CM orientation science/meditation/taoism

[Guest guest]

Wainwright,

 

This is truly a beautiful post. Thank you. I've changed the subject heading in

keeping with Todd's post. You may change it again to suit your best judgment.

 

In gratitude,

Emmanuel Segmen ... recovering from Providian 199 Mile Relay through SF Bay

Area. An incredible experience.

-

wainwrightchurchill

Sunday, October 12, 2003 2:00 PM

Re: qing hao

 

 

> Good lord, Wainwright, are these our choices?!

>

> Back to meditation, the ultimate deconstruction, the ultimate science...

>

> Rory

> --

>

>

Rory,

I think you've perceived the essence of my position.

 

An influential teacher in the UK and Europe was a French Jesuit, Fr.

Larre. He had been a missionary in China in the pre-PRC era, and while

he had been working to convert Chinese people to Christianity, he was

reciprocally converted to Taoism. He was an impressive scholar. Later,

he attended a lecture in Paris given by the head of an acupuncture

college. That gentlemen was talking about Taoism. Father Larre stood

up and said that unfortunately, the acupuncture college head didn't

really understand Taoism. This lead to Fr. Larre being invited to

teach Chinese philosophy at the college. In time, Fr. Larre became an

expert on CM texts. A student of his, Elisabeth Rochat, is on the CM

lecture circuit in the US, I believe.

 

Anyway, one of Fr. Larre's points is that CM is pre-eminently a form

of medicine that is directly accessible to the realm of experience.

It's an interesting idea to meditate on, and I think its a profound

idea. There are different ways of being tired, for example, there are

different ways of using one's energy, there are different ways of

relating to the world, and the CM framework allows for fine and

profound distinctions with therapeutic implications. Pulse diagnosis,

tongue diagnosis, perception of emotions in the voice, colours in the

face, smells, are all amenable to direct perception. Meditative

disciplines, such as outright meditation, Tai Qi, Qi Kung, lead into

and refine one's awareness of this territory...

 

This is in contrast to the mechanistic, linear, determinative,

reductionist viewpoint of mainstream medical science. I'm not wishing

to suggest that the scientific viewpoint isn't productive in a number

of ways, or interesting, but ultimately, it involves a way of seeing

and approaching reality that is fundamentally different from the

Chinese. It is not pre-eminently an approach grounded in experience,

but in many ways, divorced from it.

 

I'm reminded of Goethe's words [ed. Naylor: Goethe on Science.]:

 

(a) In so far as we make use of our healthy senses, the human being is

the most powerful and exact scientific instrument possible. The

greatest misfortune of modern physics is that its experiments have, as

it were, been set apart from the human being; physics refuses to

recognize in Nature anything not shown by artificial instruments, and

even uses this as a measure of its accomplishments.

 

 

 

(b) The same applies to calculation. Many things cannot be calculated,

and there are other things which defy experiments.

 

 

 

© But in this connection the human being stands so high that what

otherwise defies portrayal is portrayed in us. What is a string and

all mechanical subdivisions of it compared with the ear of the

musician? Yes, indeed, what are the elemental phenomena of Nature

herself in comparison with the human being, who must first master and

modify them in order in some degree to assimilate them.

 

 

 

Best wishes,

 

Wainwright