Frankincense

By David Crow

Aged sentinels watching over a vast arid silence, gnarled paper-barked trees grasp bare rock with twisted roots. Sharp knives draw the milky sap; shimmering resins fit for offering to the divine dry slowly in Bedouin caves. Merchants in bustling casbahs proclaim the virtues of their finest, largest, sweetest, rarest, most translucent drops of sunlight, all the names of al luban’s subtle grades rolling off their tongues in desert-perfumed Arabic.

Camel caravans plod across the landscape of ages and epochs, laden with wealth of spirit and healing. Greek, Persian, Chinese, Indian and European doctors examine the latest arrivals from afar, their mortars filled with white-gold powder ready for mixing into salves and unguents and ointments and plasters. Rows of apothecary jars hold pills made from recipes passed down from grandfather to father to son, family reputations upheld by the medicaments’ reliability, efficacy, blamelessness.

Pharaohs and queens anoint themselves with regal perfumes brought from the sandy wilderness; in silent waiting tombs, sealed clay amphoras hold an eternity’s worth of aromatic necessities to be enjoyed in the afterlife. The dead are transformed into crystalline relics.

Priests, monks, nuns, and yogis sprinkle the sacrament on glowing coals, fuming bowls and wafting censers of ceramic, copper, bronze, brass and iron presented to the local guardians, the four directions, the deities of enlightenment, the holy ones, the great mystery, the Absolute. Cathedrals, mosques, temples, and pagodas infused with the scent of prayers echo with supplications, devotion, and gratitude.

White-coated researchers rediscover the wisdom of old, the microscopic realms of therapeutic powers carried by the desert sentinels revealed in the light of technology. The language of molecules flows off charts and graphs, music to the minds of those seeking new drugs: a-pinene, a-thuyene, 3-carene, limonene, p-cymene, trans-beta ocimene, octyl acetate. From the trees’ scented life blood come pharmacopoeias more valuable than gold, just as the gifts once carried by the Magi: antibacterial, antiviral, antifungal, anti-inflammatory, antidepressant, anti-anxiety, a fountain of healing, solace and comfort for suffering humanity. The Bedouin puts away his scarring knife, rubs the powdered resins from his seasoned hands and knows the same.

David Crow, LAc is one of the world’s foremost experts and leading speakers in the field of botanical medicine and grassroots healthcare. He is a master herbalist, aromatherapist, and acupuncturist with over 30 years experience and is an expert in the Ayurvedic and Chinese medical systems.

David is a renowned author, a poet and is the founding director of Floracopeia Aromatic Treasures. Floracopeia was created as a way to help preserve and promote the use of botanical medicines as solutions to solving numerous interrelated global problems: lack of healthcare, poverty, environmental destruction, and loss of ethnobotanical knowledge.

David has presented his vision of grassroots healthcare, preservation of botanical medicines and the use of plants for ecological restoration to hundreds of audiences, ranging from small private groups to conferences and lecture halls to a panel discussion with the Dalai Lama broadcast internationally to millions of viewers. Through his visionary synthesis of medicine, ecology, and spirituality, he has helped transform the lives of thousands.

In 1987, David journeyed to Nepal in search of teachings in Tibetan medicine and Buddhist meditation. For the next 10 years, he studied with many teachers. Using his newfound knowledge, Crow opened a clinic in Kathmandu and another in a small mountain village, where he treated beggars from the street as well as high abbots of monasteries. In Search of the Medicine Buddha interweaves medical teachings with insights into Tibetan Buddhism, evoking the beauty and wonder of a faraway land.