The Alchemy of Accomplishing Medicine (sman sgrub): Situating the Yuthok Heart Essence (G.yu thog snying thig) in Literature and History

This essay examines historical and contemporary connections between Buddhist and medical traditions through a study of the Accomplishing Medicine (sman sgrub) practice and the Yuthok Heart Essence (G.yu thog snying thig) anthology. Accomplishing Medicine is an esoteric Buddhist yogic and contemplative exercise focused on several levels of “alchemical” transformation. The article will trace the acquisition of this practice from India by Tibetan medical figures and its assimilation into medical practice. It will propose that this alchemical practice forms the central nexus of connection between Tibetan medicine and the Buddhist Nyingma tradition, and that this little-studied link is not a marginal feature of Tibetan medicine but rather one that has had a significant shaping factor on each tradition throughout history.     

A Case Study: Sale of Railway Consulting Services

Queensland Rail has developed a market niche in South East Asia, where it advises on profitable narrow-guage rail operations. This article outlines the extent of Queensland Rail involvement with the region and offers practical advice for commercial dealings with one important customer, Vietnam.     

Decoding the DNA of the CPC

<正>The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China convened in Beijing on October 18.It is expected to set a blueprint for the country to march toward modernization and achieve national revitalization in the 21st century.A recent series of reports by Xinhua News Agency elaborate on China's development path and the CPC's governance theories,practices and efforts.The following are edited versions of the last     

How I learned to stop worrying and love polarization

This paper presents theoretical and experimental evidence of increased voter satisfaction due to moderate candidate platform divergence. The formal model combines the traditional proximity treatment of voter satisfaction with a disutility stemming from the likelihood of “incorrect” voter decision-making. The result is a voter utility function for the candidate field which is non-monotonic in platform divergence. I confirm the main result of the formal model through a voter survey where hypothetical candidate positions were varied from very moderate to very partisan. Respondents preferred moderate policy divergence to both minimal and extreme divergence. In tandem, these results recast moderate ideological differentiation as a desirable, rather than pejorative, element of politics and campaigning.