Medicine Buddha/Medicine Mind:
An Easy-to-Understand Exploration of the Healing Power of Your Mind

Charlene Diane Jones

Average Rating 8/10 (1 Review)

Neurons that Fire Together, Wire Together. This famous saying describes how we create our habits, thoughts, behaviours even our actions.

In this book the seam between Neuroscience, originator of the maxim "neurons that fire together, wire together" and Visualization reveals a pattern. All those moments of meditation, visualization and repetition all have an effect upon you, and the life you are creating. Using Medicine Buddha as the primary Visualization and quoting extensively from luminaries like Norman Doidge, Marco Iacoboni, and many others, the book reveals how Neuroscience describes Visualization Meditation. Further the exploration extends into the realm of pain and pain management, healing from depression and PTSD and much more.

Want to know more about how your brain works? Want to learn to work with your mind, instead of against it? Ever wonder about those images from dreams, from when you read a really good book, or just from daydreaming? In this book the seams between our experience of mental visualizations (dream images, daydreams, imagination, or Tibetan icons such as Medicine Buddha) and what the latest in Neuroscience has to say about images, are joined in easy to read, simple language.

An excerpt from the book, "Comprised of billions of neurons or brain cells, our brains light up with tiny electrical charges when the neurons connect. For example, neurons connect when we perform an action. As we perform the same action repetitively the circuits of those connecting neurons grows larger. As those circuits grow larger, it becomes increasingly natural and increasingly easy, to repeat the action, behaviour or thought associated. These circuits may be measured on fMRI machines, functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging machines."

Review by Molly Martin (290216) Rating (8/10)

Review by Molly Martin
Rating 8/10
Charlene Diane Jones has crafted in Medicine Buddha/Medicine Mind a simple to read, stress-free method set down in clear common terms to aid the reader as the writer explores the healing power of the mind.

While not a lengthy tome, 92 pages, with a number of them blank at the end of a chapter; the work is not a quick read. It is meant to be studied, savoured, implemented and read again, and perhaps again. While I do not know if the intent of the writer or publisher for those blank pages; I found the pages handy for making notes as I went along with my first read.

The paperback begins with dedication, acknowledgements and Preface by Buddhist teacher David Brazier.

Chapter titles encourage the reader toward the writer’s Personal History with Vajrayana Tantra Meditation, is an interesting and easy to read, while not so easy to understand if the reader has little awareness of meditation, or Tantra Meditation. As a reader with little awareness I find the author’s explanations set down in plain straight forward prose helped me set the tone for exploring the book itself with a little more understanding on my part.

Wongs* are explained, history of Vajrayana Tantra, mysticism, how the influence came to Toronto and an elementary understanding of neuroscience are all detailed. It was during the 1960s that writer Jones first met Bikkhu Ananda Bodhi, Blissful Wanderer, and gained some awareness who addressed questions tearing at the writer’s soul. Why bother living, what is the point of life and why make effort were brought into clarity as the writer began her travel for greater understanding using meditation. The Neuroscience of Brain Maps, Imagination, Medicine Buddha meditation, Self and Others, and Pain are all presented, explored and brought to the writer’s greater awareness that Medicine Buddha practice promotes neuronal changes including shifts in the shape of the brain and provides a platform upon which behaviour may begin to be altered via practice.

Mirror Neurons, phantom emotional pain, pain, fear and focusing elsewhere, continue the Jones’ journey toward the healing wellness she is seeking. Medicine Buddha is explained, Neuroscience and a Path from the Past as well as the trap of the past are all exposed, before Conclusions and Forward from Here and the writer’s hopes and expectations are presented.

I like that the book includes an appendix, glossary and bibliography. The glossary in particular is handy for helping to acquaint a novice to the understanding of meditation, Medicine Buddha and the beliefs of the writer.

Footnotes and Endnotes aid the reader toward other sources for pursuit of greater understanding of the ideas she presents.

I found Medicine Buddha/Medicine Mind describes in simple terms how our brains work with meditation including visualization. Despite the dreadfulness experienced during her teens; the writer, as she shares her story telling of her journey to enlightenment and a life without suffering via visualization and meditation, we begin to gain awareness and understanding that these techniques do actually work, and we begin to understand why they do.

Happy to recommend Medicine Buddha/Medicine Mind, especially for those who may have an interest in meditation, a need for healing and/or dealing with suffering and its results.
Molly Martin (29th February 2016)

*Wongs or Wongkur: the name of the Empowerment ceremony, also called the Initiation Ceremony that forms the centre of Tibetan Buddhist Vajrayana Tantra practice.