The role of Cultivation in our medicine

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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.