New Books In Buddhist Studies

Janet Gyatso‘s new book is a masterfully researched, compellingly written, and gorgeously illustrated history of medicine in early modern Tibet that looks carefully at the relationships between medicine and religion in this context. Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (Columbia University Press, 2015) looks carefully at the “double movements” of medicine and religion from the twelfth through seventeenth centuries: at the same time, medical learning in Tibet encouraged a critical approach to religious authority while also maturing within the context of Tibetan Buddhism. Gyatso finds a turn to “evidence of the empirical” in some aspects of Sowa Rikpa, a kind of mentality that shaped not just approaches to anatomy and pharmacy but also the writing of commentaries and the ethics of medical practice. The chapters of Being Human in a Buddhist World introduce readers to a wide variety of materials that include visual and verbal enga