there are so many steps in the chain between herbs being planted and being used as medicines, there are a great many opportunities for us to lessen potential environmental harm and to create a positive contribution to the health of our planet.
Just as we can improve our health by gradually making positive lifestyle changes, so we can also gradually rethink the way we source our herbs. We need to look beyond the orders of sweet-smelling medicinal herbs that arrive on our doorsteps. Understanding how those herbs have been grown and produced gives us an opportunity to positively influence the wider environment through our purchasing decisions. We can choose suppliers who source herbs from sustainable plant populations and who reward their workers fairly. We can avoid wildcrafted herbs that are endangered; instead, we can choose cultivated herbs that have been grown in an environmentally conscious manner. We can try to find local sources, so that shipping impact is lessened. Ultimately, we can look into growing or gathering at least some of our own herbs.
It is not an all-or-nothing process. More mindful herb sourcing will result in ripples of influence – ripples that can affect not only our own health but also that of our patients and of the environment as a whole. If we can grow or gather even just one herb ourselves, it is very significant. It may be the starting point for more over time. A 100-mile journey starts with one step.
I would like to explain a little about how I came to care so much about these things. From an early age, I loved plants and was a keen gardener. I studied agriculture and forestry at university, learning about ecology and the influence of man on the landscape, both deliberate and unintentional. After four years, I left with a master's degree in forestry and a passion for saving neglected broadleaved woodlands. I started out in farm woodland consultancy and then moved on to a job in London, working for a firm of consulting engineers carrying out environmental impact assessments of large-scale developments all over the country. After the positivity of working with the management of small farm woodlands, it was quite an eye opener – and not always an entirely comfortable process – for me to work with large developments and their environmental impacts. The building of motorways, power stations, and new towns will, even with the most careful planning and assessment, have an enormous impact on the environment. I often found myself thinking that economic factors were holding much more sway than environmental ones. I concluded that the plants and their habitats needed more human allies.
Later on, I quit the corporate world and went freelance in order to have the flexibility and availability to devote myself to studying Tibetan medicine. I was incredibly fortunate to be one of a very few students able to study Tibetan medicine with the great master Khenpo Troru Tsenam at Samye Ling Tibetan Centre in Scotland for two months a year during a four-year period in the 1990s. It was an amazing time of my life. We were immersed in Tibetan language, culture, and spirituality, as well as the ancient Tibetan medical texts, including The Four Tantras. We were fortunate to have had the benefit of a very detailed explanation and commentary on this main text from someone widely considered to be the highest living authority on the subject. These Tibetan medical studies were hugely influential in absolutely all spheres of my life. As well as opening my eyes to a truly holistic way of healing, they changed the way that I view the sourcing of herbs and protecting the environment. In this beautiful and sophisticated system of medicine the interrelationship between patient and external environment is considered to be the most fundamental factor in illness and recovery. Tibetan medicine teaches that the true root cause of all illness is an inability to recognize that we are intimately and irrevocably linked to the environment around us. To this end, Tibetan medicine can actually be viewed as a path to spiritual enlightenment. This excerpt from the Root Tantra as taught by Khenpo Troru Tsenam in 1994 illustrates the deep reverence for the environment and natural medicines taught within the Tibetan medical tradition.
Samye Ling Temple in Eskdalemuir, Scotland.
The text for Medicine Buddha practice.
Tanaduk
In the legendary city of Tanaduk there are all the medicinal substances which can cure all illnesses. In the centre is a palace encrusted with jewels which can cure both hot and cold diseases. To the north is the ‘Snow Mountain’ where plants grow in a cool energy and can cure hot ailments. To the south there is a second mountain called the ‘Piercing Mountain’ where there is a hot energy and the plants which grow there are used to cure cold ailments. To the east is the ‘Fragrant Mountain’ where ‘myrobalans’ grow and cure many diseases. In the west is the ‘Malaya Mountain’ where remedies, particularly minerals, are found which cure all sorts of diseases. The whole area is very beautiful and gives off a very good feeling which is uplifting and healing in itself. In the middle of the city is a beautiful palace with a throne in the centre on which the Medicine Buddha is sitting. He is immersed in compassion and wishes to relieve all beings of suffering.1
I love that this excerpt exudes interconnectedness. It focuses on the relationship between the environment and the nature of the plants that it supports, the ability of these plants and minerals to cure various health imbalances depending on their nature, the link between the feeling we experience being in a particular area and how it makes us feel, as well as the fundamental role of the development of compassion within Tibetan medicine and within healing in general. You will also see that it mentions Myrobalans. These are special wild plums considered to have the ability to address all sorts of bodily imbalances. In Tibetan iconography, the Medicine Buddha is depicted as holding a sprig of Myrobalan in his right hand. It is the most spiritually significant medicine in the Tibetan pharmacopaea and the reason I chose it as the name of my clinic.
Once we are aware of it, we need to be very conscious of interconnectedness when sourcing herbal medicines. We have to accept that we have a responsibility to promote wellness and balance throughout the supply chain. By wellness and balance, I mean safeguarding wild plant and animal populations, ensuring that soil and water are cared for, and taking care of the health and well-being of the people who work in herbal growing and wildcrafting production.
So where do our bought-in herbs come from? We may know the country of origin, but that does not really tell us very much. When buying in packets of dried herbs, we are at serious risk of being disconnected from the supply chain. Our involvement in sourcing that herb may have been limited to the making of one phone call and unpacking a delivery. Yet in sourcing the herbs that we are to use as medicines, we should really be asking ourselves and our suppliers a series of questions. Were the herbs cultivated or wildcrafted? If cultivated, how did the land first come into cultivation – for example, was valuable natural habitat safeguarded or lost in the process? Has cultivation been carried out with an awareness of the need for soil conservation? We should also consider how much water is used in the cultivation of our herbs. Is this water plentiful, sourced through rainwater harvesting, or is it in short supply and come from a borehole that is relied upon for drinking water by local communities? Are pesticides and fertilizers used, and if so, which ones? If they are used, how long a time period elapses between the last application and the time of the harvest? If the herbs are wildcrafted, do we know whether the species concerned are common or scarce in their source area? Do we know whether this area is clean or polluted? Do we know whether the people gathering the herbs are harvesting sustainably, only taking a maximum of 1 in 20 plants from abundant healthy populations, or are they gathering the maximum yield possible, either unaware of the environmental damage that this causes or unable to consider it, due to their own desperate need for income? Do we know whether the plants have been identified correctly or whether batches of correctly identified material have a consistent presence of other species that were growing in close proximity to the desired one? Do we know whether the herb is insect-damaged, contains insect larvae, or is contaminated with soil?
In
