2210 McKinley Avenue, Unit 4 (1 minute walk from Downtown Berkeley BART 1 block west of Martin Luther King, between Allston and Bancroft across from Bank of America Public Parking Lot - Click here for directions), Berkeley, California, 94703 USA
(1) 510-292-6696 - Please CALL US, no e-mail available (Namo AT Shurangama.com).
 

"Om Namo Aryavalokiteshvaraya Bodhisattvaya Mahasattvaya Maha Karunikaya Om Sarva Abhaya!"

Ethics

Introduction to Buddhist-Yogic-Vedic Ethics (Right Thought and Action)

The Medicine Buddha Healing Center and its Ayurveda Healing Arts Institute consider the virtues and ethical precepts that are rooted in the Buddhist-Yogic-Vedic-Confucian spiritual traditions to be the prime guiding lights to us as Ayurvedic healers.  Together, these learnings transform a student into a unique and powerful instrument of healing.  We have founded our school on the following mottos:

"Bringing fun, friendship, spirituality and
the joy of service back into healthcare."

Giving is a form of the Bodhisattva Vow to save living beings from suffering.  The 34 Buddhist Lay Bodhisattva Path Precept Vows requires of us to: “Compassionately help those suffering from ill health.” Hence, we study, practice, and teach Indo-Tibetan Ayurvedic healing as “joyful relentless service.”

Ayurvedic medical ethics and its kindhearted spirit, having grown out of the Buddhist, Yogic and Vedic moral traditions, consider the importance of following the Buddhist Five Precepts which take as their foundation the process of giving by forgetting one’s selfish desires and compassionately serving others. 

Our faculty and graduates understand and demonstrate the importance of acting ethically in their personal and professional lives following time-tested Buddhist-Yogic-Vedic spiritual ethical guidelines (The Five Precepts) of:

1.     No killing – do no harm.

2.     No stealing – do not take what is not given.

3.     No sexual misconduct – do not cause one’s sexual desire to break the relationships of others.

4.     No lying, no harsh speech, no divisive speech, no gossip, no frivolous speech.

5.     No taking drugs, alcohol or other substances which make the mind unclear and harm the body.

In summary, "No fighting, no greed, no seeking, no pursuing personal advantage, and no lying."

Just before Shakyamuni Buddha left this world, he was asked by his disciple Ananda, “Who shall be our teacher now that you are departing this world?”  The Buddha replied, “Take the Precepts as your teacher.”

Our students will have exposure to the Buddhist Vinaya texts where they will study ethics, morality, precepts, and the right comportment of a healing practitioner.  The Yogic version of the above Buddhist Five Precepts are the Five Moral Disciplines / Restraints (yamah in Sanskrit) and the Constructive Observances (niyamah in Sanskrit).  The revered 2000+ year old Ayurvedic medical classics support these Buddhist-Yogic-Vedic ethical guidelines.  These guidelines are best summed up by saying that a healer or teacher must dissolve in himself and the patient or student the Three Poisons of Greed, Hatred and Ignorance. Tibetan Ayurveda says that karma is the cause of all health and ill health and that the Three Poisons cause all disease.  Greed (desire – rajas in Sanskrit), hatred (arrogance, anger, hypercriticalness, jealousy) and ignorance (foolishness – tamas in Sanskrit) are mentioned in Ayurveda as related respectively to the negative emotional aspects of the three constitions (doshas):  vata (space-air: wind), pitta (fire-water: bile), and kapha (water-earth: phlegm).  Through the purifying fire of vowing (pranidhana) to hold compassionate moral precepts, we can transform our excessive rajasic and tamasic behaviors into sattvic (wise, generous, lucid and pure) behaviors.  These sattvic behaviors are the practice of limitless compassion and charity, loving kindness, empathetic joy and equanimity.

In the classic text, Yoga Sutras of Patanjali we see the core of Ayurvedic moral values and their goal to decrease selfishness through the maintaining of altruistic moral precepts.  The Five Moral Disciplines / Restraints (yamah) are: 1. Celibacy   2. Harmlessness.   3. Truthfulness.  4. Non-stealing.   5. Non-possessiveness.    The Constructive Observances (niyamah) are: 1. Purity.   2. Contentment.   3. Austerity.   4. Self-Study.   5. Surrender to God.     With respect to “Surrendering to God” (bakti), Voltaire said, "The physician’s job is to entertain, while God heals."  In Tibetan Medicine a healer regards medicine as an offering the Medicine Buddha.  The 2^nd century B.C. Charaka (one of the Healer-Saint-Sages of the Ayurvedic tradition) affirms, "He who regards kindness to humanity as his supreme religion and treats his patients accordingly, succeeds best in achieving his aims of life and obtains the greatest pleasure."  Charaka also asserts, "He, who treats his patients only on humanitarian grounds without desiring any money or personal benefit in return, supersedes all other physicians."

"True poverty comes from a lack of human ethics," asserts our teacher, the Venerable Buddhist Master Hsuan Hua of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas (www.drba.org) in California. This fact is obvious if one looks profoundly and observes the operation of karma and retribution (cause and effect) in daily life. With the great advances of science in the last century we sometimes overlook the importance of the simple ethics of giving and the poverty created through our limitless greed and may disregard the importance of psychological and spiritual aspects of care of the sick.

All of these great healing and religious traditions speak of the importance of giving.  Buddha says that great wisdom (prajna in Sanskrit) and samadhi  (the ultimate meditative state) come from the good roots planted through the daily practice of generosity combined with holding of the Five Moral Precepts (yamah and niyamah in Yoga) and the making of great Bodhisattva vows (pranidhana) to help heal living beings and remove their suffering. Hence, in this spirit, it is our “Bodhisattva Vow”, part of our  “Big Dao” (path) to offer Ayurvedic healing to the world.