Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 35-minute talk, Choedak explores the Medicine Buddha teaching through the lens of the four elements—earth, water, fire, and air—and their relationship to physical and mental health. Rather than treating them as abstract cosmology, he connects each element to emotional and psychological qualities: earth to groundedness and acceptance, water to flexibility, fire to joyful engagement and digestion, and air to equanimity and mental flow. He draws concrete examples from Tibetan medicine, noting how physicians cultivate warm relationships with patients and understand that negative emotions like attachment and aversion block healing. He emphasizes that Medicine Buddha practice works best when paired with cultivation of the four immeasurables and great diligence—the tireless compassion that mirrors the Buddha’s own effort across eons. The teaching concludes with an introduction to diamond recitation, a breathing and visualization practice Choedak will teach next, designed to actively transform negative emotions and prepare practitioners for the Medicine Buddha empowerment later that afternoon. Pitched toward practitioners ready to move from theory into embodied practice.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 03 MB.mp3
UUID: 333602b9-0fc7-46f4-87dc-b87837294121
Teacher: Choedak
Collection: Medicine Buddha (Choedak)
Date: 2002 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Words: ~5,076
Because everything we do should be out of love, out of joy, not out of obligation. Not because you you, know, not because you have to do it. Not because, you know, you’re employed for that. That’s not a good reason to do it. There should be much more happiness to do it.
That’s the joyfulness. That’s the fire element. You know? That’s the very thing that makes all the, you know, even though you eat a lot of foods, you know, you serve food in different plates and cups and glasses, they’re all nice because they’re all in different places, you see? But when you jumble them all put together through this throat, of course, makes all of them sorted out carefully?
The waste products put in one crust. The essence is put in some you know, if earth element isn’t working well, digestive, however many delicious food you eat, we just don’t even know how to digest. We cannot take certain food. It’s amazing, you know, our body cannot take certain foods. What’s going on?
Something is lacking elementally that isn’t able to, that can easily trigger, you know, and this is largely to do with the emotional qualities. Now certain negative emotions have completely trapped us in a strong way. Just completely rejects certain foods or certain things that you take. The fire element. The opposite of the fire element is really cold, you know.
Cold and inconsiderate and callous and that idea of don’t care type of feeling. When you don’t care, there is amazing big gap between us and the other and the need of the others. When you have joy, even though the person is a complete stranger, your happiness to serve the person brings so much joy in the other person. The way we look towards them or the way we listen to them completely brings a warmth and a friendship is completely there. There’s amazing rapport taking place there when one is joyful to be giving and attending to.
And when we are conscious, we will be cultivating all of these four elements as we go. You don’t cultivate one element one at a time. You could actually cultivate, they say that there is four elements found in one of the four elements. Even with earth, has its own water, earth has its own fire, earth has its own. When you cultivate the earth element comprehensively, all the other elements are included in that.
Subtle one, elements. When we refer to the fire element in a physical level, physiological level, it is mainly the bodily temperature but mainly the warmth, the warmest part of body, the initial warmth of the body is our navel chakra, if you like. So that’s why when you have a very poor digestive system, you don’t digest because the navel chakra is pretty much I wouldn’t say it’s blocked. The navel chakra, the five element chakra isn’t really very strong and it is not communicating very well with it so therefore our digestive system is very poor. Different kinds of airs in the body, for instance, the fourth element is the air element.
Air element is quality of our breath. For instance, we say, May they dwell in great equanimity, which is without attachment or aversion to those near and far. This is a state of equanimity where you don’t suffer because of excessive attachment or excessive aversion but being able to remain indifferent for the purpose of protecting oneself from attachment and aversion. Because when you become too close, there’s a danger of becoming attached and the extreme other is aversion. Now how can you prevent yourself from having too much aversion or too attachment?
It’s by developing equanimity. Equanimity only comes when your mind is able to let go things fairly quickly. As soon as you see something happen, do not make them to last longer than they did, you know. If your friendship didn’t last longer than they did, you just let them go, oh, bye. You know?
