Chapter on Medicines

Exploring Theravāda's connections to other paths - what can we learn from other traditions, religions and philosophies?
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Nicholas Weeks
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Chapter on Medicines

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A large sutra, some 900 pages that is from the 84000 translation project.

https://read.84000.co/translation/toh1-6.html
The Bhaiṣajyavastu, “The Chapter on Medicines,” is a part of the
Mūlasarvāstivāda Vinaya, the corpus of monastic law of one of the most
influential Buddhist schools in India. This chapter deals with monastic
regulations about medicines. At the same time, it also includes various
elements not restricted to such rules: stories of the Buddha and his disciples,
a lengthy story of the Buddha’s journey for the purpose of quelling an
epidemic and converting a nāga, a number of stories of the Buddha’s former
lives narrated by the Buddha himself, and a series of verses recited by the
Buddha and his disciples about their former lives. Thus, this chapter
preserves not only interesting information about medical knowledge shared
by ancient Indian Buddhist monastics but also an abundance of Buddhist
narrative literature.
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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Nicholas Weeks
Posts: 4210
Joined: Tue Dec 30, 2008 11:26 pm
Location: USA West Coast

Re: Chapter on Medicines

Post by Nicholas Weeks »

Here is an interview with the translator of this Vinaya chapter where she talks about the contrasts between Vinaya traditions:

https://84000.co/dr-fumi-yao/
Good and evil have no fixed form. It's as easy to turn from doing bad to doing good as it is to flip over the hand from the back to the palm. It's simply up to us to do it. Master Hsuan Hua.
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