Those Pesky Pesky Nuances

[Guest guest]

Ken -

 

I did forget that the lower radical was wood not water in rong. Along with Van Nghi, I prefer the notion nutritive qi (rong) to constructive (ying) which is a rigid feeling term and leads to a stilted reading of the material.

However, many clinical techniques derived from knowledge of the movement of qi along the organ clock do not rely on translational issues for clinical efficacy. These techniques are manipulations of physiology that are used effectively by many acupuncturists with little or no concern that it is related to the conduction of ying qi. In other words, regardless of our miscommunication, acupuncturists all over the world treat the ying qi cycle with little consideration for the words we are struggling with; this includes practitioners trained by Tan, Worsely, Mann, and Master Tong. My bigger mistake was assuming that participants on this list were familiar with introductory organ clock theory as a ying qi cycle.

 

Will

[Guest guest]

Will,

 

I'm glad that you've decided to continue the

discussion as I continue to think it's an

important point.

 

> I did forget that the lower radical was wood not water in rong.

 

The point I was making wasn't about your

very understandable error with the character

itself. As I've said, such mistakes are not

just unavoidable when dealing with Chinese

characters, they form a whole aspect of

scholarship, i.e. tracking errors made by

scholars, scribes, and those involved in

the transmission of the knowledge via words.

 

The thing I was trying to point out was

how idiosyncratic interpretations of the

meanings of Chinese medical terms are often

occasioned not by correct understanding of

the characters but by comparable errors. Now

one could ask, well if it's all unavoidable

and a part of the traditional scholarship

why bother pointing it out?

 

Well, the point of the paying attention

to such things is two-fold:

 

1) it sharpens our attention and understanding

of the subject, engaging our minds at a

very profound substantive level witih respect

to the meanings of the words we use on a daily

basis; and

 

2) it forms an essential part of what serves

as quality control in the field. That we

care enough to notice and correct such errors

demonstrates a committment to the quality of

the subject and the way it's taught. So I just

want to note again in passing how grateful I

am to you for engaging in the conversation at

all. Opposition really is true friendship for

it puts us in position to help each other in

this essential way of finding one another's

faults.

 

As a Dean and teacher at a school, I suspect

you are often asked to interpret the meanings

of words and terms. And as a writer, I am

more or less constantly concerned with what

the words really mean. But clearly the meanings

of a word like ying2 matter.

 

I don't really remember exactly what you said

about the water metaphor and don't have time

to hunt up the prior post at the moment. But

the point I'm making was to show how such

interpretations become attached to Chinese

medical terms while at the same time often

replacing the correct meanings.

 

That was why I kept mentioning the martial

meteaphor conveyed by the word ying2. You

pointed out that you are well aware of it,

but you omitted mention of it and only spoke

of the water image in your interpretation

related to its use in chapters 16 & 17 of

Ling Shu. Someone reading that post who hasn't

done a thorough study of the nomenclature

would not even have been aware that there

was anything to notice. And yet would have

come away with a sense impression of the

meaning of ying2 qi4 that is quite distinctly

different from the sense conveyed by that

text. That's what I mean by separation of

the words from their meanings.

 

I assure you that this type of thing goes

on countless times every day in books and

schools around the country. Again it's more

or less unavoidable. But by positioning the

study of the medical language and the nomenclature

outside the realm of education in the subject,

we have more or less guaranteed that there will

be a dearth of individuals who can catch these

errors and maintain the integrity of the

subject. More importantly, we impose on students

an aggregation of idiosyncratic interpretations

of the meanings of Chinese medicine that are

often not based on sound readings of the

texts and terms of the originals.

 

This is a kind of sickness. Laozi described it

quite clearly. Hmmm, that's philosophy isn't it?

 

Chapter 71 of the Dao De Jing states:

 

To know yet appear as not knowing is best.

To not know yet appear as knowing is sickness.

 

The field of Chinese medicine has this sickness

in that it has not fully incorporated its own

knowledge into its self-awareness. And it cannot

and won't until we build study of the nomenclature

and the core literature into the curriculum.

 

Believe me when I say I am poignantly aware

of the fact that we all suffer from this

sickness whenever we speak on most any

topic, as our knowledge is never perfect

and we, thus, never really " know " .

 

But I don't read this as an admonition

to just shut up, as I believe many

do. I won't get into my interpretations

of Daoist paradoxes right now.

 

Along with

> Van Nghi, I prefer the notion nutritive qi (rong) to constructive

(ying)

> which is a rigid feeling term and leads to a stilted reading of the

material.

 

Let's look at this statement more closely.

Who is Van Nghi? He is an individual. A doctor.

One voice in an enormous chorus of voices that

make up the great cacaphony that we call the

transmission of traditional Chinese medicine.

Idiosyncratic means a structural or behavioral

characteristic peculiar to an individual or

group. So what you are saying is that despite

the fact that the great bulk of the Chinese

medical literature, at least what I've been

able to see in a very slight sampling of

numerous texts, employ the character ying2

to discuss certain aspects of physiology,

thereby bringing to the understanding a

metaphoric sense of the position and function

of this aspect of the qi4 that depends on

an understanding of how ancient military

troops were deployed in camp, you prefer

and I presume you teach your students

to think about something related to the

movement of sap through trees?

 

I also believe that you've mistaken the

operation of the Chinese language with

respect to such terms as ying2 and rong2.

Rong2 is a tong1 jia3 zi4 of ying2. The

meaning of this is that the two words

have become more or less confused with

each other at times and that rong2 is

used in association with ying2, as in

passages from various texts that we

discussed, and can be used in place of

ying2. But it's meaning does not cancel

and replace but rather complements the

meaning of ying2. The gist of the relationship

as I said earlier can be summed up by

stating that if the ying2 is rong2 then

the body is flourishing.

 

Too suggest that the one is better than

the other imparts a value to the relationship

that the words have in Chinese that simply

doesn't exist. It's not a matter of choosing

between which one seems more or less stilted.

 

I'm not really sure what you meant to say

by stilted, since so much of classical

Chinese literature is so stiffly artificial

and formal or, in a word, stilted. That's not

to say it's not wonderful and beautiful.

Curious stuff ancient Chinese. At once

doggerel and music, at least to my ears.

 

 

>

> However, many clinical techniques derived from knowledge of the

movement of

> qi along the organ clock do not rely on translational issues for

clinical

> efficacy.

 

No doubt. But they should all rely on the

same set of definitions. If the term can

be taken to mean anything at all, then

it means nothing.

 

These techniques are manipulations of physiology that are used

> effectively by many acupuncturists with little or no concern that

it is

> related to the conduction of ying qi.

 

I suppose this is most true of people who

don't know what the words really mean.

 

In other words, regardless of our

> miscommunication, acupuncturists all over the world treat the ying

qi cycle

> with little consideration for the words we are struggling with;

this includes

> practitioners trained by Tan, Worsely, Mann, and Master Tong.

 

Well, virtually everything that happens

all over the world does so regardless of

our miscommunication. I have no presumption

of influences on such a grand scale. I'm

just talking to you about the meaning of

a word and the impact that ignoring the

nomenclature has on the community.

 

That life goes on despite the existence

of such problems does not argue effectively

against the importance of understanding words

clearly.

 

My bigger

> mistake was assuming that participants on this list were familiar

with

> introductory organ clock theory as a ying qi cycle.

 

I don't know about the size of mistakes, but

I believe that the word issue is more fundamental

than the more complex conceptual notions that

depend upon a clear understanding of the individual

terms in order to make any sense and thus be

understood.

 

Thanks, again, Will.

 

Ken