In Harmony and Resonance with Nature (2012-11-11)
In Harmony and Resonance with Nature
Xu Wenbing
2012.11.11
Harmony of the Five Flavors
People often say everything tastes the same to them — like chewing wax. A normal person should be able to taste at least ten flavors. And these flavors affect different storehouses. People always care how long they live, but no one cares about quality of life. The nose smells nothing, the mouth tastes nothing, the eye seeing what is fine cannot move the heart — living like a walking corpse, what is the use of even a hundred years?
The five flavors correspond to the five storehouses.
First, pungent — enters the liver. Pungent may sound abstract; everyone knows spicy hot. It is a diffusing, scattering flavor — explosive in the mouth. Pungent may be pungent-warm or pungent-hot — but also pungent-cool. Bohe (peppermint), for instance. Someone with mouth ulcers buys Bing Peng San from the pharmacy; the bingpian inside it is cooling. Pungent-cool gives an expanding feeling too. Common foods like huajiao (Sichuan pepper), cinnamon, star anise, fennel, white cardamom, nutmeg, huoxiang, peilan are all pungent-scattering flavors.
Salty — enters the heart. The birth of a civilization needs first a mother river — water — and second, salt. Without salt no civilization. As children we watched the film Twinkle Twinkle, the Red Star — the Reds blockaded in the mountain, no salt. Without salt a person goes weak, thought stops, things lose interest, life loses meaning. But too much salty and one becomes restless, sleepless at night, or wakes after sleep. Coming out of a restaurant — what do you feel? Thirst, and restlessness, no sleep.
What enters the spleen? Sweet — what we call gan.
Autumn comes; fruit comes — sour, enters the lung. I am not against eating fruit; I am against eating fruit out of season and place, and eating unripe fruit — you make yourself sick.
The last — bitter — enters the kidney.
The five flavors enter the five storehouses. Each flavor supplements and benefits its storehouse — strengthens its function. Besides these five, those who study TCM or Chinese traditional culture should also know five matching flavors.
Pungent — add spicy-numbing. Pungent-fragrant-spicy-numbing — one group of flavors.
Salty — fresh. The most fresh? Seafood. We say xinxian (fresh-new); is there lao xian (fresh-old)? Jiu xian? Studying TCM, think of opposites — don't go astray. Does ham count as lao xian? This is Chinese cleverness. We know just-out-of-water fish, shrimp, crab are fresh, but with time they spoil. Spoil means bad bacteria take them; we use good bacteria to replace them, fermenting, so another fresh persists. Soy sauce is the broth ladled off yellow-bean paste. Such fermented ham, cured meat, sauces, etc., all keep a freshness. Salty-and-fresh — best at lifting heart-qi. So to open a restaurant for profit, secrets: first, spicy-hot to go with rice; second, salty-fresh for volume. A student brought shrimp paste, another brought free-range eggs — I stir-fried the eggs with shrimp paste. Though I had eaten my fill, I could have finished the plate alone. It rouses lust, heart-fire. Restaurant fare comes down to four themes: spicy-numbing-salty-fresh. Spicy rouses the liver-gall fire; salty-fresh rouses heart-fire and desire-fire. Some ask: didn't you say each follow his desire, all get what they wish? The Daoists say: do not indulge desire, do not suppress desire — in the middle, regulate desire. Eat and drink with moderation.
Gan (sweet) we also call dan (bland). What we drink we call sweet water — is it really sweet? No, it is fresh water. This tasteless water we still classify under gan. Many Chinese drugs are tasteless: fuling, huashi, tongcao etc. Tastelessness is also a flavor.
Sour and se (astringent). The sour itself astringes; very sour produces an astringent feel. Unripe fruit has se. Is this good? For a person with heavy bleeding or unrelenting sweat, eating such se things can stop it; for a person already living constrained, suppressed, depressed — eating such sour-astringent things will only make them more shrunken.
Bitter — charred. Burnt rice — is the crust bitter? Beef slightly over-cooked — bitter. Is bitter good? Bitter firms the kidney. With kidney stones, bitter eaten — cannot pee. But for enuresis, night-rising, miscarriage — a little bitter holds it.
The flavor we have least of in life: bitter — most beneficial to the kidney. So we are all rushing-and-burning upward. Kidney is water; water can quench fire. Why are some people unable to settle, unable to sit still? Kidney water is insufficient. So one should consciously supplement bitter: tea, unsweetened coffee, rice-crust, baked potato, baked sweet potato. TCM finds: all life's problems are slight imbalance of the five flavors — much lack of bitter; that is why most TCM decoctions are bitter.
These five flavors each supplement their own storehouse and weaken another — the five-phase generation-and-restraint. Pungent supplements liver — so spleen is over-weakened, at the same time. If a person has insufficient liver-qi with spleen-earth stagnation, a pungent drug works just right — liver-qi rises, spleen-earth is cut, harmony. A normal person eating spicy all the time will have diarrhea, cannot hold the nutrients eaten. So those with poor digestion or very thin should eat less spicy.
