Tibetan Shamanism by Larry Peters

Author:Larry Peters [Peters, PhD, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL007050 Religion / Buddhism / Tibetan
ISBN: 9781623170318
Publisher: North Atlantic Books
Published: 2016-08-07T16:00:00+00:00

TREATING SKEPTICS AND NONBELIEVERS

While it may be tempting to attribute the efficacy of Lhamo’s healings to the power of cultural paradigms and hypnotic suggestion, I saw that Lhamo could also be effective with Western patients who did not value the diagnosis or treatment. One young Western man in his mid-twenties who was suffering from chronic back pain and stiffness had been persuaded by his friends to see Lhamo. When I spoke to him as he left Lhamo’s ritual room, he complained that her diagnosis and her treatment made no sense, and that she had, in fact, hurt him. Lhamo had told him that he had been attacked by a crematorium ghost and by an evil air spirit from behind the stupa. Because the man didn’t believe in demonic spirits and he had never been behind the stupa, he thought her diagnosis was off the mark. Lhamo had bit and sucked on his back and had extracted some white stones (white stones, as opposed to black ones, are considered indications that the patient will improve quickly). The man considered the extraction of stones from his body to be a ridiculous sleight of hand.

As he put on his shoes outside Lhamo’s apartment, he continued to complain about the diagnosis and about his chronic back pain. He was resistant to the notion of wearing the stones as an amulet, as Lhamo had prescribed. Suddenly, the man stood up and walked around with his hand on his lower back. Looking surprised, he remarked that he felt no pain and that he hadn’t felt such freedom of movement in years. He bent down slowly two or three times, as if testing himself. Then, thanking Lhamo’s husband and announcing that he would be back, he walked gleefully down the stairs with his friends.

Another male Western patient asked Lhamo to cure his dysentery. However, as she held his hand and felt his pulse with her fingers, she announced that she “saw” that he had a problem with his leg, which he confirmed. Lhamo described it as a numbness and stated that he had been to a doctor and was taking medicine, even before he related his story. The man acknowledged that he had been taking medicine to help alleviate a feeling of numbness that had developed during a trek. He had been worried about the problem for a few weeks, but he hadn’t mentioned it because it was on the mend. Both he and the friend who accompanied him were startled by Lhamo’s diagnosis, because they had not said anything about the problem beforehand.

The same day, a young American man came in with a sinus headache that Lhamo diagnosed as a case of smoking too much hashish. The young man denied the diagnosis, whereupon Lhamo did another divination, felt his pulse, and repeated the same diagnosis. The man eventually admitted that he had had a drug problem many years ago, but that, for ten years, he had belonged to Narcotics Anonymous and had been drug-free. Then Lhamo

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