Talk:Jianzhen

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It would be significant to learn about Jianzhen's medical education and practices. With regard to Buddhist medicine, the following discussion is interesting.

Pattison, Eliot. Stone Mountain (St Martin's Grifin Ed. 2004) 130-131 (sequel to The Skull Mantra)

The westerner tells about a conversation between a western woman and Tibetans:

"The Tibetans told her that the most important thing for maintaining the human life force was connection to the land, and that the world had become divided between people whose lives were severed from the life force and people who lived close to the land.That those who lived close to the land had a sacred duty to protect the life force."

A lama named Lokesh, speaking of the medicine lamas, who lived in a gompa surrounded by the Plain of Flowers before it was destroyed by the Chinese:

"We would sit here for lessons sometimes, and the lamas would explain how the spring was connected to th e center of the earth. They would wash herbs in this water and send clay jars of it to healers all over Tibet. I remember listening for hours while Chigu Rinpoche taught us how the power of plants came from the power of the earth and their power to heal came from the ways they connected humans back to the earth."

Then the westerner says,

"Doctors say they could heal anything if they just knew how the human animal evolved,how to trace the human body back to where it rose up out of the mud. Because everything we're made of came out of the earth....It's a different way of saying the same thing, isn't it?"

A conversation between a westerner and a Tibetan-Buddhist monk in the 19th or 20th century has nothing to do with the medical practices of Zen-Buddhist Jianzhen. Intranetusa (talk) 03:26, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Ganjin was not a Zen-Buddhist...he established the Ritsu school of Buddhism. Zen Buddhism didn't arrive in Japan until several centuries later. Tony 10:12 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.151.21.82 (talk) 03:12, 10 March 2008 (UTC)