The role of Cultivation in our medicine

February 26, 2008

Akhil,

I thoroughly enjoyed reading your post.

This also reminds me of the 3 types of Chinese philosophers:

The Buddhist says that the peach is bitter.

The Taoist says that the peach is sweet.

....and the Confucian says that the peach must be picked by a laborer,

offered by a younger brother, prepared by his wife and eaten by the

first-born son.

I hope the peach reference qualifies this as an herbal post.

Cheers.

K.

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 2:34 PM, Akhil Kumar Kaplan <akhilkumarji

wrote:

> This is my first post as I " ve been content just being a " lurker " for

> some time. While this is an " academy " and thus " academics " is the

> focus, I am constantly amazed at how little people talk about

> cultivation in this forum. I continue to read posts by people who

> pick apart others comments rather than trying to help them and I

> continue to read posts by academics who quote the classics and use

> their vast academic repertoire to assume leadership. Now, there

> really isn't anything wrong with that from a theory standpoint.

> However, can we deny those who don't have great theory but get great

> clinical results? Are there not a ton of barefoot doctors in chinese

> folklore (and currently) who still practice a lineage form of folk

> medicine who are getting great results? Personally, I am aware of

> only a few of them, but we've all heard the stories. There is the

> great Vietnamese doctor whom was the basis of Fourth Uncle in the

> Mountain (by Marjorie Pivar) who practices out of his trailer home in

> Vermont who has cured many people (some of whom I know) of incredibly

> recalcitrant illness using his folk medicine. And then of course, for

> those in the realm of martial arts and qi gong, all those martial docs

> that know very little theory and yet have amazing gong fu and can

> cure people with bodywork and a few needles.

>

> My Chinese is poor and so I " ve been limited to the classics that have

> been translated into English, but I " ve read almost all of the ones

> that have been translated and there seems to be an endless amount of

> quotes about cultivated doctors. One that comes to mind is a

> conversation between Huang Di and Qi Bo. Huang di asks why people are

> no longer healthy and is it " due to the change of spiritual principles

> or caused by the artificioal behavior of men? " Qi bo's response is

> " those who knew the way of keeping good health in ancient times always

> kept their behavior in daily life in accordance with nature. They were

> able to modulate their daily life in harmony with teh way of

> recuperating the essence and vital energy, thus they could master and

> practice the way of observing good health. " Now, cultivation can

> clearly have many meanings, but there seems to be a common thread

> dealing with ability. There is no doubt that being well read and

> studied should make you a better practitioner, but is it a

> requirement? This question/issue has clearly been a hot topic as of

> late on the CHA, but I still have yet to really hear about

> " cultivation " . There is a line in the Jia Yi Jing that Charles Chace

> helped to translate that reads " Oh spiritual diagnosis, it does not

> require the ears to listen. With eyes bright, an open mind and

> discernment, a clear picture presents itself. Although he is unable

> to express it in words, the examiner alone among all his colleagues

> sees clearly. " Now this line has always stuck out to me as very

> important and why we must all learn to " grasp " this medicine. I think

> back to a Ghost Points lecture by Jeffrey Yuen where he discusses how

> a practitioner must cultivate these points to make them work. In

> that lecture, he talks about how many indications there are for

> acupuncture points, yet so few people can make each point work for

> those indications. I remember so many of my classmates just sticking

> a needle in and hoping that the point would do what it does. For

> example, SP 6 has a whole slew of functions like tonifying the Kidney

> and Spleen, moving liver qi, clearing heat, etc., yet how many of us

> can say we're gonna use if for just one function and then actually get

> that result. I personally cannot, but I'm working my tail off trying

> to figure it out. Here is where cultivation comes in.

>

> Now, there are endless ways to cultivate oneself through study,

> martial arts, yoga, meditation, qi gong, and years of thorough

> observation. Most, if not all (please correct me if I " m way off) of

> the great idols of were very realized individuals.

> Sun Si Miao and his wife became renunciates to become more realized

> and that is when his abilities as a practitioner became so advanced.

> Daoist and Naturalist philosophies were written by very realized and

> cultivated individuals. Back to the music analogy. How does someone

> like Jimi Hendrix, who couldn't read a lick of music, redefine the

> guitar? Actually, I can't answer that... :-)

>

> Nonetheless, I'm hoping that we can all share the things we are doing

> to become more cultivated so that we can help one another advance this

> medicine through skill and not just theory alone. I do not believe

> theory alone will save this dying medicine. I believe results will.

> You can debate theory all day (and some of us clearly love to), but

> its hard to argue with results. Clearly there are so many schools of

> thought in this medicine and yet they all seem to have some efficacy.

> However, how does one doctor use just a few needles and another use

> 20 to treat the same illness, regardless of how well versed they are?

> From an herbal/diagnostic perspective, how does one truly grasp the

> patients condition before it appears before our eyes and therefore

> know the right formula to prescribe? I believe that cultivation is a

> possible answer. I will end by saying this. In the practice of

> Tantric yoga, as given by sadhu Shiva some 7000 years ago, there are 3

> types of individuals. There is the intellectual, the worker, and the

> devotee. When confronted with a mango tree, the intellectual spends

> all his/her time figuring out when the mangoes will fall and on what

> day and at what time. The worker spends all his/her time collecting

> mangoes and putting them in boxes. The devotee climbs the tree and

> sinks his/her teeth into the mango and therefore enjoys its pure

> essence. Shiva stated that the intellectual spent too much time

> thinking and thus became physically lazy while the worker spent too

> much time working and not enough time thinking, but the devotee spent

> all his/her time surrendering. While there are so many of us on this

> list, some of us intellectuals (academics), some of us workers

> (clinicians), I believe cultivation is what ultimatley allows us to

> actually sink our teeth into this medicine and truly taste (grasp) its

> sweet essence.

>

> Thoughts?

>

> Humble of your time,

>

> Akhil Kumar Kaplan MSOM, L.Ac.

>

--

aka Mu bong Lim

Father of Bhakti

The Four Reliances:

Do not rely upon the individual, but rely upon the teaching.

As far as teachings go, do not rely upon the words alone, but rely upon the

meaning that underlies them.

Regarding the meaning, do not rely upon the provisional meaning alone, but

rely upon the definitive meaning.

And regarding the definitive meaning, do not rely upon ordinary

consciousness, but rely upon wisdom awareness.

February 26, 2008

Akhil,

Welcome to the group, and thank you for your thoughts. I just

wanted to let you know that if you access the CHA archives, you'll

find quite a few posts on self-cultivation in Chinese medicine that

have come up over the years. Certainly, I've mentioned the importance

of this issue many times in the past. By no means is medicine

practiced by theory alone, and I don't know how far one can get in

Chinese medicine without self cultivation. As you note, the classics

emphasize this again and again. Chinese medicine is as much a

lifestyle as a professional medicine, if one chooses to practice in

this way.

On Feb 26, 2008, at 2:34 PM, Akhil Kumar Kaplan wrote: