Tunxis Community College invites the community to “Tibetan Medicine in the Light of Dzogchen: the View from Above,” a free guest lecture by Menpa (doctor) Phuntsog Wangmo, on Thursday, Nov. 7 at 10 a.m. in Room 6-127.

Internationally recognized as a leading Tibetan medical practitioner and teacher, Wangmo will discuss the integration of theory and application that makes her field one that attracts attention from doctors, healers, academics, and laypeople globally. She will present findings that reveal the promise of this system as a complement to modern Western care, and also share her personal experience as a practitioner in the Buddhist Dzogchen lineage of her uncle, noted master and scholar Chögyal Namkhai Norbu. In Dzogchen—traditionally, the perspective of enlightenment itself—one recognizes one’s relative circumstance as a manifestation of the primordial state, a helpful point of departure for sustaining health.

Tibetan medicine is similar to Ayurvedic medicine, but with a Buddhist framework that changes the medicine’s application. The inner philosophical and spiritual tradition in Tibet classifies Buddhist paths into the Way of Renunciation (Sūtra), the Way of Transformation (Tantra), and the Way of Self-Liberation (Atiyoga or Dzogchen). By working with the standpoint of this threefold division, it is possible to gain clear understanding of the depths of Tibetan materia medica and medical care—and see the benefit that current studies suggest the Tibetan system offers.

Wangmo received her advanced degree from the Lhasa University School of Traditional Medicine in 1988, where she also served a two-year residency after completing her five-year training program. During that time, she studied with Khenpo Troru Tsenam and Khenpo Gyaltsen, two of Tibet’s foremost doctors who are credited with the revival of Tibetan medicine in Tibet under the Chinese regime. She has practiced as a doctor in Eastern Tibet for many years, where she collaborated and directed the implementation of the Associazione per la Solidarietà Internazionale in Asia (A.S.I.A.), the non-profit organization founded by Chögyal Namkhai Norbu. Since that time, she has worked on behalf of A.S.I.A. setting up hospitals and training centers in the remote regions of Sichuan Province and Chamdo Prefecture.

Wangmo remains in residence at the Shang Shung Institute in America, located in Conway, Massachusetts (www.shangshung.org), where she is the director of the Institute’s Traditional Tibetan Medicine Program.

The talk is one of a series on philosophy and the history of ideas sponsored by the Tunxis Humanities Series and Social Sciences Department.

Questions? Contact J.I. Abbot: jabbot@tunxis.edu, or 860.773.1603