Support Chagpori Tibetan Medical Institute

Having a college where doctors can train, clinics for the sick to find healing, and a pharmacy to provide the medicines is Chagporis basic requirement. These are the three pillars, and all need constant maintainance and development.

Chagpori provides Tibetan medical education and health care according to Tibetan medicine regardless of colour, creed, caste, sex or religion. The amount that we charge is the bare minimum, just enough to help us cover the costs. These services are offered on a sliding scale according to means, and is free of charge to the disadvantaged.

With the generous assistance of friends and supporters, Chagpori can continue to preserve and propagate the science of Tibetan medicine and increase the social services to benefit society at large.

The success of these vital projects depends on your contributions. In the past, Rinpoche used to go for world tours to raise funds by giving talks and seeing patients. After his passing away, several of the new amchis have gone to the West to see patients and care for some of the funding for the Institute, but this is not at all sufficient and so the Institute is inviting our supporters to sponsor the current projects so that we may continue.

The monastery known as Chagpori was the first official medical college in Tibet. It was established in accordance with the explicit wish of the Great Fifth Dalai Lama in 1696 and was destroyed by the chinese occupation forces in 1959.

These pages will explain what Chagpori was, and has become, and how the late Dr. Trogawa Rinpoche, one of very few surviving doctors who had been trained in its system, worked for much of his life to see the lineage continued through re-establishing Chagpori in exile.In 1992 with the blessings of HH the Dalai Lama, the Chagpori Tibetan Medical Institute (CTMI) was inaugurated at Darjeeling, India, in commemoration of Chagpori, Lhasa, Tibet.

Since that time, thirty-one doctors, known as amchis in Tibetan, have graduated and there are currently twenty-three students enrolled. Through the work of these young people, who come from all over the Himalayan region, the unique tradition of medicine, with its particular knowledge of herbs survives.Many people and organisations have given help in the form of funds and support to CTMI over the years, but much more is needed to provide a really sound foundation for continuing growth in the future. Through these pages we hope to inform you of our projects and we hope that you will want to help us make the Chagpori medical tradition flourish again.

Dr. Samphel Norbu Trogawa Rinpoche was one of the most respected senior practitioners of Tibetan medicine of our present time. He was born in 1932 in Lhasa, Tibet. At an early age he was recognized as the incarnation of the famous lama physician Drag-Lhong Gomchen Paljor Gyaltsen by H.E. Reting Rinpoche, the regent of Tibet at that time.
The first incarnation dates back to Trappa Ngoshe (1012-1090 C.E.) the great terma revealer of the main medical text, known as the Gyu Zhi.

Rinpoche was mainly educated in Lingbu monastery at Gyantse until the age of fifteen. He then travelled to Lhasa for medical training from the renowned Dr. Rigzin Paljor Nyerongsha, a holder of the Chagpori lineage teachings, who himself had studied under Dr. Jampa Thubwang Taykhang, the private physician of the 13th Dalai Lama. To become a Tibetan doctor Rinpoche completed a rigorous nine year apprenticeship under Dr. Rigzin Paljor Nyerongsha.

In 1964 Rinpoche joined the new Tibetan Medical and Astrological Institute (Men-Tsee-Khang) in Dharamsala at the request of HH the Dalai Lama. He can be seen in this capacity in the film Message of the Tibetans made by Arnaud Dejardins. In 1967 he had to retire on account of ill-health and then went into retreat. During this time he realised that the Chagpori lineage was in danger of disappearing, since he was one of the very few of those physicians who had left Tibet, and so he decided to try and preserve that special tradition and established a new institution in exile.

Buddhism underlies and informs all aspects of Tibetan medicine and the medical texts are regarded as teachings of the Buddha himself. The Buddha taught that the mind is the basis for the existence of all phenomena and thus developing the means both to know the mind and to control it is the key to overcoming suffering. It is the fundamental ignorance of our situation which keeps us trapped in the cycle of birth and death and from this ignorance arise three aspects of mind: desire, hatred and indifference.

Closely connected with these aspects are the three energies of wind, bile and phlegm. All living creatures and everything that grows are compounded from the five elements of water, earth, fire, air, and space and it is in this material basis of elements, in other words the body, that the wind, bile and phlegm energies can manifest.

In Tibetan medicine the art of living and healing is related to the concept of harmony, and disease can result when these energies are out of balance.

Wind energy is present in everything that moves in our body, the nervous system, the sensory functions, breathing, digestion, movement and circulation. Wind energy also governs mental well-being and stress.
Bile energy controls the regulation of warmth in the body, liver function and blood circulation. Phlegm energy regulates the cold energy in the body as well as fluids, hormones and the lymph system.

These three energies arise from emotions and deep underlying attitudes that are conditioned by primordial ignorance. We go from life to death and again to life without understanding this cause. From the point of view of Tibetan medicine the connection between body and mind is clearly seen. When the basic energies are disturbed by emotions, seasonal changes, ways of eating or behaviour, they can give rise to many different kinds of disease.

Most the students who come to Chagpori are from very poor families. Without sponsorship it would not be possible for them to fulfil their ambition to study Tibetan medicine. Each student will need 75 euros per month which is payable for twelve months a year for the duration of six years include  five years of theoretical study and one practical year spent in clinic. This will cover the students tuition fees, board and lodging, and pocket money.

http://www.chagpori-tibetan-medical-institute.com/projects-01.htm