Losang is a Ordained American Buddhist Practitioner,

a Sixth Year Senior Student of Dr. Vasant Lad and

Past Faculty Member of the Ayurvedic Institute

After completing a six-year Ayurvedic Medicine apprenticeship with world-renowned author and Ayurvedic Physician, Dr. Vasant Lad, B.A.M.S., M.A.Sc., for more than 1800 hours since 1996, Losang served on the faculty as Herbology Instructor at Dr. Lad’s Ayurvedic Institute (www.ayurveda.com).  Since 1998, Losang has served more than 5000 patients using Ayurvedic healing.

In 2000, Losang was one of the first Ayurvedic Herbalists ever to be awarded Diplomate of Ayurveda (D.Ayur) by the American Ayurvedic Association (AyurvedicAssociation.com).
 

A 1998 graduate of the Ayurvedic Institute’s Ayurvedic Studies Program, since 1999 he continued advanced “Gurukula” clinical study, where he has observed his Ayurvedic teacher Dr. Lad healing over 1900 clients in the San Francisco Bay Area, India and New Mexico. Rev. Losang has served more than 5500 patients using Buddhist Ayurvedic healing.

As an ordained American Buddhist Practitioner in the Tibetan tradition of Nalanda Monastery, Losang is very devoted to H.H. Dalai Lama and Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition and their Nalanda Monastery in the south of France, their San Francisco-based Tse Chen Ling Center for Tibetan Buddhist Studies, and the Santa Cruz area based Land of the Medicine Buddha in the beautiful California Pacific coast redwood forest covered mountains.  Rev. Losang returned from a Monastery retreat visiting and volunteering at Nalanda Monastery and now donates 25% of Ayurvedic herbal consultation monies to support the building of the new Nalanda Monastery building and other Sangha support as described on our home page.  In his 40th year Rev. Losang ordained as a Buddhist yogic practitioner in the Tibetan Nalanda tradition of H.H. Holiness the Dalai Lama and Lama Zopa Rinpoche.  He drew his inspiration to ordain as a Buddhist Practitioner from having met Ajahn Sumedho of Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, the oldest American Buddhist Monk on the planet (ordained in 1966), and from having met the teachings of Venerable Master Hsuan Hua of the City of 1000 Buddhas Dharma (via his Western monks and nuns of the Dharma Realm Buddhist Association, Dharma Realm Buddhist University and Berkeley Buddhist Monastery) and His Holiness the Dalai Lama.  Through their inspiration and guidance Losang sees that these three schools of Buddhism (Theravada Thai, Chinese Mahayana and Tibetan Nalanda Vajrayana) are really all "One Vehicle" ("Eka Yana" as the Lotus Sutra states) and thus practices both Tibetan and Chinese forms daily.  Although Losang never directly met the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua, he accepts him as his primary guru along with Nagarjuna (who was one the three greatest great Ayurvedic Doctors was also a Revered Monk and the abbot of Nalanda University and Monastery in ancient India) and his Nalanda Lineage Dharma heir's as represented by His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso the Dalai Lama, Venerable Lama Zopa Rinpoche, Venerable Choden Rinpoche, Venerable Geshe Ngawang Dakpa and Venerable Geshe Losang Jamphal (who gave Buddhist precepts and vows to  Losang Jinpa).
 

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Founder of Medicine Buddha Healing Center
and Co-Founder of the Medicine Buddha Healing Center

Rev. Losang co-founded the Medicine Buddha Healing Center in 2000 in Albuquerque, New Mexico to revive the age-old integration of Buddhism with Indo-Tibetan Ayurveda. He maintained his clinical practice there under the guidance of Chinese Medicine Doctor and IICM Senior Professor, X.J. Yang, D.O.M., Ph.D, M.D. (China). 

 

An ordained Minister at the Center, Losang studied Buddhism with the Venerable Master Hsuan Hua’s senior monk disciples of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery (www.drba.org).  Losang has lived for 10 months at the Institute for World Religions and the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery studying Buddhism, teaching Ayurveda and practicing free Ayurvedic healing consultations for the neighboring community.

