SHEN HUN PO. E. Peluffo READ / DOWNLOAD PDF VERSION

THE WEST AND THE EAST: Reciprocal attraction?. E. Peluffo READ / DOWNLOAD PDF VERSION

THE FAR EAST IN THE WORKS OF C.DEBUSSY AND G.PUCCINI. Professor H. Urbon READ / DOWNLOAD PDF VERSION

CHEEK BONE IN CHINESE MEDICINE. E. Peluffo READ / DOWNLOAD PDF VERSION

ZHUANG Zi,THE VOID, MINGMEN, TANZHONG. E. Peluffo READ / DOWNLOAD PDF VERSION

SHEN HUN PO. E. Peluffo - DOWNLOAD PDF VERSION

SHEN (mental energy, spirit, soul…) resides in the heart, which is why it is so important in Chinese medicine as well as in other medicinal practices. We can say in passing that this way of thinking is not uncommon in the West insofar as in Paracelso’s hermetical medicine the mind is situated in the highest part of the right auricle.
Shen is harboured in the heart, and if we have emotions that upset the heart our mind loses harmony. It is one of the reasons that the Taoists sought to liberate themselves from their emotions in order to achieve a strong Shen. The liver is also involved as it is responsible for harmonizing emotions and you cannot separate Shen from the brain, the special organ that controls the mind, another name for Shen.

In acupuncture, each viscera is characterized by a tendency towards a specific action, which differentiates itself from others and so defines its function in the body. They resemble that which to us is known as “vegetative souls” corresponding with “sensitive souls” not exactly the same but close. Each individual is unique, and no one else, through Shen. According to Chinese thinking Shen is not an abstraction, it is a reality which determines unique characteristics in each individual, Shen shapes that which will be the individual. One of the meanings of Shen is the type of “aspect” the person has, that is to say how Shen applies to spiritual and organic conditions. It is only through the heart that the shen of each zang arrives at its designated organ, as the sovereign is inside his ministers represented by them. For the Chinese, of all the human activities the most important is the shen. They represent an expression that designates the general phenomena of human life, its conscious and subconscious activity. It picks out the individuality of each organ. Harbouring Shen gives the heart the knowledge as to all that happens in the organism. In China there are five sacred mountains, but in reality they are assumed to be distributed throughout the earth (China was the world) those that were considered the support of the earth. There was one in each cardinal point and the fifth in the center which had a ritual importance.

In these the monarchs made requests, prayed to the Heavens and made sacrifices because the spirits lived in these. Tai, that of the East, was the creator of human beings, controlled the duration of life and corresponded to spring and even in this day and age it has sacred connotations. It was the principal place to summon the spirits of hun and those of po. The mountain of the West represented autumn and the death of nature as part of the life cycle of human beings. It is important to highlight that the school of wuxing did not value life and death in a positive or negative way as the main object was the harmonic equilibrium among the cosmic forces.

Po is translated as the soul, a sensitive terrestrial soul, vigour, spirit, a physical manifestation of a sensitive soul, and hun also like soul, as the vital source of a human being, mood. It is the human soul produced by the progressive condensation of air breathed in; the Taoists considered Hun as one of the three main essentials, that after death was kept alive with offerings from the living. It is always a risk to speak of the spirit as for an occidental the idea of a spirit is different from that of an oriental. For occidentals the soul is one and indivisible but for a Chinese, if as we have mentioned has the idea of Shen as a force and energy that forms an individual in the widest sense of the term, from this Shen more specific concepts are derived to designate those particular elements which form an integral part of a human being.

We speak on one hand, of the body po, flesh and bones and on the other hun, a spiritual element by which hun and po show the composition of man. Lingshu 8 says: that which moves with Shen actively giving form is Hun which implies the existence of a global Shen; the potential capacity to structure is represented by po.

