Medicine Buddha is also known as Healing Buddha as well as Bhaisajya guru. He is said to dispense spiritual medicine when properly worshipped. It is an ancient belief that an efficacious cure may be accomplished by merely touching or even seeing the image.

"If one meditates on the Medicine Buddha, one will eventually attain enlightenment, but in the meantime one will experience an increase in healing powers both for oneself and others and a decrease in physical and mental illness and suffering."- Lama Tashi Namgyal

As a sign that he gives protection from illness, his right hand is outstretched in the gesture of giving and holds the "great medicine", the myrobalan plant (a-ru-ra). Myrobalan is the only herb in the Tibetan pharmacopoeia that can aid in healing basic illness, the root causes of which are the conflicting emotions -- passion, aggression, and ignorance.

In Tibet, he is represented either as a Buddha or as a Bodhisatwa. As a Buddha, his figure has small round bulge above the bridge of the nose which is the fourth superior mark of a Buddha and a bulge on the skull which is the first superior marks of the Buddha. He has short and curly hair. He wears a monastic robe. He is seated with the legs crossed with his left hand lying on his lap in meditating mudra holding a medicine bowl full of long life nectar. His right hand (in charity mudra) holds either a branch with fruit or the fruit alone, as medicinal plant found in India and other tropical countries.