This painting depicts a specific event: the Medicine Buddha, seated in the center of his mandala palace, explaining the science of healing to four groups of disciples—gods, saints, Buddhists, and non-Buddhists. Yet the painting can also be viewed as a metaphor for the inclusive, holistic nature of Tibetan medical knowledge and practice—representing the entire physical world, where everything can be used for healing, as the story of the medical student Jivaka tells. His master asked him to find a substance or a plant that could not be used as medicine. After a long search, Jivaka returned empty-handed, but his teacher congratulated him and said his training was complete—now he knew that there is no substance on earth without healing properties.

The palace  is surrounded by four mountains in the cardinal directions. Each is a perfect environment for certain medicinal plants, springs with healing waters, minerals, and precious stones associated with specific curative qualities.

From the Blue Beryl treatise, The Ornament of the Intention of Bhaisajyaguru, Master of Remedies, explaining the Four Medical Tantras. This painting illustrates the first chapter of the Root Tantra, The Introductory Scene. At the center of an emanational abode amid the medicinal forest called Bhaisajyavana, on the summit of a mountain endowed with potent and powerful remedies, within a celestial palace with four gates, the Teacher of Remedies (Bhaisajyaguru) explains the science of medicine to many assembled gods, hermit sages, Hindu divinities, and Buddhists. The teaching is given in the form of a dialogue between the hermit sages who are the natural brilliance of the five types of pristine cognitions—the mirror-like pristine cognition which purifies delusion, the pristine cognition of emptiness which purifies hatred, the pristine cognition of sameness which purifies pride, the pristine cognition of discernment which purifies desire, and the pristine cognition of accomplishment which purifies envy.