Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet by Gyatso, Janet

Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780231164979)

Vendor: Janet Gyatso
Product type: Books
Format: Paperback
$32.00
$32.00
$32.00
Subtotal: $32.00
Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet by Gyatso, Janet

Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet

$32.00
Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet by Gyatso, Janet

Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet

$32.00
Format: Paperback
Description
Description
x

Critically exploring medical thought in a cultural milieu with no discernible influence from the European Enlightenment, Being Human in a Buddhist World reveals an otherwise unnoticed intersection of early modern sensibilities and religious values in traditional Tibetan medicine. It further studies the adaptation of Buddhist concepts and values to medical concerns and suggests important dimensions of Buddhism's role in the development of Asian and global civilization.

Through its unique focus and sophisticated reading of source materials, Being Human adds a crucial chapter in the larger historiography of science and religion. The book opens with the bold achievements in Tibetan medical illustration, commentary, and institution building during the period of the Fifth Dalai Lama and his regent, Desi Sangye Gyatso, then looks back to the work of earlier thinkers, tracing a strategically astute dialectic between scriptural and empirical authority on questions of history and the nature of human anatomy. It follows key differences between medicine and Buddhism in attitudes toward gender and sex and the moral character of the physician, who had to serve both the patient's and the practitioner's well-being. Being Human in a Buddhist World ultimately finds that Tibetan medical scholars absorbed ethical and epistemological categories from Buddhism yet shied away from ideal systems and absolutes, instead embracing the imperfectability of the human condition.

Author: Janet Gyatso
ISBN-10: 0231164971
ISBN-13: 9780231164979
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Language: English
Published: 12/27/2016
Pages: 544
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.95lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.10w x 1.20d
By Janet Gyatso
By Janet Gyatso
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Janet Gyatso is Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies at Harvard University, where she serves on the faculty of the Divinity School, in the Study of Religion, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and Inner Asian and Altaic Studies. Her writing has centered on Tibetan Buddhism and its cultural and intellectual history from the perspective of large issues in the humanities about human experience and its literary presentation. She is the author of Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary, as well as several edited volumes.

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