Salty-fresh is good for the heart — bad for whom? Fire restrains metal; metal is the lung. So salty-fresh eaten too much, the lung is harmed first. Western medicine does not recognize this. They do heart transplant — original heart 40 beats, the pacemaker takes you up to 60. They say it was successful, but you die of pulmonary failure — not our problem; our heart surgery was successful. The original rate was matched to your body — like an old car given an A6 engine to push at high speed: engine fine, but tires, transmission, brakes? So salty-fresh harms lung and large intestine. Now lung cancer, colon cancer, rectal cancer, intestinal cancer rise — partly because of air pollution, partly because of what we eat.
Sweet helps the spleen, hurts the kidney. We know: too much sugar, teeth ruined; sweet eaten makes the bones loose too, and one drinks much. Eight glasses of water a day — water poison. So lovers of sweet must watch kidney problems. Some women in middle-and-older age, with hopping or coughing, leak urine — cannot hold. Cut down sweet. But sweet is everywhere — children are pacified with sweets, no one says try a piece of bitter melon.
Sour is good for the lung but bad for the liver — bad for the liver's outpouring and free-coursing, because it promotes the liver's gathering-in. So someone already living constrained, swallowing anger, with liver-qi not free — give him sour, and he can only grow tumors. We can observe our own belly — a person's belly should be flat and traceless; many have several transverse stripe marks. People say fat — no, it is the person constrained, self-binding. Inner constraint shown outside. In such a case, eat fruit — yet more knotted, more depressed. Sometimes a little spicy, a burp, a fart — turbid qi scatters. So I advise: less sour-astringent. Bitter and charred — replenish daily.
Houpu Motto
Last time I gave you six characters: recognize, know, learn, awaken, feel, comprehend. This time another six: Way, principle, virtue, method, art, vessel. These twelve are the motto of my Houpu TCM Hall. Students reach the Way, principle, virtue, method, art, vessel layers through recognize, know, learn, awaken, feel, comprehend. Different perception, different layer.
Vessel (qi). What the eye can see, the hand can touch — that which is below form. The shallow love the vessel: it can be shown, proven — a living person, body, drug, food.
Art (shu). Matter is in motion; shu concerns direction, mode, frequency, amplitude. As a TCM doctor: first know what Chinese drugs to use — vessel; second, have good technique — guasha, anmo, needling, moxa, including diagnostic technique.
Method (fa). Example. You and I drive Beijing to Guangzhou — you in an Audi, I in an Alto. You might not arrive first. I am an old driver, you a new — my technique is better. So shu is more important than qi. But you drive an Audi as an old driver — will you beat me? Not necessarily. Above shu is fa — fa yu yinyang. Fa is in fact lifa (calendar) — humans should follow sun, moon, stars. If you drive an Audi with great skill but flout sun-and-moon changes, you will crash; I in an Alto with average skill but rise with the sun, rest with the sun, sleep when tired, drive after rest — may reach Guangzhou ahead of you. This is fa yu yinyang.
China's calendar is yin-yang combined. The solar calendar is set by the 24 solar terms. Not only 24 — five days a climate (hou); fifteen a qi; forty-five a jie (node); ninety a season; four seasons a year. So 365 days have 72 climates, 8 nodes, 4 seasons, 24 solar terms — sun's variation. Chinese society was agrarian, so working hours were set by the sun. Visiting the Yao Temple in Linfen, a stele has the Drum-and-Stamp Song in five lines: rise with the sun, rest at sun-down, dig wells and drink, plow fields and eat — what has the emperor's power to do with me? — the ancient Chinese attitude to life.
The Chinese also found that the moon's waxing and waning greatly affects mood. Whether on Mid-Autumn Festival the moon is hidden by cloud, or on the first full-moon night snow batters the lanterns — seen or not, it is there, and affects women's menses and people's mood. So Chinese fixed festivals by the moon. Chinese guide work by the solar calendar, life by the lunar. Our festivals — New Year's Day, the 15th, Erlong Taitou (Feb 2), Mar 3, Duanwu (May 5), Double Seven, Aug 15, Sep 9 — all lunar.
Beyond this, higher, is what Teacher Fan spoke of — wuyun liuqi: beyond sun and moon, the five planets — wood, fire, earth, metal, water — affect the human body too. The Chinese observed that heaven affects man, so man should walk with heaven. Huangdi Neijing: "Take pleasure in your food, joy in your clothes, follow the local customs; high or low, do not envy each other; thus the people are called 'plain.'" This is the normal life Chinese should live — what I call the noble life. Rich people spending freely, fleeing to Hainan or Australia in winter — those rich men are foolish.
