Commentary on the Papers of the Fourth Bachelor's Forum (Excerpt)
I greatly enjoy exchanges with university students. The young are quick in thought and broad in mind — not stiff and conservative like us old men. To exchange with them is a fine chance for me to learn.
Today's exchange has touched on views of foundational theory, on clinical efficacy, on philological work on classic texts, on the field study of herbal resources — a wide span, lively thinking, especially apt to stir thought. I was particularly glad to hear it. What matters most is that, through such a study and exchange, the students of the Xueshi Salon have grasped a method of inquiry. That is the most important thing. To grasp a method, to sharpen a skill, to learn a real craft — these will benefit a lifetime.
What I want to say is: what is Chinese medicine, after all? TCM is in fact a doctrine that studies the relation of human beings and the great natural world. Nature has nurtured humans, supplying for our basic living the sun, the rain-and-dew, and food; and supplying, for the body's loss of balance, natural animal, plant, and mineral medicines. As one student paper (Worry over Herbal Quality) quoted: foods take the natural world's qi in a fairly balanced form; medicines, in particular ecological settings, take it in a relatively leaning form. At the height of summer when sunlight is strongest, watermelon ripens. I have been in a watermelon field — to experience it. I said: O great watermelon, how is it you do not fear the heat, that you grow vigorous under summer's direct sun? I stood five minutes — my head ached, sweat poured. I understood: in that very environment you forged your power to resist heat; when our body cannot resist heat, we eat you, and you have the virtue of clearing heat, releasing summer-heat, generating fluid and quenching thirst. (Applause.) One year, when I was a student, on a herb-gathering trip to Mount Xinglong in Hebei, I — out of curiosity — descended into a shaded deep ravine. I was startled to find: though it was summer, ice and snow had not melted; around them no other plants, but right beside the snow grew clumps of green plants with purple flowers. I had never seen the like. I dug one up and carried it to the top. The teacher leading the trip looked at it: "Ah, where did you dig that fuzi? After we keep a specimen, the rest must be buried, lest the donkeys and sheep coming up the mountain eat it and be poisoned." I suddenly understood — why does fuzi grow where, in summer, ice and snow do not melt? Because, growing there, it forged its power to bear cold; generation after generation it has grown there, so it carries that cold-bearing nature. When the body cannot bear cold — what TCM calls yang-deficient cold-flourishing — we take a naturally cold-bearing plant, and so adjust the body's yin-yang imbalance. Later I read a herb-cultivation book that said fuzi grows well on rich, sunny, fertile soil — everyone likes it: better environment, better growth, higher yield, more money. First generation passable, second generation passable, but a third-generation fuzi, the cultivation institute told me, is finished — steam it in a pressure cooker, dip in sugar, and it eats like a sweet potato. Eat your fill, no rising fire. (Laughter.) Korea grows ginseng by simulating the natural growth state of the wild changbai ginseng — humidity, temperature, soil composition, light, all simulated. Fail to simulate, and quality is poor. We also grow American ginseng, simulating its original soil. Even so, by the third generation the active constituents and concentrations change badly; one could say its efficacy is much below the first generation. Humans are the same. We have today the Chinese character — fond of pitting wits, while foreigners are straightforward, saying what they think. Go to America: you are Chinese, but by the third generation your son and grandson have taken on American habit; no winding inner thought; everything spoken straight. I don't like you — we part. Part is part. (Laughter.) That straight. Herbs are the same — hence the prizing of daodi (place-of-origin) herbs. Our pharmacy-system students specially raised the question of herb quality. TCM clinical practice has survived to this day only by efficacy. However good your pattern-discernment, if the herb is not the right thing — all bred, all human-cultivated, generation after generation — there is no efficacy, and TCM itself is in trouble. So TCM's biàn zhèng lùn zhì is one matter, and the true quality of the herbs is another — a most important guarantee.
We live in this environment. I just said TCM studies the relation of human and nature. Nature nurtured human and nurtured a thousand-faced living world — so all things in nature have a bearing on human health. One student spoke of music therapy. How did the ancients study the body? Looked up at the heavens; looked down at the earth; in between, knew of human affairs. Everyone knows there is a sun, knows there is day and night. With day and night there is yin and yang. So through the motion and change of these two qi — neither blocked nor wild, balanced and steady — after four-point-six billion years there grew the thousand-faced world of life. Every life in nature bears the brand of yin-yang. That is nature's "genetic code" to humans. So the Huangdi Neijing says: "Yin and yang are the way of Heaven and Earth, the outline of the ten thousand things, the parents of change, the root-beginning of life-and-killing, the dwelling-place of spirit-brightness." And: "Life's root is rooted in yin-yang." Without the motion of yin and yang two qi, without solar light and heat radiation, could Earth have nurtured life? It could not. So since Earth has nurtured life, it must be ruled by the motion of yin and yang two qi; so every life in nature bears yin-yang's brand. The line life's root is rooted in yin-yang is most important. We often stress this as a philosophical doctrine — I say it is a natural-science doctrine that lays bare the basic law of natural qi-motion.
