The Healing Power of Buddhism - Calton Davis

Carlton Davis

This article was originally published on Calton’s blog here. 

Several months ago I attended a purification and healing ceremony conducted by the Tibetan Buddhist healer, Namkha Drimed Rinpoche. One hundred and twenty or so people attended and many were mentioned who had severe illnesses from terminal cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, Parkinson Disease, Hodgkin’s disease, depression, mental illness, and many other infirmities. Several people mentioned were deceased. How they could be healed I do not know. All who attended including me were purified.

The Rinpoche, a skin headed brown man wrapped in brilliant yellow and deep red robes with a wide gentle smile and gapped front teeth, did not speak long. His mumble, which resonated for me like the sounds I remember of American Indian chanting, were translated into short descriptions by a long haired American seated below the Rinpoche’s raised dais.  I did not understand all of what was translated, but the fundamental drift seemed consistent with what little I know of the tenants of Buddhism. Our flaws cause our infirmities.

The three great poisons of life: ignorance, aversion, and attachment manifest themselves as physical imbalances in our bodies through three metaphorical ways: air, phlegm, and bile. I am not sure how this works. These imbalances, which can be a combination of the three poisons and thus the three manifestations, can be carried over from past lives into our present life. Thus if I were a murderer in a past life I might be paying for it today in the misery of my present suffering. This I believe is what the Tibetans call Karma. I am not sure I believe in this concept. However also what we do in this our present life influences our imbalances and thus our physical well being.

In the here and now living correctly according to Buddhist precepts improves our health.  In other words being without avarice, without avoidance of problems and without ignorance of our effect in the world is a healthy way to live. I believe the way to look at this is–what is the way to reduce our stress. For desire (attachment), flight (aversion), and fear (ignorance) increases our stress. Thus the goal is to let go of these three poisons, and when we do our health improves. I did not hear the Rinpoche say this exactly because his speech was short, wrapped in the flowery language and images of an alien culture, and 120 plus people were there to be purified.  I thought the crowd was gathered to partake in the symbolism of possibility.

We all lined up and passed before the Rinpoche, where he poured some yellowish looking liquid into your hands. I thought it looked like Ginger Ale.  We put the liquid from our hands into our mouths, swished it around, and spit it out into a big aluminum bowl. While we bent over to spit the Rinpoche poured more of the liquid over our heads from a small jug that had a trapezoidal plume of peacock feathers on top.  We rubbed the liquid into our hair, looked up and the smiling Rinpoche poured more liquid into our hands to drink. The Rinpoche nodded and we moved away to an assistant with a towel, where we could rub our heads dry. I was reminded of the Christian baptism. We were anointed to follow in the way of the Buddha.

I don’t know if I felt purified? I do know that the ceremony reminded me that when I followed the path of Buddhism rigorously some ten years ago my own mental illness went into remission. I was a serious meditator. I sat an hour or more every day. I attended weekend retreats, and went to yearly retreats of a week or more. The method of meditation I followed was called Vipassana, which rooted out the three poisons of avarice, aversion, and ignorance through a technique of body scanning. The effect on me was great. I was even warned that this method of meditation which passed awareness down through the body in a slow steady sweep was dangerous to people with mental problems. I did it anyway.

My body would shake and vibrate in gross reaction to the technique in the first hours or minutes of meditation. As the time passed the vibration would diminish to a fine oscillation and energy would flow easily through my body. Blockages to the flow of energy would be broken up and fade away when I would concentrate my awareness on the points where I found these impediments. Often the points of impediment were points of pain. Sitting with your awareness on a location of pain in the body could be excruciating. Sometimes the pain was so bad; I would have too stop the meditation. Sometimes after you concentrated on the pain, it would begin to move and you could push this pain through your body and out through a limb or the head. Sometimes the blockage, which could also be an area where one had no sense of sensation, would just disappear. When the state where awareness or psychic energy you could call it, flowed easily through out the body, you could sit for hours without distress. In this state one would feel a certain sense of purity, as if one were internally cleansed. In a way I think this is true because one was different in the world of every day life after going through this self ceremony of doing nothing and achieving everything.

In the years that I followed this path, I was not perfect, but I did give up drugs. I was generally without the cycles of extreme high and low, which affect those of us who are afflicted with the Bipolar Disease. I had a few manic attacks, but they were fewer and less severe than before and as I look back far less severe than what followed after. You may well ask, “What happened?”  Like so many others who believe they are cured I forget in the rush of life what cured them. I became busy with a career and a new marriage and gradually fell away from the path that had led me to a partial healing. Stress grew and I finally buckled. I regressed into drugs and all sorts of manic behavior. I now know I was not fully cured, nor perhaps will I ever be. Maybe I was a maniac in past lives and I am paying for it now. Now I am a medicated man and I am better. I am fairly normal. Except I still have a strong predilection for those strange Eastern rites where lamas wave peacock feather wands over big aluminum bowls of spittle mumbling Tibetan prayers. The wind of the wand blows away the poisons of life. I like the imagery.  I tell myself each day I shall return to my meditation, but I haven’t consistently done so yet. Thus I like feeling that I could be purified after baptism in Ginger Ale and I could be energized to sit again daily. Something good always happens to me when I follow this Buddhist path.