On Friday night, I hosted Lama Lobsang who lectured on Tibetan medicine. One of the more notable things I wanted to share from that talk was the following statement:
If you can get a disease, you can cure a disease. We just need to know the cause.
And while he did acknowledge certain “karmic diseases” that have no cure, most diseases were curable. He said that was the only logical way to understand the ability of someone to get sick. If one can get sick, one can get un-sick. Knowing the cause of the disease is the most difficult part. In fact, he stated that in many instances we will never know the real cause; that it is hidden, as in karmic diseases. But placing the emphasis on diagnosis is the real key to understanding the causes (or coming as close to the cause as one can), and then healing the person from that disease. He gave the analogy of knowing what country a person is from by looking at their face and features, but not being able to know the exact town or street address or the specific details. The more details you can uncover, the better your success at treating the disease.
That is where traditional diagnostics come into play, especially the pulse diagnosis and knowing one’s psychology. The specificity of the details come into sharper focus.