The festival offers an atheist and secular reading of the Medicine Buddha, egalitarian, rational and popular: it presents him through his history, his art and his texts, without worship, and takes from him a model of care. It says clearly what it keeps and what it leaves aside. This reading is the festival’s own; each tradition keeps its own.
A history of more than a thousand years
The Medicine Buddha (Bhaiṣajyaguru in Sanskrit) is a figure of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, associated with healing. His main text has come down to us through Sanskrit manuscripts from Gilgit, fragments in Khotanese and Sogdian, and Chinese and Tibetan translations. His figure appears in the paintings of Dunhuang and at the Yakushi-ji temple in Nara. The festival will present this history with its dates and sources.
What we keep
- Care for all, without distinction.
- Compassion, as an attitude towards everyone.
- The wish to heal, pursued with the methods of science.
- Lapis-lazuli blue, the colour of the Medicine Buddha, which gives the festival its visual identity.
- History and art in all their forms, from ancient manuscripts to manga.
- His twelve vows, which the festival has rewritten as twelve commitments (see below).
What the festival leaves aside
- Passages in ancient texts that place women below men, such as the vow in which a woman wishes to be reborn as a man. They reflect their time; the festival sets them aside and affirms full equality between women and men.
- Traditions present their practices, rites and beliefs in their own words, as a living heritage.
Setting an idea aside does not mean setting people aside: the traditions that keep these texts are welcomed with the same respect as the others.
Why the life sciences
The Medicine Buddha is associated with care; biology studies living things. The festival links them like this: the Medicine Buddha gives values (to heal, to help everyone, to stay honest), science gives the evidence. What is shown at the festival is judged by the methods of science, never in the name of a tradition.
The 12 vows revisited
The sutra attributes twelve vows to the Medicine Buddha. The festival has drawn from them twelve commitments of its own; they are not the vows of the text.
- Equal access: the festival is open to all.
- Equality: women and men have the same rights, the same voice and the same place.
- Evidence: only what has been demonstrated is presented as established.
- Honest promises.
- Honesty about limits: every uncertainty is stated.
- Shared knowledge.
- Safety first.
- The same place for everyone.
- Freedom of thought: everyone may doubt and criticise, the festival included.
- Transparency: accounts published, interests declared.
- Respect for living beings.
- Celebration: music, art and shared moments.
Commitments 4, 6, 7 and 8 are set out in the Ethics and safety charter.