MEDICINE

Medicine (bhesajja) is a substance applied or ingested to cure sickness. Ancient Indian pharmacology was based on the idea that medicines could be categorized according to their taste (rasa), their post-digestive effect (vipāka), their potency (vīrya) and their specific action (parabhāva). The Buddha was knowledgeable in drugs and remedies and skilled in prescribing medicines. In the Vinaya he recommended numerous types of medicines and classified them as tallow, roots, astringents concoctions, leaves, fruits, resins, salts and ointments (Vin.I,198-250). Some of the medicines he recommended have been shown by modern research to have therapeutic value. Once, when the Buddha was suffering from an imbalance of the bodily humours, his physician Jīvaka prescribed for him oil massages and inhaling the perfume of water lilies (Vin.I,279).

What medicine is to health the Dhamma is to happiness and freedom and thus it is not surprising that the Dhamma is often compared to a potent restorative medicine: 'The Buddha is like a skilled physician in that he is able to heal the sickness of the defilements. The Dhamma is like a rightly applied medicine, and the Saṅgha, with their defilements cured, is like those restored to health by that medicine' (Pj.I,21). See Healing.