The Blue Light of Healing: Our Medicine Buddha Prayers
There is a particular blue that appears nowhere else in the world quite as it does in the figure of the Medicine Buddha. It is the deep, luminous blue of lapis lazuli, the colour of a clear sky just after rain, and in our prayer hall at Sed Gyued Monastery it seems to hold a quiet promise: that suffering, however heavy, can be eased.
Who is the Medicine Buddha?
Known in Tibetan as Sangye Menla, the Medicine Buddha is revered as the great healer — not only of bodily illness but of the deeper sicknesses of the mind: attachment, anger, and the confusion that keeps us turning in suffering. He is depicted seated in serene meditation, his body radiant blue, holding a bowl of healing nectar in one hand and the myrobalan plant, the king of medicines, in the other. Long ago, before his awakening, he is said to have made twelve great vows — promises to bring wholeness, dignity, and relief to all who call upon him. When our monks chant his prayers, they are calling those ancient vows gently back to life.
The gathering of voices
On the days set aside for Medicine Buddha prayers, the monks assemble before dawn. The hall fills with the low roll of the recitation, the bright punctuation of bell and cymbal, and the rising sweetness of incense. His mantra is repeated again and again, each round a small wave of well-wishing sent outward into the world.
What moves us most is for whom these prayers are offered. Families write in from across Sikkim and far beyond, asking that a sick parent, a struggling child, or a friend facing a frightening diagnosis be held in the monastery's prayers. And so the monks chant not into empty air, but toward real people, real worries, real hopes. In this way the practice becomes a bridge of compassion stretching from our small hall in the hills to bedsides and homes we will never see.
Healing as a practice for everyone
You do not need to be a monk, or even a Buddhist, to draw something from the Medicine Buddha's example. His teaching reminds us that true healing begins with attention — with turning toward what hurts rather than away from it, and meeting it with patience instead of fear. To wish another person well, sincerely and without expectation, is itself a kind of medicine, and it quietly heals the one who offers it too.
If there is someone in your life who is unwell, you are warmly welcome to hold them in your heart as you read these words, and to know that here, half a world away perhaps, monks are doing the same.
May the blue light of the Medicine Buddha reach all who are suffering. May the sick find healing, the frightened find courage, and every being, without exception, find lasting peace.