Medicine, Compassion, and Liberation: A Buddhist Hermeneutic

Abstract

This essay explores how Buddhist texts illuminate the meaning of medicine beyond bodily cure alone. Drawing on the Vinaya Pitaka, the Samyutta Nikaya, the Lotus Sutra, and traditions surrounding the Medicine Buddha, it argues that a Buddhist hermeneutic of medicine understands healing as an ethically serious and spiritually meaningful practice. In these traditions, caring for the sick expresses compassion, protects vulnerable life, and responds to suffering in bodily, mental, and spiritual forms. Buddhist thought thus presents medicine as a moral practice shaped by wisdom and the aspiration to relieve suffering and foster liberation.