He continues these healing consultations and classes now in San Francisco at the new Medicine Buddha Healing Center (www.ayurveda-tcm.com) and in Berkeley, California at the Medicine Buddha Healing Center (www.Ayurveda-Berkeley.com), which he co-founded in July 2000.

One of the highlights of Losang's time spent living and studying at the Institute for World Religions was to get involved with supporting the United Religions Initiative (www.uri.org).  This video clip below gives you a feel for what URI is all about.

.WMV file requires Windows Media Player.

improbable_pairs_south_africa_peace_smallest.wmv - 1.5 MB - 6 minutes video clip

improbable_pairs_south_africa_peace_small.wmv - 4.5 MB - 6 minutes video clip

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Losang "Studied" Humor in Healing with Patch Adams, M.D.

Patch Adams, M.D. and his Gesundheit! Institute team (www.PatchAdams.org) were Losang’s most recent teachers at UCSF’s 4-day conference on “Humor in Healing”.

Our Healing Services: House-calls or In-Clinic

Inspired by the friendly “Clown Bodhisattva” energy of his role model Patch Adams, both Losang is offering “house-calls” – just like the traditional “country doctor” of yesteryear, Losang is able to visit you directly at your home or office for a health consultation or Ayurvedic massage rather than you having to come to the Ayurveda Healing Arts Institute or the Medicine Buddha Healing Center. 

For those in need and unable to come to Berkeley due to health reasons or other concerns, we can offer Chinese Medicine, Acupuncture, and Ayurvedic Medicine house-calls in the following San Francisco Bay Area, California cities: Alameda, Albany, Atherton, Belmont, Belvedere, Benicia, Burlingame, Calistoga, Campbell, Clayton, Cloverdale, Colma, Concord, Corte Madera, Cotati, Cupertino, Daly City, Dublin, El Cerrito, Emeryville, Fairfax, Fairfield, Foster City, Fremont, Gilroy, Half Moon Bay, Hayward, Healdsburg, Hercules, Hillsborough, Lafayette, Larkspur, Livermore, Los Altos, Los Gatos, Martinez, Menlo Park, Mill Valley, Millbrae, Milpitas, Morgan Hill, Mountain View, Napa, Newark, Novato, Oakland, Orinda, Palo Alto, Pacifica, Petaluma, Piedmont, Pinole, Pittsburg, Pleasant Hill, Pleasanton, Portola Valley, Redwood City, Richmond, Rohnert Park, St. Helena, San Anselmo, San Bruno, San Carlos, San Francisco, San Jose, San Leandro, San Mateo, San Pablo, San Ramon, San Rafael, Santa Clara, Santa Rosa, Saratoga, Sausalito, Sebastopol, Sonoma, South San Francisco, Sunnyvale, Talmage, Tiburon, Union City, Ukiah, Vacaville, Vallejo, Walnut Creek, and Woodside.
 

Offering House-calls supports Patch's and our philosophy of:

"Bringing fun, friendship, and
the joy of service back into healthcare."

“The healer who regards kindness to humanity as his supreme religion and treats his patients accordingly, succeeds best in achieving his aims of life and obtains the greatest pleasure.”
-- from Charaka, honored 2nd century B.C. Ayurvedic Physician

Although Losang studied Ayurvedic, Tibetan and Chinese Medicine, he also encourages his clients at the Medicine Buddha Healing Center and at the Medicine Buddha Healing Center in San Francisco to follow the advice of his other teacher, Dr. Patch Adams, M.D. of the Gesundheit! Institute.  Dr. Patch suggests a daily dosage of the following:

• A Daily Prescription for Helping to Heal Society

• Laughter as Medicine? - Joy and Light-heartedness is our context --- PLEASE VISIT!!

Soon after seeing the famous movie “Patch Adams” with Robin Williams, Losang met the humorous, joyfully exuberant and immensely generous Dr. Patch Adams in person in New Mexico at a World Peace Prayer Gathering. His Clown Bodhisattva energy inspired Losang to make the vow to offer to the world for free his Ayurvedic healing knowledge and the fruits of his continuing long-term studies with his Ayurvedic teacher Dr. Vasant Lad.  It was due to this initial inspiration from Patch that Losang founded the non-profit Medicine Buddha Healing Center in 2000 to offer low-cost (sliding scale) to free Ayurvedic and Chinese healing arts consultations.  Since then, the Medicine Buddha Healing Center has given away more than $3000 of Ayurvedic medicines and over $10,000 worth of free treatments in the USA and India.

