I was especially happy when I heard that this lecture series on the Medicine Master Buddha Sutra was to begin, because it seems so relevant to our everyday lives and to what is happening in our modern life today. Illnesses of all kinds, both physical and mental, seem to be especially pervasive today. Even if we ourselves are healthy or if our family is typically healthy, we all know people who are seriously or chronically ill. Also, we cannot read a newspaper or a magazine or watch TV without being made aware of the larger spectrum of disease in our society. The list of illnesses that exist gets longer and longer. Every year or every few years, newly identified diseases that didn exist previously get added to this list. Seldom are any of these illnesses eliminated or a cure found for them.

Here in the United States, there is a growing health crisis, not only because of AIDS, but also because of other diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, that mostly affect the elderly. In addition to that there is a health insurance crisis. We know that there are people who cannot afford to see a doctor when they are ill; but even if we have health insurance and access to doctors, we pay a lot for it. The cost of being ill is very high in dollars and in suffering. A lot of our time, effort, and resources in life are devoted to either preventing illness or treating it.

Among Americans, attitudes about why we are ill and how we get healthy again vary a lot. Many people think of an illness as some kind of alien and mysterious process that “happens” to them—something that is external, that comes to them out of the blue, uninvited and undeserved. Also, some people think of their illness as something that a doctor fixes. For a long time Western medicine has encouraged this attitude and encouraged patients to look to their doctor for the total cure. More recently, Western medicine has begun to admit its limitations and to seek more assistance from the patient in getting healthy again and in preventing future illness. Doctors are beginning to look at how people’s attitudes contribute to an illness and to the healing process. It is this shift towards personal responsibility that parallels what Buddhism has emphasized all along—that the causes for what happens to us begin in ourselves—in our own minds and in our own behaviors. It is this shift in emphasis that makes what is happening in mainstream society fit more with what we do here.

So although I haven’t studied this Sutra before, I see it as an opportunity to think more about the mechanics of health and illness. This lecture series could be used as motivation to take a closer look at our mental and physical habits—to become more mindful—to look at the origination of both good and bad health.

Although Medicine Master Buddha has taken vows to save living beings from their illnesses, I don’t think this means that we should rely totally on this Buddha to save us unless our circumstances are extreme. That would be like relying totally on our doctor to cure us. The point of Buddhism is to take responsibility for what happens to us and to observe very closely how our habits actually lead to something positive or negative happening to us and to find ways to regulate our behavior.