You say, okay, that friendship wasn’t meant to be more than that. Okay, that’s fine. Maybe we can work on that. Maybe next time would be different. So for some friendship doesn’t last long, So be it.
Don’t resent the fact that it didn’t last very long. What is long enough that you will be happy anyway? If you aren’t able to draw the sustainable happiness from any encounter from others, how long should any happy relationship should be? All happy relationship usually ends into unhappy relationship. No happy relationship ends in happy relationship.
I may be wrong here but, you know. So therefore, should be able to let go whatever it is. Every wonderful thing has happened to you, you should say, Oh, that’s great. I have this, but it will soon be gone so I might as well appreciate it as much as I can while I have it. Soon I have to just let it go, you know.
And you do that. You actually do a lot better out of it the jury, however short it is. Like he saw this Dalai Lama. It’s amazing. I watched him last eight days.
And he would be just walking through maybe two hundred people lining. He almost makes contact with everybody within six, seven minutes. And it touches virtually everybody, not just physically, but just emotionally. So you don’t need a lot of time, you know, when you really. He says a wonderful short sentence.
It’s almost complete. It doesn’t have any unfinished things that the person has to say. It’s enough. That kind of thing. Equanimity.
Everybody gets a very beautiful blessing and then nobody is trapped or nobody feels stranded or unattended to. That kind of equanimity, you know, equanimity is the air element. The universal, you know? Air element is the universal. Air element is the hollow part in the body.
Hollow part in the body. Our body is the way air circulates. Air circulates. I’m sure they also work on a even the solid part of the body. But air element is that are now in between the lungs and livers and all the main organs, as well as the vessels inside them, which is also whole.
All the vital air is flowing in them but the qualities of the earth element is very much determined, yeah? Determined by our ability to remain unblocked. If you have too much attachment and too much aversion, you get blocked by yourself, you know. So air doesn’t flow. In some parts of body, we don’t have any sensation.
Either physical or mental. We just don’t know how to feel loving kindness. We don’t know how to feel joy or gratitude. We just have blocked that zone where you can feel gratitude because it is not circulating. So when you develop meditation and equanimity, try to emulate the air.
This is why Tibetan put the prayer flags we call wind horse, you know. Let the wind do the job, you know. You just print the prayers on the flag and let the wind touch it and distribute it wherever she flows, Which is everywhere by the way. So it’s not just on your roof, but because the wind touches, then the air will go everywhere. So it’s just prayer for equanimity really.
When Tibetans experience some kind of bad luck, they know they have short of equanimity, so they put a lot of prayer flags in order to sort of raise their air element. So air element refers to your capacity to flow and change quickly and swiftly without freezing and holding and grasping. Even the wonderful ones, you don’t hold them. You just let them go. Let of course, even the difficult ones, just forgive them.
Let them go. Let them free. They never intended and let them be free. You hold them with the resentment of attachment, it totally is anti air element. It’s just like stopping air tight.
It’s just like stopping air tight compartment. Air can’t go in there. Like that, know, you’re just stopping because tightness really is example of grasping. And grasping is attachment. And attachment to the negative is resentment.
Is it? So when we talk about the quality of equanimity, means, you know, you try sometimes might even emulate being a tree, you know. Because we’re too busy being Jack or Peter or Jackie. And because when you are in either of these person, you have too much of attachment. But only if you can just act like a tree, that’s what Śāntideva says, that’s how may I be like a tree.
He’s really invoking equanimity. Tree, you know, whether the wind blows from the east or the west or none at all, you should stand there, you know. That’s like that. She doesn’t care where the wind blows from wherever, you know. Whether the leaves are blown away by her or whatever it is, just trees just stand there.
That kind of equanimity. And we’re too busy not being equanimity, you know, because of attachment and aversion. And the meditation is a sort of entunement how to bring us to that station of equanimity. How we can just recite a mantra, or how we can just watch the breath, how we can just watch a posture. Just very very calmly, equally abiding.
