Hawthorn Berry Harvest

Processing some last bits of this year’s Hawthorn berry harvest, I was reminded of a beautiful story from the life of Jowo Atisha, a 10th-11th C. Bangladeshi scholar who was instrumental in establishing Buddhism and medicine in Tibet. When he first came to Tibet, he lamented the lack of familiar south Asian herbs necessary for making medicines. Suddenly, the female Buddha Tārā appeared to him in the form of a turquoise-colored bird, and she said:
སྨན་རྒྱའི་ལ་སྒོ་འགགས་གྱུར་ཀྱང་། ཁྱོད་ཀྱི་གསོ་བ་དོན་མི་རྨོངས། ནང་བ་སྨན་དུ་ཤར་ནས་ཡོད་ཀྱིས་ཟེར་སྐད་བསྟན་པར་གྱིའོ།
“Even if the mountain passes to India are blocked, your healing aims will not be obscured by access to medicine. The phenomenal world arises as medicine - make use of what there is.” She then led him into the wilderness and introduced him to the local healing flora and fauna. Inspired by this experience, he wrote a number of manuals on the practice of Tibetan Medicine, and many materia medica texts list Green Tārā as their ultimate source.
This is a beautiful demonstration of how Sowa Rigpa is a truly universal and living healing system. Even here in the UK, thousands of miles away from the biologically-rich Himalayas, nature organically arises as medicine. This hawthorn is just one of countless powerful indigenous plant allies that can be skillfully integrated into our practice of traditional Sowa Rigpa in the west. It is fundamentally antithetical to the legacy of Tibetan Medicine to become rigid and static in the development of medical science. Dynamic integration and illumination through divergence - these are the keys to the past, present, and future of the healing arts.