The Treasury of Lives

Pasang Yonten Arya (Menrampa) trained at Men-Tsee-Khang in Dharamsala, where he graduated first of his class in 1977 and served as assistant pharmacist, professor, and college principal until 1989. After lecturing at the Central Institute for Buddhist Studies (Ladakh, 1989-1991), he moved to Europe, where he acted as guest professor in Tibetan medicine for DÄGfa (the German Medical Association for Acupuncture) for more than two decades. He co-founded and directs the New Yuthok Institute (Italy) as well as TME – Tibetan Medicine Education Center (Switzerland), through which he has instructed many students on clinical, yogic, and tantric knowledge and practices that balance the body-mind. His recently published handbook New Light on Tibetan Medicine: Volume I – Foundations (2022) is based on his lifelong teaching experience.

Jan M. A. van der Valk (PhD, University of Kent) is a scholar-practitioner specializing in Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan medicine). Drawing on a multidisciplinary training in anthropology, ethnobotany, and biology, his interests revolve around Eurasian medicinal plants and other potent substances, traditional pharmaceutical processes, more-than-human ecologies, and knowledge transmission. He mainly conducts ethnographic fieldwork in the Himalayan valleys of Ladakh (India) and Kathmandu (Nepal). Besides working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies (University of Vienna), he has a private Tibetan medical practice in Belgium, while also collaborating with his teacher Gen. Pasang Yonten Arya as the editor in chief of Bedurya Publications.

Barbara Gerke (DPhil, MSc, University of Oxford), has been based at the University of Vienna since 2015 and works across the disciplines of Medical Anthropology and Tibetan Studies, researching medico-religious interfaces in Sowa Rigpa across the Himalayas. Her open-access monograph Taming the Poisonous: Mercury, Toxicity, and Safety in Tibetan Medical Practice (Heidelberg University Publishing, 2021) examines the use of refined mercury in Tibetan medicines and related safety and toxicity debates. Her first monograph Long Lives and Untimely Deaths (Brill, 2012) analyses long-life rituals, as well as vitality and life-span concepts among Tibetans in the Darjeeling Hills.

Published August 2023