The Five Phases are also like this. Looking up at the heavens this time — not at the sun — at dusk, watch where the Big Dipper's handle points. When the Big Dipper's handle points East, on Earth it is spring. The climate? Soft, warm spring breeze. Animals and plants? Look at the grape tree in our backyard: in spring break off a branch, and it will gush sap; break off a rootlet — gush sap. Nutrients move outward. From observing this phenomenon, the ancients judged that the qi-motion of spring is a spreading-out, an extending qi-motion that rules the life-activity of all things. See in spring: the spring breeze wakes the snake from its cave hibernation; in hibernation the snake coiled close, reducing surface area, conserving body heat — the bear in hibernation, too, did the same. Now spring comes: they open their bodies, crawl from the cave, crawl from the tree-hollow. The bear yawns — ha-a-a — feels his gut and bowels sluggish, not yet stretched, then finds in the forest a kind of dried fruit kept from winter; the dried fruit has a purging power; eaten, it stirs gut motion, drives out a winter's accumulation; then appetite comes; the new year of living begins. So having watched this growth-state of animals and plants in spring, the ancients held it to be a spreading-out qi-motion ruling the life-activity of every thing then. Now the grape branches are dry; dig up the root and the rootlets are dry; nutrients have moved into the trunk-frame; this is exactly pruning season. Next spring, break open a grape branch — drip, drip — sap pours. Cut now — not a drop. Winter is a qi-motion of inward gathering. The other examples I will not list. Looking up — at the Dipper. Looking down — the changes of four seasons. Just because each year has the qi-motions of spreading-out, rising, leveling, gathering-in, descending, we have the Five Phases. The character xíng — its old form means a person's road, i.e., walking forward. Wuxing is the five different motions of qi. So we write them with wood, fire, earth, metal, water — but these five characters in wuxing stand for five motions of qi, while in wucai (five materials) they stand for five physical substances. We speak of wuxing, not wucai. Hence Zhang Zhongjing's preface to the Shanghan Zabing Lun: "Heaven sets out the Five Phases to move the ten thousand classes; the human is endowed with the five constants, hence has the five storehouses." And the Neijing also calls wuxing the wuyun. "Heaven has the Five Phases; the human has the five storehouses; in Heaven it forms qi, on Earth it forms form." So the Five Phases speak of qi, of the formless-above; the five materials speak of substance, of the dead thing, the formed-below. Five materials cannot nurture the ten thousand things — they are dead. The Five Phases are the law of qi-motion — they are alive; they shape nature's thousand-faced living world. Because of nature's qi spreading-out, rising, leveling, gathering, descending — five-state alternation — the rich-colored living world is nurtured. All life carries the brand of the Five Phases, the brand of yin-yang. I will not say more. Where do you see the Five-Phase brand? On this table — one of the five materials, wood. It has tree-rings. In spring, qi begins to spread, the cells begin to enlarge; in summer, qi rises, cells are largest; in autumn, qi gathers in, cells shrink; in winter, qi hides deep, cells barely grow — that is one ring. Not only do trees have rings, but horses, oxen, sheep have rings on their teeth. In the countryside, to buy a horse, you check the age by the teeth. Big fish scales, turtle shells — all have rings; the polar ice sheet too has rings. Sun Wukong cultivated who knows how many years — always trying to leap beyond the three realms, beyond the Five Phases — but the Buddha caught him with his hand and told him: you must be ruled by nature. That hand is not the Buddha's hand — it stands for the Five Phases. Why do humans have five fingers? Nature's making, nature's making. (Laughter.) Sun Wukong was unconvinced — with my power, how can I not escape nature's rule? The Buddha pinned him under Five-Phases Mountain. China has so many famous peaks — why pin him there? The Buddha told him: you must still be ruled by nature. So the Five Phases are deeply interesting; they bind human and nature together.
The Five Phases name five motions of qi. So wood qi is spreading: branches reach up to drink more sun and rain, rootlets reach down to draw more water and nutrient — that is wood's character. So speaking of liver-qi upward issuing is wrong: if the liver issues upward, it becomes liver-fire; saying that is the liver — wrong. Liver-qi should coursing-and-discharging, should spreading. Coursing the liver can disinhibit urine, can free the stool, can treat many many illnesses, can free the sanjiao. Liver-qi's character is not upward but spreading. The lung governs the depurative descent — su means to shrink. In our TCM foundations this character was not made clear; it was held to mean expelling foreign matter. The ancients had no air pollution; we today have so much dust pollution we cannot help but cough up phlegm. Go where there is no pollution and there is no coughing up phlegm. I lectured in a European country: I said, you spit phlegm too. They told me — they do not cough up phlegm. I doubted; later I saw it was true. Why? The air is so clean — fresh sky, white cloud; a white shirt collar still clean after a week; shoes need no polish for half a year; dust falling on the body is taken away by nature. With air this clean, there is no laborious expulsion of phlegm. Su: to shrink. I should add: each of the five storehouses has all five phases. For instance liver: liver governs upward issuing is wrong; liver governs spreading; but liver storing blood is a gathering-in motion; liver governing spreading is an opening motion; in the alternation of spreading and gathering, overall the leaning is the spreading character. Spleen and stomach — middle earth — their qi-motion is leveling; in stomach descending the turbid, spleen lifting the clear, mutually moving, the overall qi-motion of spleen and stomach holds a relatively stable balance. So even within five-phases, five-phases is contained.
