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A Monk's Book of Spells, Found At Dunhuang
Dakini
Veteran
"Spells were being cast by Buddhists long before the tantras appeared. Indeed, the recitation of verses against disease or evil spirits goes right back to the beginnings of Buddhism. Mantras are found in the Sarvastivadin texts and in the paritta texts of the Theravadins."
"Ordinary people have turned to the monks for help with their every day needs, whether serious calamities, like illness, complications of childbirth, and spirit possession, or the questions that are answered by astrology and divination."
According to this article (see link below), the use of spells by monks is not limited to Tibetan Buddhism, but has been practiced by Buddhist monks in China and Japan for many hundreds of years
http://earlytibet.com/2009/02/19a-tibetan-book-of-spells
"Ordinary people have turned to the monks for help with their every day needs, whether serious calamities, like illness, complications of childbirth, and spirit possession, or the questions that are answered by astrology and divination."
According to this article (see link below), the use of spells by monks is not limited to Tibetan Buddhism, but has been practiced by Buddhist monks in China and Japan for many hundreds of years
http://earlytibet.com/2009/02/19a-tibetan-book-of-spells
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Comments
EDIT:
http://earlytibet.com/2009/02/19/a-tibetan-book-of-spells/
That should be it.
In any case, an awful lot of practitioners in the West are unaware that spells are part of Buddhism. I thought this was really informative.
Perhaps he was a duck in his previous life.
I've brought this up before, but in the book "A Social History Of Indian Esoteric Buddhism", the author says that in medieval times, monks became fascinated with spells, tantra and power and personality cults in general. These elements entered into Buddhism from folk traditions or the beginning of the tantric movement. When Buddhism came to Tibet, it was Padmasambhava, a tantric adept and magician, who brought Buddhism to Tibet. So naturally, Tibetan Buddhism would have spells, etc. But what's interesting about the article Dakini posted is that the author says it wasn't just Indian and Tibetan Buddhism that practiced magic. It was Theravada, Chinese and Japanese Buddhism as well. So spells were just a part of life throughout Asia, and in the Buddhist regions, the monk was the local expert people turned to.
As a result of Dossey's studies on the effect of prayer on hospital patients, "nearly 80 medical schools [in the US] have instituted courses exploring the role of prayer in health".
How about you, Daozen? Your turn to provide a source critiquing his studies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grimoire
Let us be mindful of the fact that if something is Buddhist it doesnt mean its dharma or that the buddha taught it.
I'm sorry but, publishing articles in a journal you establish yourself, and act as executive editor for, doesn't quite count as a professional peer-reviewed journal. It's not exactly the Lancet is it? Or even remotely close.
The main criticism of his work seems to stem from the fact that, despite him being a trained physician who should know better, and despite trying to talk up his scientific rigour, he used decidedly unscientific methods in his studies.
Notably, he used anecdotal evidence rather than properly run, double-blind testing. His prayer studies have never been published in a reputable journal, and needless to say, no-one has ever duplicated his results.
The point is that it was a new journal for research in alternative medicine, and he did have a board of MDs reviewing articles.
I read he'd done double-blind testing.
Polite and courteous engagement is still the order of the day.
Yeah, it's off topic, but the scientific basis for miracles is sketchy at best and if anyone wants to read up on the criticisms of what little research has been conducted, all you have to do is visit a skeptical site such as http://skepdic.com/ I'm certainly not going to argue against people's beliefs here.
But it's very interesting about the book of spells. However, it's really no surprise to anyone who studied history. Almost everyone, including Buddhists, believed in the power of what we would call magic ritual because that's all they had. Most people even hold some sort of magical beliefs today, only we call it superstition usually.
It really has nothing to do with the Buddhism and everything to do with how to influence the world around us. For instance, my Grandmother, a devout Christian, believed handling toads would give you warts, and to get rid of them, you rubbed a fresh laid egg on the wart and then burried it somewhere. That is a belief in sympathetic magic (like affects like) and the power of a "casting away" magic ritual. It has nothing to do with her Christianity.
A spell book owned by a Buddhist monk back then is about like a first aid book owned by a monk today, to help people who need it. It is fascinating to get a glimpse of life back then.
The other side of the family had traditions for removing the "evil eye" that could only be done on Christmas Eve.
Folklore is an interesting part of our history.
Anyway, divination isn't dharma, in fact in one of the suttras the Buddha says it's not a suitable occupation for monks, and that would include, I would think, spell-making. But Buddhism as practiced in Asia tends to be a very different beast than what followers in the West are exposed to. Personally, I enjoy the cultural diversity, and I thought this article would be a good reality-check.
Katie, what is your ethnic background? It's mostly only in Eastern Europe where people still believe in the "evil eye".
http://www.stregheria.com/
Back in the old days, these folk were the doctors, herbalists, vets, and midwives. The communities depended on them. When the church came to power, they couldn't allow these people to have that much influence. That's when the persecution started and women were especially vilified.
Most situations worsened, but every once in a while one improved!
Was it the words, prayers, or blessings that people had been saying at the time...what exactly had they said? Was it the tea... what was in the tea? Was uncle killing his pig next door at the time one of the conditions under which someone in the household recovered from serious illness? Then, as now, figuring out cause from effect or coincidence was no easy matter.
Buddhist monks were the keepers and transmitters of the sacred texts, and in many areas they were the only people who knew how to read and write. Of course they recorded and preserved collections of local wisdom commonly used for healing all manner of complaints. They were the sole library and repository of human wisdom in many areas for centuries.
