Healing Masters: Asian Religious Traditions and Their Views on the Root of Disease

Dear Colleagues,

Whereas health and healing from various diseases are currently in the spotlight for obvious reasons, insufficient attention is paid to what lies beyond the symptomatic definition of illness. Hence, scrutinizing how the root of disease is envisioned will contribute to complicating our understanding of the porous contours of “sickness” and what lies beyond. Investigating this facet of the intertwinement between health and religious traditions through the lenses of “healing masters” facilitates examining the convergence between distinct traditions and their use of common metaphors.

Asian religious traditions provide a particularly ample set of conceptual tools and practices allowing us to not only problematize the distinction between body and mind by showing their nondual nature—a feature that resonates with postwar insights into psychosomatic disease—but also to move beyond the conventional understanding of individual wellbeing. This is usually accomplished by considering subtle parameters of energy balance and their interactions with deeper levels of consciousness that could be labelled "spiritual." Such an approach echoes various forms of traditional medicine whose origins are usually ascribed to Indian, Tibetan, and Chinese therapies.

Although a vast array of publications dealing with the overlap between medicine and specific traditions, such as Buddhism, Daoism, or Brahmanism, have emerged in recent years, one area that warrants further attention is that of the "healing masters", often viewed as the ancestors or founders of particular strategies to deal with the root of disease. These figures tend to display hybrid characteristics, suggesting that they emerged or evolved at the confluence of various traditions. For instance, the healing master Bhaiṣajyaguru is identified as a Buddha (usually translated as Medicine Tathāgata or Medicine Buddha), yet he incorporated medical ideas and beliefs from the areas in which its worship arose and spread. Once the Mahāyāna Buddhist tradition began moving eastward, the cult of the Medicine Buddha gained traction in Central Asia before its name and representation as Yàoshī Rúlái 藥師如來 flourished in the Sinosphere. This is where its scripture and its emphasis on the twelve divine generals became closely intertwined with local beliefs, including those labeled "Daoism." One of the research questions that needs to be addressed is whether the Six jia Generals (liùjiǎ 六甲) of Daoism could have merged with the twelve great Yakṣa Generals (Ch. shíèr yàochā dàjiàng 十二藥叉大將), with the possible addition of the “transcendent Six jia” of the Shangqing tradition, female deities called “jade maidens” (yùnü 玉女), who may also correspond to the Six Ding Jade Maidens (liù dīng yùnǚ 六丁玉女).

This provides one example of the questions at the core of this Special Issue, with the objective of encouraging cross-disciplinary contributions, mostly from specialists focusing on Buddhism, Daoism, and Shamanism, and their mutual interactions. In terms of time scope, contributions dealing with the early sources of these traditions are encouraged, although articles highlighting compelling evidence of such cross-pollination up to the early twentieth century will also be considered. Regarding the broad geographical scope identified as "Asia", contributions focusing on any area in Central Asia, South Asia, or East Asia are welcome, as long as they clearly focus on religious traditions and healing doctrines and practices. We also want to keep addressing the question of the "root" of disease, either in relation to specific illnesses or in relation to the philosophical distinction between health and sickness, which is often blurred. For example, the early Buddhist approach to "dis-ease" (Pāli dukkha, Skt duḥkha) tends to identify nescience (Pāli avijjā, Skt avidyā) as its root cause. From that perspective, all ordinary beings are "sick," despite their lack of awareness of this condition. This constitutes a crucial premise for our scholarly discussion, with deep psychological implications that also allow us to question the dichotomy between "sanity" and so-called "insanity".

Thus, the purpose of this Special Issue is to re-examine the canvas on which various Asian religious traditions painted their own therapeutic approaches, paying particular attention to the idea of "healing masters" who showed the way and vowed to eliminate all forms of disease. This focus should complement the vast array of case studies provided in the existing literature by further emphasizing areas where separate traditions, such as Buddhism and Daoism, converge or borrow from each other.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 400–600 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the guest editor (Michel.Mohr [at] hawaii.edu) or to the editorial office of Religions ([email protected]) with a clear mention of the special issue’s title: "Healing Masters". Abstracts will be reviewed by the guest editor for the purposes of ensuring proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will then undergo double-blind peer-review.