It totally makes you just remain in that state of equanimity. So all in all, you can see that if whatever meditation practice you do, from conventional meditation to certain esoteric meditation, with recitation or mantra or visualization, whatever you do or don’t, if you don’t cultivate these four immeasurables, the four elements still remain very, very unharmonious. Disharmonious Tibetans call, therefore, when we ask each other, we don’t call how are you, you know. It’s how are you is emotional question, you know. We usually call it how are your elements.
Oh, that’s a very profound question actually. You can’t say straight away, oh god, that’s really hitting on the nail. You ask me such a profound question. Then you have to go and meditate on that, what are your elements? What is the four elements first of all?
Then you realize you see these outer elements and inner elements are related with psychological emotional qualities. If you develop loving kindness, there would not be a lot of selfishness. So you are self-cherishing and selfishness slowly sort of drops away. The more self-cherishing drops away, you have less argument with people, you are more sort of wishing and doing for the sake of others. Most people I think try quite hard trying to have loving kindness, but they get pretty fatigued, you know.
And always having to be nicer one, you know, when others aren’t doing that. Feel pretty lonely being a good one. You see, earth never feel lonely. Whether it’s in a desert, whether in a city, she just stand there. She just sit there.
Whether it’s a desert, whether there’s parts of her desert, nobody walks, or the big city like Sydney, she just sit there. No problem. That that kind of that kind of that kind kind of earth’s quality of air is earth’s equanimity. Being able to have that. Even you are the only one who has to do the thing all the time, but you still keep doing it because your your objective is great.
Objective was great. Remember? And and you have one of the great seven great things I should not forget to mention is the great diligence. Diligence is not only great at the beginning or at some good mood period, but diligence is good even when you are the only one who has to do it. That’s a really good diligence.
Diligence. You reinforce your diligence and hope he does it. That’s a great diligence. When your diligence gets really inspired, but everybody does it. Even dogs will do it.
That’s dog diligence. When everybody’s busy, dogs also wag their tails as if they could help you around. Diligence when nobody’s doing anything but your motivation gets even more reinforced. That’s my inner diligence, greater diligence, greater eager diligence. Because it’s completely supported by the four elemental factors.
Why you do it with loving kindness, it with compassion and so forth. So your diligence is very, very strong. Great diligence. Why? Why it’s called great diligence?
Because Buddha or any enlightened one that we know of the past all have worked for three uncalculable eons with great diligence. So it’s not just for six years under a tree with great diligence. That was the culmination and completion of all the great diligence cultivated for three uncountable eons. That six year under the tree was just the tip of the iceberg. So when we can remember these things, then our diligence, there’s no danger of us being too diligent.
So therefore, you realize your practice of great, what do call, great diligence. In Tibet. Great diligence by definition is one who only emulates the diligence of the enlightened one who works for three uncountable eons tirelessly. So our diligence is a little small. So in order to make it a great diligence according to the great great vehicle, you have to have great skillfulness, great skillfulness, great skillfulness, great sense of ingenuity that you cultivate.
And that ingenuity is and sometimes you have to approach with peacefully, generously, forcefully, all kinds of methods you employ, you know. While maintaining these four immeasurables, your skillful means is variable, adaptable, and tailorable so that you don’t have only one sort of rigid approach. And if it does go well, otherwise you get totally rejected. It’s not like that. You’re completely flexible.
You’re completely flexible if you’re really in the dynamics of His Holiness Dalai Lama’s policy of Tibet, Tibetan issue, for most people just can’t fathom it because he can only fathom it. He says, I don’t want independence. You met any leader in the world who says that, who has amazing confidence and competence to say that, and remain unchallenged? Because there’s this amazing sense of that skillful means because there’s this great time of strife in the rest of the world and you won’t get anywhere by just fighting for truth, you know, fighting for trying to win something back. So that kind of ingenuity, very few people can fathom, you know, that are not doing it, you know.
