Tibetan medicine identifies our contemporary time as the Degenerate Age, a period characterized by environmental cataclysms, virulent epidemic infections, and mental health conditions complicated by chronic inflammation. During this time, environments, bodies, and minds deteriorate and incur obstructions from toxins in life-sustaining pathways called channels. This project investigates a well-being paradigm in Tibetan medicine aimed at addressing the ecological, sociological, and cosmological imbalance of this time through specific cleansing practices advised for coarse, subtle and environmental pathways to support health and resilience. We investigate “channel cleansing” for coarse pathways in clinical contexts and “dispelling obstructions” for subtle body pathways in contemplative contexts, both alongside the ritualized environmental purification practices they integrate to restore health in environmental pathways and relations for ecological balance. Our central research questions explore: (1) How Tibetan medical and related Buddhist literatures characterize the Degenerate Age in terms of channel physiology and proliferative toxins; (2) How textual and ethnographic understandings differentially address physical, mental and socio-environmental challenges historically described for the period as related to contemporary concerns; and (3) How prescribed practices illuminate coarse/subtle channel understandings in the Degenerate Age. We use a mixed methods research approach. Textually, we analyze works from two key formative historical periods for Tibetan medical discourse on Degenerate Age, toxin proliferation, and cleansing practices—12-14th centuries when the Four Medical Treatises classic and its spiritual cycle Yutok’s Heart Essence were canonized; and 17-19th centuries when its key commentaries were composed. We identify references for environmental ritual contexts with elaborations from related rediscovered teachings and hagiographies. Ethnographically, we document the contemporary clinical, contemplative, and environmental practices as they enter innovative redeveloped states at their central locations in Tibet, Nepal and India. The project aims for innovative contributions to several disciplines—anthropology, Tibetan & Buddhist studies and environmental humanities. Practices are understood to occupy intersections of human behavior that are personal, societal, and soteriological to bridge efforts that sustain wellbeing and shape human-environment relations in supramundane transformative pursuits. This research provides the first substantial contribution from Tibetan medicine to practice theory and embodiment literatures by integrating medical and contemplative practices in a social-ecological framework. Tibetan medicine's environment-health-realization paradigm in the Degenerate Age shows practices are contingent, situated, and dynamically configured in history with critical relevance to present-day.
