MEDICINE BUDDHA / SANGYE MENLHA – THE SUPREME HEALER
Medicine Buddha: Noble One, you should think of yourself as someone who is sick,
Of the Dharma as the remedy,
Of the Buddha as a skillful doctor,
And of your diligent practice as the way to recovery.
The Medicine Buddha / Sangye Menlha, or Bhaisajyaguru, is the Buddha of Healing. Meditating on the Medicine Buddha is considered to be a powerful method for increasing healing powers, allowing practitioners to alleviate their own sufferings as well as those of others. Through his boundless compassion and generosity, Bhaisajyaguru helps sincere seekers overcome physical illness and infirmity. But even more importantly, the Buddha is the skillful doctor who heals the great disease afflicting all sentient beings. By providing the Dharma as a profound antidote to the poisons of attachment, hatred and ignorance, he lifts the veil of delusion and points the way to freedom.
GESTURES AND ATTRIBUTES
The Medicine Buddha / Sangye Menlha is depicted with his right hand extended downward, palm open, with thumb and index finger touching. This posture is known as Varada Mudra, or the gesture of granting wishes. This mudra symbolizes Bhaisajyaguru’s kindness, charity and compassion toward all beings. In the same hand he lightly grasps a sprig of the Myrobalan plant, an important healing herb in Ayurvedic medicine. It is believed that this plant has the power not only to heal the body, but also to free one from the inner sicknesses of attachment, hatred and ignorance. His left hand lies in his lap with palm upward in the gesture of meditation (Dhyana Mudra), representing the eradication of all sickness and suffering through the realization of absolute truth. In the same hand he holds the traditional begging bowl of an ordained Buddhist monk. The bowl contains a sacred medicinal nectar that cures all ills, hindrances and obstacles.
The Bhaishajyaguru sutra makes this Buddha far more than a healer of either the body or the spirit. Medicine Buddha is conceived, rather, as supreme and cosmic figure that illuminates the entire world and possesses infinite knowledge. It is also interesting to note that the sutra places considerable importance on the worship of the healing Buddha’s image. The worshiper should “bathe, and with a pure mind try to be friendly to all beings. After this he is to circumambulate the image with music…” The Chinese translation further states that “if one makes an image of this Buddha, or if one recites the text of the sutra, he will escape from the nine ways of death”.