Nature's colors, nature's sounds — all have effect on human qi-motion. A student raised music. Jue, zhi, gong, shang, yu are the ancient five tones; I have ordered them by wood, fire, earth, metal, water. In music they go gong, shang, jue, zhi, yu — by pitch — "1 2 3 5 6". Gong-shang-jue-zhi-yu is "1 2 3 5 6". So jue-zhi-gong-shang-yu is "3 5 1 2 6". A lone note builds no melody; it has no therapeutic action. To speak of therapy, you must put it into melody, into music. If with the note jue, "3", as tonic, the music is in jue mode; with "6" as tonic, in yu mode; with "2" as tonic, in shang mode. Different music, different instrumentation — note the instrumentation — with apt rhythm: these are music in different modes. How does music act on body and life? Two ways: physically, by the vibration of sound waves on body cells and life-cells; and psychologically, through the emotion the melody expresses, by regulating the mental state, then through it the physiological state. Music therapy on humans is like a double-edged sword — physical and psychological. As for physical effect: plants have no psychological activity. The Japanese Pioneer audio company did an experiment with three tomato greenhouses, identical in conditions: one played disco; one played classical music; one played none. At harvest, classical-music tomatoes outyielded the no-music by 15%; disco/rock yielded 10% less. They could not explain it. In fact: some music is, for cells, a massage that quickens growth — TCM calls it tonifying; some music discharges cell energy — TCM calls it draining. Why do young people like disco and rock? Because their energy is excess, body has surplus, lacks discharge — so dance, vent, burn off the energy. They need draining. Middle-aged and elderly like classical music: their right qi is insufficient — they need tonifying. So music itself, in its physical action, has tonifying and draining. As for the five-phase music — the different modes act on us how? Jue mode favors qi-spreading; zhi mode favors qi-rising; gong mode favors regulating spleen-stomach, keeping qi's rise-and-fall, exit-and-entry in concert; and shang mode favors qi-gathering. Shang mode has "2" as tonic — 2-1-2-3-2-1-2-5-3-2 — what music is that? You have heard it at Babaoshan: the funeral dirge. Is "2" not its tonic? After listening, your chest tightens. (Laughter.) That is the sound-wave. The five tones have no fixed standard pitch — in the motion of melody, in the movement and change between tones, the character of the music is shown, and so it works. Years ago I worked with an old composer on music therapy: zhengjue mode, shaojue, taijue. Shao leans toward tonifying, tai toward draining, zhengjue should be balanced. Once at the Sports University, training in the afternoon: rising from the nap, everyone listless; could you expect a fast time? Could not. In the gym we played jue mode music; their chatter stopped at the sound. After a while zhi mode; that afternoon every result was outstanding. In the meeting room they were noisy with excitement — what was that music, why are we so charged? Then we played shang mode; shang opens with a gong stroke — the gong sounds, everyone quiet; then dirge-like mode — even quieter; when it ended, everyone slipped away, restored to inward-gathering calm. There was an old gentleman who could not sleep, one day and one night; took sedatives — still no sleep. I advised his daughter: play him yu mode, "6" as tonic; it favors qi-descending and hiding. Twenty minutes in, the old man slept. The daughter saw him asleep, turned off the recorder. The instant it stopped, the old man woke. Eh, what, what? Music life has a regulating effect on human qi-motion. Why? Because it is all the natural environment! What is color? Color is the reflection in our visual organs of electromagnetic waves of different wavelength. Someone spleen-deficient, with serious digestive trouble, prefers yellow — believe me: look at his clothes, his furnishings, his bedsheet, his rug, his furniture, all yellow. Walk into a household decorated like an imperial palace — the mistress is surely spleen-deficient, has surely a digestive disease. Mr. Peng is a well-known nephrologist; observe his nephrology patients — their clothes are black or white in greater number. Of course, most people are not so sensitive to color; but think about it — why is the wedding chamber red? To excite. Hui-long-guan Hospital ran an experiment: painting the rooms of manic-schizophrenic patients red, they found to calm the patients, the dose of sedative had to be doubled — so they hurriedly stripped away the papers. What does this show? Under some illness states, sensitivity to color (electromagnetic waves of various wavelengths) is very high; and these can influence body qi.
What I am saying means this: TCM studies the relation between human and nature. To study TCM's foundations, do not be confined to theory on paper — look up at the heavens, look down at the earth, in between know of human affairs. So yin-yang and the five-phases speak of nature's laws — the laws by which life is nurtured — applicable everywhere under heaven. Good. That is all I'll say.
Originally in Zhongyi zhi Hun, January 2001