Jeffrey Yuen : lineage and ways of knowing

[Guest guest]

I'm re-reading Jeffrey Yuen's transcripts of the Su wen, Ling shu and Nan

jing that took place at NESA.

Since we've been commenting on ways of knowing, I thought it would be

relevant to type up some quotes

from Jeffrey Yuen himself....

6/24/00 Nei Jing Su Wen volume 1:

 

" Chinese medicine places heavy emphasis on the way to understand healing,

you have to understand it

within yourself before experimenting with people to see whether the system

works or not. Empirical data

is not the basis of Oriental Medicine, in fact it is written in the Nei Jing

that when a clinician fails to achieve

success the first failure is because they are not mindful of what they are

doing. Focus and mindfulness,

these are the prerequisites. They talk about it in Tai Ji, they also talk

about it in the Nei jing, where the mind goes,

Qi follows. You can't do something just out of memory. Then it is just a

technique. You believe in it whole heartedly

and you're channeling that intent through the needling process if you are

doing acupuncture, or with herbs,

you need to ingest them and know how they work in your body. Consequently,

it becomes much easier to explore

how herbs are going to work on someone else's body.

 

Let me give you a little background on who I am, so you know a little about

the tradition I'm coming from. I come

from a Daoist tradition. My grandfather, or rather my adopted grandfather

was a Daoist priest who adopted my father

during WWII. He had a vision that my father was going to have a son who

would become one of his students.

He had 4 students at that time. I was the last of his so called disciples.

My grandfather took my father to one of his

disciples to be raised. I was born in Hong Kong, and my grandfather applied

for us to come to the Americas.

I am youngest in a family of 4 siblings. He essentially raised me and

babysat me all that time, infusing into me

his tradition of Daoism. He comes from the tradition that is called the

Jade Purity school. It is considered one of the five

major sects of Daoism, considered among scholars to be among the oldest of

Daoist schools.

 

One of the perhaps unfortunate things about the Jade Purity tradition is

that they don't believe in writing, which is why

I myself don't believe too much in writing. We believe in oral

transmission. Information transmitted orally allows

for greater creativity and imagination. Students have approached me about

writing books, but I'm not really interested

in that. I do have people writing books with my name on them, those will be

published. But I'm not too involved in the

writing process. " ...

 

" Medicine for me, because that which I was most interested in. Because I

was interested in the Meridian system and the energy flow. When I was a

child I was also a medium. So sometimes you get information that comes

through me and not from me. When I do the 4 Great Masters series, they come

through me, and they are really the ones who are teaching. I can listen

and observe and basically be an instrument for what are they saying, but I

myself am not really saying it. Sometimes it

puzzles me because I'll say something, then I'll have to go and research it

and really see if this is what that particular person says. And sure enough

this indeed is what they are talking about.

 

So that's my background, and in Daoism, and especially in the study of

medicine, we first have to learn how to heal ourselves,

become familiar with who we are. Then it becomes easier to relate, to

extend that process to people that try to become

more familiar with themselves. "

 

Well, those are JY's own words, so just wanted to put that out there for

your own interpretation.

You can agree or not, that's how it is. Interesting area of discussion are

oral vs written traditions

and intuitive/creative vs academic/analytical ways of knowing.

 

K

 

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