Virtue (de). We say daode; the word has lost flavor — close to ethics, or just good and bad. I greatly oppose old-Confucian-style stiff standards judging people good or bad, labeling people. Preserve heavenly principle, extinguish human desire — strips away humanity, makes people unlike people. Kong Rong at four yielded the pear — what does it mean? Sacrifice yourselves to complete the centralized rulers. Later this becomes I am a brick — moved wherever they want. Sacrificing individual integrity for some power's centralization — a senseless logic that has formed over thousands of years. Mother is dying — no, I must sing red songs in Beijing. Such a person is worse than an animal — yet greatly promoted by society.
What is de? De has the double-man radical — describing human thought and behavior. What is of virtue to us? Respect for heaven, respect for nature, conduct that accords with nature. All conduct against nature — fighting heaven, fighting earth, fighting man — is lack of virtue, against virtue, loss of virtue. The Daoist de contains two ideas: first, how to do oneself well; second, how to deal with others — i.e. handle human relations. This standard varies by time, place, person. Many today have violent qi in the heart: their expression is moral kidnapping, putting tall hats on others. Chinese love face; easily roped in.
To study TCM, first: for whom? First, for oneself. All who sacrifice themselves to save others I call hypocrites. First for oneself — this is nature; don't war with nature. De is how to do oneself; once you have taken care of yourself, help others to the extent of your strength.
From 1949 on, we received this kind of education; we must recognize its negative effect and break free. And remember: the physician does not knock on the door. To be so foolish as to grab people on the street and say "you must believe in TCM; look how it saved me" is foolish indeed. Confucius said: do not impose on others what you yourself do not want. We have turned it into impose on others what you yourself want. Many have harmed others under this banner.
A TCM student must handle three relations well. First, relation with heaven — the Way. Second, with earth — principle (li). Third, with people — virtue (de). Huangdi Neijing · Shanggu Tianzhen Lun speaks of four kinds of person — true, wise, sage, worthy. To be a person is to be like these. Going about stirring up disquiet wherever one goes, kicking up class struggle, slandering one to the other — such a person is sick. A person without virtue has physiological problems too — body and mind are not two. I once treated an OCD-cleanliness patient: anything touched, he had to wash; after washing, thought the washer was contaminated and threw it away — two washers thrown. My disposable single-use sheets must be changed in his sight; lay it first, he refuses. His stomach and kidneys had serious problems; heavy blood-stasis. First time I prescribed wulingzhi; he looked it up — bat feces — refused. After three months of treatment, he stopped throwing washers; people could touch him. Only in very filthy environments would the urgency return — I told him I would too. Such cleanliness sufferers cannot get along with people — who wants to deal with them? Through treatment, this person became easier to live with.
Including myself. In college I was very left — upright and strict. Such leftists — I joined the Party in 1987. Ten years post-graduation, classmates said: Xu Wenbing, you have become likable. Why? In college I had severe stomach problems and a touch of depression. My thought was: everyone should study TCM and revive TCM; if you study Western medicine, you and I have no common life. After my teacher tuned me, I found: people can live by different lives. These inward changes came as physical changes affected psychological changes — not the conscious should. Conscious acceptance is shallow and easily changed. Look at a person's circle of friends — you know whether he lives well. Living to be a hermit, walking with no dog paying attention — such a person's life is a failure.
Principle (li). Li speaks of earth. Daodi yao cai — herbs of their proper place. Many say some place produces good. Wrong. Produced in that place, and sown and harvested in the proper season — that is daodi. Greenhouse vegetable — of the place but not of the proper time. More and more, things are not daodi.
Way (dao). Dao speaks of heaven. I hope you see what is most important in TCM. Teach you a folk formula, cure a few people, earn money? Sure — folk formulas abound. For vitiligo, buguzhi soaked in alcohol applied works. But the prerequisite is rise with the sun, rest with the sun. Drink to drunkenness, post on Weibo till 3am — nothing applied works. At the Cui Yueli TCM Culture Study Hall, what to learn? To be a person; to keep in step with heaven; to sing the song fitting the mountain; to adapt to time, place, person — this is TCM's most fundamental. Direction. So driving an Audi, with good driver relations, on a highway — these set, will you reach Guangzhou first? Not if you go toward Moscow — those advantages will be a help to failure, not success. So in TCM the most important is the Way. I sum it in two lines: the Way takes its law from nature; medicine takes its law from self-healing. TCM's only dependence in treating illness is: the human has a heaven-given self-healing ability — call it forth, and all diseases can be treated. Whoever thinks a doctor cures the patient by his own ability — that one is a fool. By his theory, if he does not cure, must he take responsibility? Bian Que treated Prince Guo's shi jue; all said he raised the dead. Bian Que said: "I cannot raise the dead. He was about to live; I just helped him up." Whoever thinks he can raise the dead — go to hell.