So this is what is called great skillful means. Great skillful device. That you try to use various approaches. Various approaches. And these four elements I’m referring to, when you cultivate these four elements, that slowly will go if you recite the mantra of meditation, Buddha, whatever, after that in relation to these feelings of emotional qualities we cultivate.
Then your Medicine Buddha practice is not just for you and your patient or for yourself or whatever. You’re doing it for a great number of beings for whom you do not mind including in your vision of kindness, objective kindness. When you’re able to do that, it will definitely improve your own capacity to cope well with ill health. You first of all become a better acceptor of your illness. That’s very good, you know?
Acceptor of your illness. Most people are busy rejecting illness and you first will become a better acceptor of your illness. An acceptor of your illness meaning because your own illness becomes a great teacher, you know. When your illness becomes your teacher rather than illness becomes an obstacle to you, then you have actually moved a long way in your progress of the spiritual mentality. When illness no longer see as a curse or negative karma or obstacle to you anymore, but it becomes more of a teacher, more of challenge to your quality or your practice of compassion and joyfulness and unrest.
If your joyfulness is so miserable that little illness can totally dampen it. So this is a very good example of even though you may lose some everything, but still your capacity to remain joyful cannot be taken away by your enemy. They can take away your land, they can take away your house, they can take away everything, but still your capacity to feel happy will not be prevented by not having those things. Sometimes it’s better not having things, actually. You have difficulty getting rid of and you don’t have to get rid of somebody coming to clear it for you, you know?
It’s really nice, you know? When the teaching is all about renunciation, here you don’t have renouns, so people help you to practice renunciation. It’s hard, but, you know, that’s where the teaching counts, you see? I think Tibetans fulfill their prayers. We teach renunciation everywhere.
We teach emptiness everywhere. We teach compassion. There we have good practice, you know. And so we live in exile, but, you know. But we got a lot of friends, you know.
I think we have more friends since then than before that, you know. Before the people thought we were mysterious and we were some semi human or we’re gonna take photos. No, they are completely different. Practice of healing. What can heal us?
It’s only when we have these four elements harmoniously blended. Then any conventional medicine or whatever you get, you will be easily cured. Illness will be short lived. Even if you have illness, your attitude will be completely powerful to cushion that conventional medication. If you don’t have the complementary attitude, then first of all you reject illness and that itself prevents the efficacy of the medication.
Because doctors know why should hospitals nowadays employ more psychiatrists and psychologists than actual physicians. I mean, was only the last two hundred years, you see. They realized, oh it’s not just the tablets, it’s not just these pills, they need a bit more people, we need to give them how to think, how to, you They realized that something was missing. Was missing. In Tibetan Buddhist medicine, it’s not sophisticated as we may look at it, but it is completely intact.
It was the small chapter on psychiatry right in the beginning. It isn’t some late, late addition. It’s not a late addition at all. Actually, it’s one of the earlier chapters for the doctors or physicians to learn about the nature of the mind body relationship and what mental attitude causes, what illness, and so forth. Usually Tibetan physicians, while they don’t have any sophisticated technology, they spend a lot of time on technology, of relationship.
They develop a warm relationship with the patient. They really let the patient talk about so many things, you know. And practitioner actually gets to know a little bit about the psychological state of the patient, you see. The Tibetan medicine, if you were to wait for the Tibetan medicine to cure, it’s going to take a while. First you have to brew it.
First you have to take all this big chunk of powder and then you have to brew it and then the taste is gone. It looks like whole dinner, you know. It’s not just easy, easy, just easy tablet, you see. It’s a very tedious process really, but they give you a bit more than that. They actually give you there’s a real discussion, real rapport between you and the doctor and they tell a lot.
They even ask about your dreams. Don’t just, they’re a very comprehensive consultation and they talk about various events that have occurred around your, you know, days and weeks and preceding before your illness. They make a really, really the interview is really, really thorough, you know. And he doesn’t write everything down. Silly thing.
