Porcupine Bezoars – The Best Medicine?
In Chinese traditional medicine, there are some incredible sources of natural remedies for all kinds of ailments. One of these many interesting remedies believed to be able to cure various conditions is called a bezoar.
A bezoar is a mass of food found trapped in an animal’s stomach system, usually from consuming grass and herbs. In particular, bezoar stones found in porcupines are believed to be used to cure cancer, diabetes, dengue fever, typhoid, epilepsy, hepatitis as well as many other conditions.
In Malaysia, there is a high demand for porcupine bezoar stones and medicinal shops can charge as much as RM700 for under a half gram! There is a lot of money to be made from obtaining these stones and people are very keen to make a profit from those looking to find quick-fix miracle cures.
However, the high demand for porcupine bezoars means that countless porcupines suffer needlessly in order to meet that demand. Recent news stories have given heart-breaking insights into such suffering. People who try to profit from the bezoar stones keep the poor animals in cramped cages and the porcupine is butchered for its meat and the stones are removes from its stomach to be sold on. (You can read one such story here: http://dailychilli.com/news/1364-how-bezoar-man-caught-rearing-porcupines-in-cages).
Recently, I have had bouts of illness and have been searching for remedies so my health can improve quickly. However, whatever I experience when I am ill is nothing compared to the terrifying trauma and brutal treatment poor porcupines are faced with. If I were to use porcupine bezoars in order to heal, I would not feel good about my health and recovery at all, knowing that a porcupine had suffered a horrific death. Especially when I can find alternative methods and remedies. Hence I refused to use this. It is your choice, but have compassion for animals please.
Porcupines suffer tremendously and there is no 100% guarantee that the bezoar stones will cure people of their condition. There are many other ways in which we can treat our ailments and illnesses. Why do we need to force unnecessary suffering upon porcupines and other animals to tend to our health? It makes no sense that we should feel positive about our own health improving when the cause for this is an animal having been slaughtered on our behalf.
In our practice, we pray to take on the suffering of all beings so that we can develop compassion and loving kindness towards all sentient beings. Imagine how hypocritical it would be to pray for the benefit of all sentient beings while we are happy for a poor defenseless animal to die a horrible death for our own gain. That doesn’t provide any benefit for the porcupine at all – only terror, suffering and pain!
When we are ill, we should definitely look towards getting better as quickly as possible. No-one wants to suffer; everyone wants to live in peace and without pain. We should keep this in mind when considering all other beings too: they also want to live in peace and without suffering. There are many, many ways that we can treat our illnesses and conditions and as spiritual practitioners, we should always endeavor to check that the treatment we seek out is free from causing suffering to other beings.
Tsem Rinpoche
Porcupines kept in captivity, to be killed and harvested for their bezoars. Some people claim that the porcupines undergo surgery to remove the bezoars and that no lasting damage is done to the porcupine, but we can never be sure that is the case.
Close up of a porcupine bezoar
Let everyone know re this ‘wonder’ drug…spread the awareness around asap and as far and wide as possible…please..it’s important ppl know what is going on and let them make their own choices.
People should stop torturing animals.
Natural medicine is great until you start harvesting from animals…
A good Dharma practitioner will not try a medicine which entails a lot of sufferings to an animal or have them killed so that a cure can be achieved. Like taking out a Bezoar from a porcupine with surgery or killing them to extract the Bezoar. I would think that would be selfish. The harmless small little porcupine will have to suffer pain or being killed for the relieve of sufferings of a man. I was told that there was another type of cure for pneumonia that is contracted after childbirth. You will have to collect the droppings of pigeons fry it. And boil it with hot water. Drink and it will cure you of the pneumonia.
In everything we do, there is positive and negative effects due to the nature of our existence. It is 100% correct you don’t eat meat. HH the Dalai Lama, the highest authority within Tibetan Buddhism recommends we do not eat meat, so that is all we need to remember. Buddha said, we should not lie, or get attached to drinking, singing, dancing, intimacies,entertainments and that we should spend our energies to become enlightened. Are we doing all die and not just the meat part?? People tend to pick what is convenient from the Buddha’s teachings to suit themselves. If we are going to follow Buddha’s teachings or quote, we may ask are you following everything Buddha says? If you are not, then rejoice when others follow the best they can and as much as they can. Since it is the right path for 21st century Buddhists to follow the no meat path, let’s do it. We have so much variety of food. Let’s eat the no meat diet and get on with our practice and basically compassionately go passed the criticisms. It is very simple, do not kill. So hence animals will not die in front of you to eat them…There is no good karma in eating meat..full stop, but definitely there is good karma refraining from eat. Many of the tantras when engaged in the practice prohibit meat as taught by Vajradhara. Many rituals we do in the great Monasteries prohibit meat so the rituals are more effective…..Many who are not monks or not living in the monasteries would never understand that. Reading from books, net or from dharma centres would never be the same as in the monastery. Again, eating meat does not gather good merits for our spiritual practice, avoiding does. Listen to some of wonderful Tenzin Palmo’s views on not eating meat. She is the great yogini who meditated for the longest time in the mountains.TR
I got some bezoar powder from a friend few weeks ago after trying desperately to lower down the high fever of my child. The powder worked wonderfully within an hour. I was fascinated and hence I am trying to read up on the Internet about it.
I have the view that bezoar only exists in porcupine which grows up in thick jungle and eats nTural herbs and roots to cure itself in their entire life. Porcupine that lives in cage or fed in farm will not have any bezoar grown in the body. To have a sizable bezoar, I think the animal needs to be quite old in an average lifespan of 5 years. I am still researching into this topic, but I don’t believe that the animals are fed and killed for the bezoars.