought, Buffalo: State University of New York Press, 1991, chapter 7, “The Therapeutic Paradigm and the Search for Identity in Indian Philosophy”, pp. 242-257, discusses the limits of the medical model in Buddhism and other schools of Indian philosophy as well. See also the extensive discussion in Linda Covill, A Meta- phorical Study of the Saundarananda, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 2009, pp. 99-184. I also thank Charles Malamoud for sharing with me his paper, “Doctors as Characters in Sanskrit Narrative Literature.” 2 Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages, ed. Peter Biller and A.J. Minnis, York: York Medieval Press,1998, Introduction, p.8; Alexander Murray, “Counseling in Medieval Confession”, p. 66; 69-70; John Baldwin, “From the Ordeal to Confession”, pp. 202-203; J T McNeill, “Medicine for sin as prescribed in the Pentientials”, Church History 1, 1932 pp. 14-26. Journal Asiatique 299.1 (2011): 5-22 doi: 10.2143/JA.299.1.2131058 994253_JA_2011/1_02_Granoff.indd4253_JA_2011/1_02_Granoff.indd 5 114/09/114/09/11 115:145:14 6 P. GRANOFF discussion with a passage from the Mulasarvastivadavinaya, in which the Buddha explains to his own celebrated doctor Jivaka just why the Buddha is called the best of physicians, the best of surgeons. The passage appears in a long section on the extraordinary abilities of the doctor Jivaka, who is an illegitimate son of the king Bimbisara. In this passage, Jivaka has performed so many brilliant diagnoses and cures that he begins to let his pride get the better of him. Here is the text3. Jivaka became proud and thought, “There is no doctor who is my equal. I am the best of those who cure the body and the Blessed One is the best of those who cure the mind.” Now one time he went to see the Blessed One. Being overcome by his pride, he could not see the truths. The Blessed One thought to himself, “This Jivaka has accumulated much merit. How is it that he does not see the truths? It is because of his pride. I must destroy his pride. “And so the Blessed One said to Jivaka, “Jivaka, have you seen the Himalaya, the king of the mountains?” “No, Blessed One”. “Then grab on to a corner of the Tathagata’s robe.” Jivaka grabbed the robe. And with that the Blessed One took Jivaka the King of Physi- cians to the Himalaya, King of Mountains. There numerous medicinal herbs glowed like so many lamps. The Blessed One said to Jivaka the King of Physicians, “Jivaka, gather all the herbs you want.” “Blessed One, I am afraid.”. And so the Blessed One said to the yakÒa Vajrapa∞i “Go, Vajrapa∞i, and protect Jivaka. “Jivaka went with him and gathered up all sorts of medicinal herbs. The Blessed One asked him, “Jivaka, do you know the name of this herb?” He answered, “Blessed One, it is such and such. With this, such and such a disease is cured. And this one is such and such. It cures such and such.” But he did not know the names of the others. The Blessed One told him about all the herbs that he did not know: this is such and such and used in this way it cures such and such. This is such and such and so on. Jivaka said, “The Blessed One also knows medicine!” The Blessed One then said to Jivaka, “A doctor, a surgeon, is worthy of the title of king, worthy to be a king, and gains fame in the court of the king, by knowing four things. By what four things is a doctor, a surgeon, worthy of the title of king, worthy to be a 3 Mulasarvastivadavinaya, edited Dr. S. Bagchi, Buddhist Sanskrit Texts no 16, Darb- hanga: Mithila Institute of Post-Graduate Studies and Research in Sanskrit, 1967, p. 193-4. Journal Asiatique 299.1 (2011): 5-22 994253_JA_2011/1_02_Granoff.indd4253_JA_2011/1_02_Granoff.indd 6 114/09/114/09/11 115:145:14 THE BUDDHA AS THE GREATEST HEALER 7 king? He is skilled in the nature of diseases, in their causes, in the curing of diseases that have arisen, and in the prevention of their arising in the future. There follows a long description of various medical practices used to cure diseases and a definition of each of these four skills of the doctor, which I abbreviate. Then the Blessed One says, “Similarly, with these very four things, the Tathagata, the Arhat, the perfectly enlightened one, is said to be the best of doctors, the best of surgeons. He knows the truth of suffering; he knows the cause of suffering, the removal of suffering, and he knows the path to avoid all future suffering. But, Jivaka, the ordinary doctor, the ordinary surgeon, does not know the medicine that cures the suffering that is caused by birth. The Tathagata does. Therefore the Tathagata, the Arhat, the per- fectly enlightened one, is said to be the best of all doctors, the best of all surgeons.” In this passage, the Buddha is depicted as both an accomplished doctor of medicine in ordinary terms and a very special kind of healer whose skill transcends any skill that a medical doctor possesses. As an ordinary physician, he knows far more even than the great Jivaka, because he knows about medicaments that Jivaka has never even seen and indeed could not have seen without the assistance of the Buddha’s magical power that enabled him to transport Jivaka to the distant Himalaya. Jivaka is surprised by the Buddha’s knowledge of healing herbs, but the Buddha wants Jivaka and us to understand that even the greatest healers of the body are not as great as the Buddha, who heals the disease that is life itself, with all its woes of birth, sickness, ageing and death. The Buddha likens the Four Noble truths to the four-fold knowledge that a doctor must have: the doctor must know that there are diseases and what they are, just as the Buddha knows that everything is duÌkha, suffering. The doctor must know the causes of diseases, whether a disease is caused by an abundance of wind, of bile or of phlegm, as the text elaborates, or by ignorance and craving as the four-fold path will teach. The doctor must know how to cure diseases, and here the text gives a list of treatments, including purgatives, emetics, sweating, fumigation, that must have rep- resented current medical practice. In the Four Noble Truths, the treatment is the removal of the causes of birth and suffering, for example ignorance Journal Asiatique 299.1 (2011): 5-22 994253_JA_2011/1_02_Granoff.indd4253_JA_2011/1_02_Granoff.indd 7 114/09/114/09/11 115:145:14 8 P. GRANOFF and craving. The ordinary doctor must prevent the future occurrence of a disease and insure health; similarly the Buddha teaches a way to find a permanent refuge from suffering, through the eight-fold path. In this vignette we see that the Buddha is both the transcendent healer and the consummate physician of the body. There are many stories in the Buddhist texts which describe how the Buddha by his mere presence or by the touch of his hand was able to heal. One of the most famous of these stories was told in the Mahavastu, about the Buddha ridding the city Vaisali of the plague merely by stepping across the threshold of the city gate.4 In the Lalitavistara the Buddha heals from the womb. Throngs of the sick come to see the pregnant Maya, who stretches out her hand and by her touch heals them all. She even prepares healing herbs that she distributes to the sick.5 There are many such stories, but I will leave them for another occasion and return to the comparison that was so often made between the Buddha and a physician. The Buddhabaladhanapratiharyasutra, which is known from a manu- script discovered in Gilgit, opens with a similar long comparison between the Buddha and a doctor.6 The skilled physician masters the science of medicine with its eight-fold limbs and knows what is best for his patients who are suffering from various diseases. He knows what will heal them and he knows the various causes of their disorders. The means that he exploits to cure them are various, and the text lists many of them. For his part, the Buddha has mastered trance states, attained powers from his meditative practices, and has supernatural sight and hearing.
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