 To quote Patch in his book Gesundheit (p. 54), “Greed is one of society’s worst malignancies, and it appears to have metastasized to every corner of the earth.  The sense that greed is incurable may well account for its escalation.  Certainly one of greed’s most devastating symptoms is cynicism.  Unless greed and its symptoms are excised, society will perish.  We believe that a society must care for its population enough to take care of its needs.  Treatment of disease and provision for health care are fundamental to a society’s sound survival.  These needs should be fulfilled as a gift to its population, not as a commodity to be bought and sold.  In a profit-oriented system devoted to grabbing the most income the traffic will bear, the goal will be disease care.  In a service-oriented system devoted to keeping the population at its healthiest, the goal will be disease prevention.  The Gesundheit Institute will never charge money for its medical services.  If it is to survive, its staff, patients, and friends will cooperate and donate everything needed for it to flourish as a community hospital. We hope to eliminate the factor of debt entirely from the healing interaction.  Although this leaves us vulnerable to the wishes of the greater community, paradoxically, we believe that vulnerability is our greatest strength.   We believe it is imperative to need the community we serve because the community also needs us.  This is basic to interdependence, which we feel is necessary for a healthy society.  We must, as individuals and as a free society, stop our worship of things and wealth and put our sense of richness in things everybody can have in abundance without excluding anyone.  These riches include faith, fun, and the breathtaking bounty of nature and friendship.  This kind of medicine cannot be bought or sold.  By not charging patients… we are freer to be silly and to build friendships. We also believe that not charging money is very good malpractice insurance. We hope that our patients will take the generosity with them when they leave and spread it in their own communities. This is the heart of our social revolution: to take the most expensive service in America and give it away for free.”

(Click here to listen to an amazing 2 hour long lecture by Patch at UCSF's Practical Outrageousness Seminar which Losang attended in April 2002 - 19MB .WMA file).  Click on any of the above links to see many video clips that show Patch's philosophy on life which has been the model for the Ayurvedic Healing Arts Institute.

While Medicine Buddha Healing Center is not set up to be able to offer free treatments, we do offer low cost sliding scale consultations.  In the spirit of the compassionate healing arts of India, a donation-based “sliding scale” is available for seniors, single parents, students, and those on fixed incomes.  As a non-profit 501(c)3, we rely on your donations to support our Dharma (life purpose) of spreading the healing wisdom of Ayurveda to people throughout the Bay Area.

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Clinical Background in Tibetan Ayurvedic Medicine:
Intensive Study Trips to Himalayas
Tibetan Medicine and Astro. Institute

Losang’s 8 years of scholarship included Chinese Medicine theory and two intensive Tibetan Medicine study trips to H.H. Dalai Lama’s Tibetan Medicine & Astro Institute in the Himalayas (www.Tibetan-Medicine.org), where he studied with Tibetan Dr. Kelsang Dorje whom Medicine Buddha Healing Center has invited from India to come co-teach with Losang in September 2002. 

Losang's scholarly study has involved hundreds of hours of perusing Tibetan Medicine classic texts including the key Gyud-Zhi (Tibetan: rGyud-bzhi -- pronounced "jyu shee" in Tibetan), the most important classic 700 A.D. Sutra text (scripture) of Tibetan Medicine referred to as the "Four Tantras" in English.  He has also read all of the Tibetan Medicine works of Vijaya's teacher, H.H. Dalai Lama’s past personal physician Monk Doctor Lobsang Rapgay, previous director of the Tibetan Medicine & Astro Institute in the Himalayas (www.tibetan-medicine.org). 

In his two study trips to the Himalayas (in 1999 and 2001) Losang has acquired and developed the largest library of English language books, video, audio and other publications on Tibetan Medicine - over 200 volumes.  Losang has made available at the Medicine Buddha Healing Center, the entire 53 audio tape series of the First International Congress on Tibetan Medicine (Washington, D.C., November 7-9, 1998).  

Here is a sample online from His Holiness the Dalai Lama's talk on "The Relevance of Tibetan Medicin