Please see below a preliminary list of references relevant to the current state of the field.

Selected References

Birnbaum, Raoul Oyan. 1989. The Healing Buddha. Boston: Shambhala.

Buswell Jr., Robert E., ed. 1990. Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

Demiéville, Paul., and Mark. Tatz. 1985. Buddhism and Healing: Demiéville’s article “Byō” from Hōbōgirin. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Ferrari, Fabrizio M., ed. 2011. Health and Religious Rituals in South Asia Disease, Possession and Healing. Routledge South Asian Religion Series 5. New York: Routledge.

Greene, Eric M. 2014. Healing Breaths and Rotting Bones: On the Relationship Between Buddhist and Chinese Meditation Practices During the Eastern Han and Three Kingdoms Period. Journal of Chinese Religions 42, no. 2: 145–184.

Kuriyama, Shigehisa. 1999. The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine. New York: Zone Books.

Loukota, Diego. 2019. Made in China? Sourcing the Old Khotanese Bhaiṣajyaguruvaidūryaprabhasūtra. Journal of the American Oriental Society 139 (1): 67–90.

Mollier, Christine. 2008. Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face: Scripture, Ritual, and Iconographic Exchange in Medieval China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

Peters, Larry. 2016. Tibetan Shamanism: Ecstasy and Healing. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books.

Salguero, C. Pierce. 2011. “Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China: Disease, Healing, and the Body in Cross-cultural Translation (second to eighth centuries C.E.).” PhD Dissertation, Proquest, Umi Dissertation Publishing.

Salguero, C. Pierce. 2014a. Translating Buddhist Medicine in Medieval China. Encounters with Asia. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Salguero, C. Pierce. 2014b. Buddhism & Medicine in East Asian History. Religion Compass 8, 239-250.

Salguero, C. Pierce, ed. 2017. Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources. New York: Columbia University Press.

Salguero, C. Pierce. 2022. A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine. New York: Columbia University Press.

Schipper, Kristofer. 1993. The Taoist Body. Translated by Karen C. Duval. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Schopen, Gregory. 2017. Help for the Sick, the Dying, and the Misbegotten: A Sanskrit Version of the Sūtra of Bhaiṣajyaguru. In Buddhism and Medicine: An Anthology of Premodern Sources, ed. C. Pierce Salguero, 235–251. New York: Columbia University Press.

Strickmann, Michel. 1990. The Consecration Sūtra: A Buddhist Book of Spells. In Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha, ed. Robert E. Buswell Jr., 75–118. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

Strickmann, Michel, and Bernard Faure. 2002. Chinese Magical Medicine. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Suzuki, Yui. 2005. “The Medicine Master: Yakushi Buddha icons and devotional practices in Heian Japan.” PhD Dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.

Suzuki, Yui. 2012. Medicine Master Buddha: The Iconic Worship of Yakushi in Heian Japan. Japanese visual culture. Leiden: Brill.

Thubten, Zopa, and Ailsa. Cameron. 2001. Ultimate Healing: The Power of Compassion. Boston: Wisdom Publications.

Weiss, Richard S. 2009. Recipes for Immortality: Medicine, Religion, and Community in South India. New York: Oxford University Press.

White, David Gordon. 2000. Tantra in Practice. Princeton Readings in Religions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Yumiyama, Tatsuya. 1995. Varieties of Healing in Present-day Japan. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 22 (3-4): 267-282.

Zysk, Kenneth G. 1991. Asceticism and Healing in Ancient India: Medicine in the Buddhist Monastery. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Prof. Dr. Michel Mohr
Guest Editor

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• healing masters
• health
• Asian religions
• Medicine Tathāgata
• Medicine Buddha
• Yàoshī Rúlái 藥師如來
• Buddhism
• Daoism
• Shamanism