Where can one draw the line between the authority of tradition to focus our observations of the physical world and observation’s potential to challenge accepted beliefs? If Buddhist tantric theory states that there are channels of energy running up and down the center of the human torso and these are not found upon inspection, how can one adjudicate between the Buddha’s word and empirical observation? In Tibet these questions were never more poignant than in the medical arts, for the visceral reality of the human body consistently confronted the claims of the medical tradition. Janet Gyatso places the fulcrum point