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Revisiting 'Galen in Tibet'

 

Abstract

Revisiting Galen in Tibet

This paper readdresses the assertion found in much secondary literature that Greek medicine was adopted in Tibet in the seventh and eighth centuries. I discuss some of the traces of Galenic medical knowledge in early Tibetan medicine, and raise the question of why Tibetan medical histories who mention Galen give Galenic medicine a much more significant place than is evidenced in the Tibetan medical literature itself. I discuss some historiographical considerations and argue that the centrality given to Galenic medicine is more indicative of the period in which these sources are written than of the period which they presumably describe.

The fifty-one mental factors

Five omnipresent mental factors

These five accompany all minds. Without them complete apprehension of an object cannot occur.

1. Feeling: a distinct mental factor that is an experience of pleasure, pain or indifference. Feeling experiences the results of one’s past actions and can lead to reactions of attachment, aversion, closed-mindedness, etc.
2. Discrimination: a distinct mental factor that has the function to distinguish “It is this and not that” and to apprehend the characteristics of the object. It differentiates and identifies objects.
3. Intention: a distinct mental factor that moves the primary mind with which it shares five similarities and other attendant mental factors of that primary mind to the object. It is the conscious and automatic motivating element that causes the mind to involve itself with and apprehend its object. It is action, karma. It makes the mind engage in what is constructive, destructive and neutral.