Today your physician's standard incantation "take one of these every 4 hours and call me in the morning" gleaned from his own book of spells (The Physician's Desk Reference)is simply called a "prescription" rather than a "spell." Today your psychiatrist will put you under a prescription (a spell) of Prozac and assign you "a list of helpful affirmations to repeat" rather than "a mantra."
We assert the superiority of our own present-day incantations and experimental spells as "peer reviewed" and "evidence based"....we would never be taken in by superstition! Yet the majority of our own modern day "peer reviewed" and "evidence based" scientific studies have funding sources representing too much conflict of interest to be regarded as truly "unbiased," and our modern day "spells," our prescription medications, are estimated to be the 4th most common cause of our own death.
Surely modern pharmacy is the no 1 life saver and preserver, not the 4 th biggest killer as you unbelievably claim - got a source for that claim?
The report apparently shows there are 2,000 deaths/year from unnecessary surgery; 7000 deaths/year from medication errors in hospitals; 20,000 deaths/year from other errors in hospitals; 80,000 deaths/year from infections in hospitals; 106,000 deaths/year from non-error, adverse effects of medications - these total up to 225,000 deaths per year in the US from iatrogenic causes which ranks these deaths as the # 3 killer. Iatrogenic is a term used when a patient dies as a direct result of treatments by a physician, whether it is from misdiagnosis of the ailment or from adverse drug reactions used to treat the illness. (drug reactions are the most common cause).
Jason, et al. (Lazarou et al), Incidence of Adverse Drug Reactions in Hospitalized Patients, Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), Vol. 279. April 15, 1998, pp. 1200-05. Also Bates, David W., Drugs and Adverse Drug Reactions: How Worried Should We Be? JAMA, Vol. 279. April 15, 1998, pp. 1216-17.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db22.htm
http://internet-scam-busters.com/pharmaceutical-drug-dangers-a-prescription-for-disaster
http://sustainablemedicine.org/2008/10/death-by-medicine-iatrogenic-illness/
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs335/en/index.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=prescription-drug-deaths
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=5EEBE889-B08B-5AA1-8315C046598F67E3
However, I would still say that modern medicine saves, preserves or improves a far far greater number of lives than it damages, and that therefore the net effect is positive. Would you agree?
Modern medicine prolongs life, not necessarily improve life.
Take cancer, chemotherapy & radiotherapy, its a gamble, either the cancer cells die first or you die first.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article1072638.ece
On the medication note, I'd also agree that the number of people who would have died without medical help would vastly out number those who die through negligence/complications. Therefore we shouldn't avoid modern treatment. The system certainly needs improving though..
My point is that in the modern day we too have our own particular superstitions, incantations, and spells which are basically equivalent to that ancient book they just dug up, and that several centuries from now our own remedies will be regarded as equally laughably (and appallingly) superstitious and ineffective.
my stepmom's father asked her doctor what would happen if he stopped taking his medicine. Because he didn't like to. His doctor without a pause said 'You'd be dead'. Heart problems which is not uncommon one bit.
Medication errors are quite rare. The whole system is designed to prevent them. I worked in a hospital pharmacy and I would think wrong pill/dose errors in the pharmacy were not especially high since a tech prepares each dose (fast), but the pharmacist on duty has NOTHING to do other than check each order for accuracy. There are also errors in correlating the pills/syringes made in pre-pack (bulk everyday) and put in drawers for bed patients. Prepack drugs seemed to be pretty routine and non-dangerous meds such as ranitidine kinda a brand of pepcid ac. The pills are also administered and diagnosed which are other (rare) sources of error.
"106,000 deaths/year from non-error, adverse effects of medications" These results would be from strong medicines which are dangerous. Those are not administered unless there is a large reward to compensate the risk. Pepcid AC is not among these but drugs for heart arhythmias probably are. Also consider that there is a massive amount of sick and old people in hospitals.
A time traveler from a thousand years past would take one look at my wall of books and easily recognize it as the magical modern day equivalent of the magical medical spells and incantation books of a thousand years ago.
I am deeply grateful for those people from a thousand years ago. Their courage, efforts, trials, errors, and observations helped get us where we are today in the field of medicine.
A time traveler, an archaeologist from a thousand years in the future, however, would take one look at that same wall of books and laugh at our magical medical remedies of the modern day. A thousand years from today these books will in turn likewise be regarded as so many ancient spells and incantations. The archaeologists of the future will most certainly be left both laughing and horrified by our accounts.
The practice of Buddhism deeply embraces the concept of the universal relief of suffering.
It is therefore no surprise that ancient Buddhist monks collected ancient medical remedies, as it is likewise no surprise that modern practitioners collect modern ones.
The practice of Buddhism also embraces the practices of mindful observation, open-mindedness, and gratitude. Buddhism embraces the practice of respect for all, and respect for the sincere efforts, beliefs, and gods and prayers of all, past, present, and future. Buddhism does not embrace arrogance.
However if I had a life threatening disease, from depression to diabetes to heart disease and cancer, I would follow pretty much all medical advice.
If I had a condition that caused a lot of pain or stress, I would follow the advice that made sense to me, and refuse anything I didn't like the sound of unless I had the chance to do some research and be convinced.
I still love this quote: "Believe Nothing, no matter where you read it nor whom has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." - Buddha