But he knows everything. He knows exactly what he needs to know and he doesn’t need to record everything. And why? Because he doesn’t rely on that record. No doctors can rely on that record because he got to put that hard work himself to get the data or the psychological or physiological state of the patient when he sees the person.
Not rely on my record. This is nothing against record but the system. Instead of writing down, they usually record everything what they hear from the patient and then an amazing sense of, and the best doctors also practice and meditate themselves as a Buddha when they are listening to the complaints of the patient, when they are reading the pulse and they do the practice every morning then therefore they themselves actually take the role of medicine Buddha. And efficacy of the, you know, what we call, how fortunate that some doctors cure, meditation. It works very well to some patients, and others it doesn’t.
We say, a very auspicious coincidence between you and a doctor. Really a lot depends on these qualities of the physician and your own trust, your own faith, I suppose your own capacity to be that way. And because of that, they themselves say that Japan medicine also says that you have to take this medicine for three months or whatever, even for ordinary illnesses. And they don’t give you, oh you’ll be okay next week, oh it’s only four hours, they’ll be fine, can go to work next day. So there’s not a lot of giving, giving a lot of guarantee, but they give you a real interpersonal relationship.
Medical texts in the Tibetan Buddhist medicine require the medical doctor to actually emulate the Medicine Buddha himself. One who’s constantly giving in his right hand, holding the medicine and plant, constantly giving, giving, giving, giving. The whole idea is just giving. It’s not exactly the opposite. It’s just giving, giving, giving, And of course, when there is a lot of giving, doesn’t, you get respect and actual, what do you call, offerings or traditional offerings that they do is never make the physicians poor.
Physicians even by just giving by people’s charity. It looks like charity, but they never are. They have more than enough. So that kind of culture is of course maybe we can’t imagine it will be happening, but the whole idea of these four elements is very important in relation to what you call harmony. Because the outside four elements are intact and strong there.
The capacity for us to extract that, to build ability to enjoy better health, even our health is poor, whatever karmic reasons are, but psychologically we don’t have to be depleted by them, you know. That is the capacity we can cultivate by using these practices. So while your practice of medicine hasn’t really cured your illness very fast, but your attitude toward illness really has changed. That’s pretty good really. That’s magic.
You don’t have medicine for attitude. You cannot take medicine for changing your attitude. Attitude can only be changed by attitude and all changes. And so it’s not some kind of pills or tests or anything you can have surgery or anything you can do. But even if you have surgery, remove certain things, but now that has been developed in good twenty years, but who doesn’t know, who would say you won’t have another one in ten years time?
Because if these kind of negative emotions remain unabated and given rise to, you know, it doesn’t take for another small lump to come from somewhere else next time. Because we create the causes again, you know. So that’s why it is these four line prayers is important in the context because the four elements that I refer to, the water, fire, earth, and air elements, you know, are the very four factors harmoniously. When they are in harmony, we enjoy better health. Even physically we may be healthy but the psychological state of how happy we are really depends on the subtle qualities of the four elements.
When we give rise to these four and interrelated positive elements, emotional intelligence, give rise to it because loving kindness is an intelligent emotion. It’s not just an emotion that gives, but it’s an intelligent. It sees the benefit of it. And it is not some emotion that you have to do for the nicety of perceived by other people. It is not just to seek the approval of other people.
That’s not intelligent. That’s just seeking approval of emotion. The loving kindness is intelligent in the sense that it is guided the realization that promotes the well-being of others. When you promote the well-being of others, it’s much easier to ensure a well-being of yourself. And it’s better your your where your well-being is completely taken care when you promote the well-being of others.
But when you do the exact opposite, it’s exactly the You know? Opposite is the case. When one realizes, this is quite revolutionary thinking. This is not just a health issue. This is just enlightening in the sense.
But the very idea seems so powerful, really. So powerful. And almost we feel, why didn’t we do that? And why weren’t we taught like that right from the very beginning to do this? And that kind of internal revolutionary realization that we are able to adopt gives us much more capacity to cultivate.
