Project

Tantric Healing, Medicine, and Science

Program

The Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Early Career Research Fellowships in Buddhist Studies

Department

Weatherhead East Asian Institute

Abstract

The project explores Tibetan tantric healing practices in the medico-ritual nexus with an emphasis on botany and medicine, within both their historical developments and present indigenous, exile, and globalized transnational power, economic, and ecological realities. As a contribution to scholarship on medical and scientific pluralism, pluralistic healing, and indigenous science, it focuses on Tibetan ‘Medicinal Accomplishment’ (Tibetan: Mendrup) rites of the Yungdrung Bon tradition, some of which are the rarest, most demanding, expensive, and politically and socially significant Tibetan rituals performed today. The research also reveals their continuation over almost a millennium and across great geographical space, as well as their adaptations to modernity and globalization.