Potent Substances in Sowa Riga and Buddhist Rituals

Potent substances are used in surprisingly similar ways in both Tibetan medicine (Sowa Rigpa) and in Buddhist ritual: they can be processed into multi-compound pills, consecrated, and ingested as powerful healing substances. This suggests a fascinating yet underexplored overlap between Tibetan medical and ritual practices, based on their entangled histories and the potency of materials. In this project we explore for the first time how specific (largely herbal and mineral) substances are considered potent and why. How do practitioners enhance potency during processing and ritual consecration? Given the importance of the senses in ritual, and especially taste and smell in Sowa Rigpa pharmacology, our aim is to assess how practitioners know and/or perceive substances to be potent by using their senses, and how they modulate potency in practicethrough the processing, compounding, and consecration of substances as described in both specific classical Tibetan texts and when orally transmitted. Based on Tim Ingolds theoretical approach on substances-in-becoming, which proposes skilfully working with the properties of materials as a source of their agency and power, we will test the following hypothesis: Both medical and ritual practitioners approach potency as a potential inherent in substances, but one that must be actualised and enhanced through skilful intervention (e.g. processing and/or consecration) in order to become active. Potency thus emerges in fields of practice as substances are transformed, becoming enmeshed in human-centred lifeworlds. We uniquely combine methods of Tibetology, Ethno-biology and Medical Anthropology, which enable us to investigate a hitherto unrecognised yet foundational common ground between Sowa Rigpa and Buddhist rituals, and the entangled histories of their substances. We will audio-visually document three particularly insightful events, carried out by both institutionally trained Sowa Rigpa physicians (in north-western India) and in a Dudjom Nyingma community (north-eastern India and Bhutan): (1) the processing of calcite, frequently used in both accomplished medicines (mendrup) and Sowa Rigpa medicines; (2) specific consecration rituals; and 3) a comparative case study on the potency of poisonous substances used in both Nyingma expelling rites and Sowa Rigpa medicines. Besides extensive ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with practitioners, we combine methods of textual analysis and translation, taxonomic identification of key substances and processing techniques. The special focus of this project is on the interface of materiality and the senses in the processing of potent substances. Our original results will elucidate to what extent early Nyingma Buddhist rituals shaped ideas of potency in Sowa Rigpa, while also contributing a novel take on efficacy studies, moving beyond clinical trials or conventional socio-cultural interpretations by considering how the direct engagement of practitioners with substances impacts potency in fundamental ways.