Now, I would like to conclude here by saying that those four elements, if we haven’t cultivated the positive aspects of these qualities to that which nourishes and nurtures and enhances the harmony of the four elements and we have done the exact opposite. For instance, maybe we have developed more selfishness instead of loving kindness and that is the negative emotion we have to deal with. Likewise, instead of developing compassion we have sense of anger or resentment or whatever the like. Still have them sedimented or trapped in our mind and emotion. They need to be gotten rid of.
They are packed wrongly in ourselves unknowingly and they have to be unpacked, you see. So that’s what we are going to talk and do next session, what I call diamond recitation, a form of meditation that Tibetan medical doctors give to their patients on top of their normal meditations, you know, probably prior to being able to do Medicine Buddha Mantra. Even Medicine Buddha Mantra, they give actually greater credence to this Diamond Recitation Meditation than the Medicine Buddha Mantra itself. Because if the Diamond Recitation Meditation, you’re able to do, it’s not just a mantra that you recite. It’s actually a conscious practice of thoughts, conscious practice of your thoughts and and being able to increase your capacity to serve, to be able to alter positive feelings on your own accord.
Not wait for the positive feelings to be delivered at your door, but the positive feelings, you alter them creatively by yourself, by doing this deliberate recitation, mental recitation, and what you call visualization, and so forth. So that’s what we’re going to do. And I’m sure this is a practice you can do at all times, whether you recite the Medicine Buddha Mantra or not. But of course, once you take the empowerment, it would be beneficial and requirement to recite the mantra. But if you are able to do that then it sort of plows the field, makes it fertile ground for your own mind stream because otherwise it is completely, maybe there’s a lot of weeds and stones in your mind that are stopping from enjoying good health and they need to be uprooted and they need to be removed.
And diamond recitation is a breathing practice, a breathing practice that we will learn how to do. So after this break, we will learn to do that and this will give you, I will first give you a short instruction on how to do and then we go and learn to practice several rounds. Then that will prepare us to actually receive the actual actual Medicine Buddha empowerment later in the afternoon and then add on the actual practice itself. So with that, I will now conclude here by the dedication of merits. The dedication of merits is on page eight.
Through this virtue may I quickly attain the stage of Buddha and establish each and every sentient being on a stage of enlightenment. By recalling the name and murmuring the powerful healing mantra of the healing Buddha, the king of all physicians, May those being who encounter physical and mental sickness gain strength to control pain and soothe the sufferings of others. By shunning the act of harming others and as the blessings of the healing Buddha and unconditionally nursing the sick, aged and poor, may all beings emulate the compassionate acts of the bodhisattvas. Next we will do this on page eleven, the meditation on pain which we have included here. Pain will bring me onto the path of cultivating inner strength.
It will teach me the skills to accept and see how it rises and falls. While paying it my full attention, I’ll whisper about its rise and fall. Otherwise, it may be heard as a loud scream from the outside. Seeing the rise of pain will show me how to search for matters to heal and to realize that running away only deepens the pain. By knowing its transient nature, I’ll find the space to flow and spread, and to find the wisdom to nurture and nurture the part of me that is in pain.
Pain humbles my arrogance and crumbles my attachment to health. It reminds me of the fragility of the body and it purifies my negativities. As the trial and test of life, pain evokes wisdom and compassion. As a timely reminder, it says pain is prevalent. Observing my own pain opens my heart in a compassionate way, and I experience the burst of compassion towards others with more pain than me. Seeing how trivial my own pain is, I become patient with myself and find strength and tolerance and acceptance rather than rejecting the pain.
Although I feel gratitude to those who care for me as a loved one, day after day they attend me, patient like myself, thinking of them soothes my pain. If I can skillfully deal with my own pain, I’ll gain the strength to overcome it. Let my pain radiate rays of goodwill and peace to illuminate the darkness of sorrow and ignorance. So we’ll have a short twenty minutes break.