Chapter 15 Chapter 15 My Little History of Self-study: Learning Buddhism and Medicine

The first series of my autobiography Chapter 15 My Little History of Self-study: Learning Buddhism and Medicine Thirteen. Learning Buddhism and Medicine My pursuit of reading Buddhist scriptures began in the early Yuan Dynasty of the Republic of China, and my efforts were made around the third year of the Republic of China.At the same time, he read Chinese and Western medicine books.Both Buddhist scriptures and Western medicine books were obtained from Youzheng Publishing House at the west gate of Liulichang at that time.This is the branch of Shanghai Youzheng Bookstore.It is said that the person in charge in Shanghai is Di Baoxian, named Pingzi, also known as the head of Pingping Pavilion.The Buddhist scriptures engraved in Jinling, as well as the Buddhist scriptures printed in Changzhou and other places, are all circulated here, and anyone can find and buy them. There was an article by Mr. Li Zhenggang (Yi Zhuo) in "Buddhism Congbao", which I liked to read at that time.But because there is no one to teach me, I still don't know the difference between Mahayana and Hinayana in Buddhism, and I am even more at a loss in various sects.I once remembered that the classics of "Consciousness Only" and "Because of Ming" are the most difficult to understand, and it is very laborious to grope in secret.

Therefore, those who study Buddhism and medicine, although they admire the ancient system of "going to the city to beg for food" as mentioned in the Diamond Sutra, they cannot practice it today, and they plan to use medical skills to serve the people to obtain everything they need.It just so happened that there was a regular bookstore that sold Western medicine books published by Shanghai Medical Bookstore, and read them due to mergers and acquisitions.It is said that Ding Fubao, who is in charge of this bureau, is also fond of Buddhism and has published books such as Buddhist dictionaries.Since the Ding family and the Di family have similar interests, the business of the two bureaus is connected.Its Western medicine books are translated from Japanese, and there are more than a dozen works on pharmacology, internal medicine, pathology, and diagnostics. The ancient books of traditional Chinese medicine are available in many bookstores in Liulichang.According to today's recollection, my readers seem to focus on Chen Xiuyuan's forty-eight kinds, from "Huangdi Neijing" to Zhang Zhongjing's "Treatise on Febrile Diseases" and "Golden Chamber".At first I thought that since both Chinese and Western medicines take the human disease as the research object, it should be easy to communicate with each other, but later I realized that it was not the case.Chinese and Western thoughts are fundamentally different, and although they can learn from each other in some details, they cannot be integrated into one.Later, since he gave up the idea of ​​becoming a monk, medicine was also ignored.