Tag Archives: yogi-doctors

Who Needs a Man When You’ve Got Medicine: Yuthok the Elder’s Teaching to the Yogini-doctor Dami Mentsün

Posted on by
A painting of Yuthok Yönten Gönpo the Elder, from a 2006 compilation of medical biographies

Recently, a student from Brazil in our ongoing one-year deep-dive course on the Ngöndro or Foundation practices of the Yuthok Nyingthig tantric Buddhist teachings, which is happening right now through Sowa Rigpa Institute, asked me if I could provide a little more information about an important female disciple of Yuthok the Elder, who I mentioned in passing during in a class for the course. The main reference we have relating to this disciple is in Yuthok the Elder’s namtar or biography. Since this reference is really quite interesting, I thought I would make a short post about it here so others could appreciate it.

As I touched on in a previous post about the origins and meaning of the family name Yuthok, there are two Yuthoks/Yutoks, གཡུ་ཐོག་, in Tibetan tradition, a Yuthok the Elder and a Yuthok the Younger. Both of these important figures bear the personal name Yönten Gönpo, which translates to something like ‘Lord-Protector of Spiritual Qualities’. Yuthok the Elder is said to have lived in the eighth century, but the most extensive biography we currently have for him was commissioned and composed in the seventeenth century (this biography as well as a shorter companion biography of Yuthok the Younger was compiled by Menrampa Lopzang Chödrak 1638 – 1710, based on materials from a descendant of the Yuthok lineage called Jowo Lhündrup Tashi). Yuthok the Elder’s biography, whose full title is A Treasury of Resplendent Jewels: The Sealed Biography of Venerable Yuthok Yönten Gönpo the Elder, is full of many fascinating moments, many of which involve interesting interactions between Yuthok and various remarkable figures, human and otherwise. The female student of medicine and Dharma mentioned in the biography is named Dami Mentsün, མདའ་མི་དམན་བཙུན་. Yuthok the Elder, who is said to have been one hundred and twenty-five when he died, was something of a late bloomer, only getting married and having children in his nineties. His encounter with Dami Mentsün seems to take place sometime in Yuthok’s mid-to-late nineties, during an exstensive set of pilgrimages Yuthok went on with a sizeable entourage of students. As part of these travels, Yuthok visitied various parts of Tibet and went to sacred sites in India, China, and Uddiyana. It is during Yuthok’s tour of a part of Southern Tibet called Chayul, བྱ་ཡུལ་ (‘Land of Birds’ or possibly ‘Vultures’, located within the boundaries of colonial China’s Lhünzê  County), that the great yogi-doctor meets with Dami Mentsün.

Google Maps image showing the approximate location of Chayul in Tibet.

The passage from Yuthok’s biography that details the encounter runs as follows:

Continue reading →

Shut up and Recite! Naropa’s Pith Instruction on Mantra Practice

Posted on by
The Great Siddha Naropa, who is famously associated with Six ‘Dharmas’ or Completion Stage yogic disciplines.

Yesterday, the Naldjor Facebook page, a wonderful resource for texts and images related to Tibetan Tantric Buddhism and Yoga, shared a short text composed by Naropa, the famous Bengali Mahasiddha or ‘greatly accomplished’ Tantric saint who lived and taught in the 11th century (Naropa was famously put through great trails by his Guru Tilopa after he left his life as a monastic professor behind. For a brief summary of his life, see the Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism’s entry for him shared on Tsadra’s Buddha Nature Project page, which is incidentally where I also got the above image from. The text in question has to do with mantra recitation and it is a mengngak མན་ངག་ or upadesha in Sanskrit – that is, a text of ‘pith, oral instructions’. Mengngak are usually related to meditation, medicine, or ritual practice and in this text Naropa gives a list of twenty-one do’s and don’ts regarding mantra practice for practitioners who want to cultivate ngak ki nüpa, སྔགས་ཀྱི་ནུས་པ་, i.e. ‘mantric efficacy’ or ‘power’. The Naldjor page administrator requested that English translations of the text be shared, so I thought I would offer one here. Naropa’s text was also one of the many sources Dr Nida Chenagtsang drew on when writing his Tibetan-language book on mantra healing and some of Naropa’s instructions appear in Dr Nida’s own ‘do’s and dont’s’ chapter from the book (see here for my rough translation). Dr Nida also often refers to points from Naropa’s text in his classes, so I thought it would be useful to share a full translation, along with some brief commentary. I will give the full text and translation below, followed by a few explanations about terminology and translation choices. I have put asterisks alongside the points which have variant renderings or interpretations.

Continue reading →

Two new upcoming courses with Dr Nida Chenagtsang: Sorig Foundations II & Yuthok’s Heart Teachings

Posted on by


Yuthok All in One.jpg

Hello, friends!

I thought it would be a good idea to post an announcement here about two upcoming online courses to be taught by my own teacher and research collaborator Tibetan physician and tantric yogi Dr Nida Chenagtsang, which I will be assisting with. Both training programmes start in only a few days and are being offered through Sorig Institute. The courses will be hosted on Teachable and lectures and discussion will take place primarily over Zoom (further information about Dr Nida, his life, work, and training can be found here, here, and here).

Continue reading →

Interview on ‘A State of Mind’ Podcast about Dr Nida’s Book on Tibetan Sexual Yoga Practices

Posted on by

No photo description available.

Guru Yuthok manifesting as Vajradhara in union with Vajravarahi by Anna Artemyeva

Hi everyone. A quick post to inform you all that an interview I did with my friend professional counselor Julian Royce for his ‘A State of Mind’ podcast is now online to view and listen to. The interview mainly focused on my involvement with helping to put together Dr Nida Chenagtsang’s 2018 book on Tibetan tantric Buddhist sexual yoga practices, ‘Karmamudra: The Yoga of Bliss (Sexuality in Tibetan Medicine and Buddhism), so should be of interest both to people who have already read Dr Nida’s book and who are considering doing so! (you can read my full editor and translator’s foreword to the book here as well)

Here’s the YouTube video of the interview. As always, feel free to let me know what you think!

Continue reading →

Some Dos and Don’ts of Mantric or Tantric Healing

Posted on by

nyingma yogi chapman

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(A photograph of an itinerant Nyingmapa yogi with prominently displayed trengwa or Buddhist prayer beads, one of the central tools of mantra healing, taken in 1936 in Lhasa by British army officer Frederick Spencer Chapman, 1907-1971. Chapman visited the Tibetan capitol between 1936 and 1937, where he served as personal secretary to Basil Gould, the British Raj Political Officer to Sikkim, Bhutan and Tibet. Gould went to Tibet in the hopes of persuading the then 9th Panchen Lama to return to Tibet from China, to where he had fled after the 13th Dalai Lama had clamped down on his power and holding due to political differences) 

In the post that follows I offer yet another translation of a chapter from Tibetan tantric yogi and traditional doctor Dr Nida Chenagtsang’s book on Tibetan Mantra Healing (I’ve already provided translations of a number of chapters from this book, called rten ‘brel sngags bcos rig pa in Tibetan, here on my blog – you can find these posts by searching under the tags ‘dr nyida chenaktsang’ and ‘mantra healing’). In this short chapter Dr Nida provides an overview of ‘things to avoid and things to take up’ (spang blang) when doing mantra healing, using a traditional Buddhist turn of phrase which I’ve rendered more colloquially and chattily here as ‘dos and don’ts’. In the sections that follow, Dr Nida outlines suggested everyday behaviour and dietary prohibitions for tantrikas and mantrins and describes common ritual taboos connected with mantra healing practice as well as the optimal times and locations to do different kinds of tantric or mantric rituals.

Central to Dr Nida’s explanations is the concept of ngaki nüpa (sngags kyi nus pa) or ‘mantric/tantric power’ or ‘efficacy’. Anyone can recite the syllables of a mantra, but according to Tibetan cultural understanding there are a number of factors which contribute to whether or not a mantra will actually produce tangible results Continue reading →

Tibetan ‘Yogi-Doctors’ Today: Professor Gojo Wangdu’s Preface to Dr Nida’s new book on Mantra Healing

Posted on by

image1 (7)

The following is a translation of Professor Gojo Wangdu’s preface to Dr Nida Chenagtsang’s new Tibetan-language volume on the ‘Interdependent/Auspicious Science of Mantra Healing’. In his preface, the Professor supplies a brief overview of Dr Nida’s upbringing, education, and achievements. He describes the important contributions that Dr Nida has made to re-invigorating Tibetan traditional medicine, like his efforts to preserve and revive lapsed oral lineage practices such as the ‘stick-therapy’ methods that were taught by Padampa Sangye and others centuries ago. The Professor makes a strong case for why Tibetan doctors today should practice as the founding lineage masters of Tibetan traditional medicine did, as ‘yogi or ngakpa doctors’, that is, as practitioners who seamlessly integrate mantra healing rituals, yogic practice, and medicine. He also responds to questions readers might have about the issue of secrecy, and of the pre-requisites – the transmissions and training – required to put mantra healing into practice to benefit beings. While the Professor follows the traditional Tibetan style of modestly talking-down his own achievements, he is a highly respected and learned scholar, and his endorsement of Dr Nida’s book speaks to its value.

Continue reading →