The hun control the mental human essences because they were air above all (yang in the yang and also yang in respect to po) and they return to the air in which they remain after death. It is also something that governs the instincts and nature of every person. Po on the contrary heads towards earth (yin in the yin) because of its control of fluids, of flesh and bones essentially earth into which it will enter again after death; it had above all power over emotions. Hun represents the forces that model personality and po the structure that permits the fulfillment of psychic functions. Each organ has its soul. They appear in this way in the Classics although in truth hun and po do not appear in ancient medical texts. Later they will change from being one hun and one po to three hun and seven po. This is interpreted that three Hun is a reference to the social relations of man: sovereign/subject , father/son, husband/wife. The seven po elements refer to the seven orifices of the body and therefore to the senses and the seven emotions that were described in that era: anger, hate, happiness, desire, sadness, fear. If illness presented itself it was because some hun or po was missing and one would die if the ten abandoned man, so it was evident that life and health were the harmonious amalgam of the ten elements.

As the hun after death is left wandering in the air and the po in similar circumstances comes back to earth, this gives root to postmortem filial piety, to the cult of the ancestors and the funereal monuments for the dead to dwell in so that their hun and po would not disperse and thus would serve as beneficial souls, intermediaries between their descendents and the Heavens. Behind the idea of the spirit in every organ, the hun soul is directly subject to Shen and corresponds to the liver, vegetative soul whose model puts all the dynamic organic in motion, it commands the rise, the breaking away, the creation. Under hun are imagination, planned thought, dreams, intelligence and meditation.

Po, vegetative soul of the lungs, spiritual natural force of the lungs, bound to the essences, possesses the necessary energy to conduct and look after all this mechanism. Po governs the descent, the harnessing of the elements, all that which is related to instinct and to the automatic care of the body. At the same time it is a hieroglyphic, which in astronomy defines the dark invisible portion of the moon. Functionally the lung is united to the large intestine and this is because po also is made up of a residue of vitality whose waste matters are eliminated through the anus which is called the gate of po, thus coinciding with the return of the po’s to earth, in comparison with the hun’s which go into the air. Any illness or malaise is directly implicated to Shen or the spirit. If we speak of energy we have to speak also of the soul or spirit of Shen, a form of energy complimentary to material energy. We will remember the Jing Essence, the Qi Energy and the third “treasure” the Shen Spirit, where the human conscience takes root and altogether are part of the individual; there is no mind/body dichotomy in Chinese thought. The harmonious Shen keeps the mind clear and the will firm, it reacts reasonably to the surroundings, there are no irrational thoughts or incoherent actions.

References:

Cochran, Warren “History and Philosophy of TCM”. Spring Semester 2002.Sidney University of Technology. College of TCM

González González,Roberto y Yan Jianhua “Medicina Tradicional China”,Grijalbo, México 1996

Matsumoto, Kiiko, Birch, Stephen “Hara Diagnosis: Reflections on the Sea”, Paradigm Publications. Brookline,Massachusetts,1988

Lavier,Jacques, “Histoire,Doctrine et Pratique de l’Acupuncture Chinoise”, Tchou Éditeur,1966.

Marmori,F y Chen Yue Ling, traductores de “Origen de la Medicina China” Porkert, Manfred. “The Theoretical Foundations of Chinese Medicine. Systems of Correspondence”. The MIT Press.Cambridge Massachusetts, 1973

Rochat de la Vallée,E. “SUWEN Les 11 Premiers Traités”. Maissonneuve. París 1993

“The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts” Translation and Study Donald J.Harper. Kegan Paul International, London and New York 1998

Tomoyoshi Saito. “The Beginning of Acupuncture”.EJOM.vol 4 Nº1 Summer 2002

Unschuld, Paul, “Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen”. University of California Press.Berkeley 2003

Unschuld, Paul, “Chinese Medicine”. Paradigm Publications. Massachusetts. 1998

Veith, Ilza “The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine”.University of California Press. Berkeley and Los Angeles.1949

THE WEST AND THE EAST: Reciprocal attraction? - DOWNLOAD PDF VERSION

Cartography:
The division of Orient/Occident from the cartographic point of view of in a planisphere form is, shall we say, “Ptolemaic”, the earth flat; but the earth is spherical, it is difficult to determine where the orient starts or where the occident ends, to this end we are helped by the Greenwich meridian but it’s clear that the concept is dynamic. Ptolemy divided the world into seven climates in a latitudinal sense subdivided in ten longitudinal sections. In China we are presented with the planisphere in a different manner, most correctly, in accordance with their idea of the world. China is the Empire of the Centre and they assumed that they were situated in the middle of the Four Seas surrounded by four barbaric populations. In one of the legendary versions Huang Di one of the three founder Emperors of Chinese lineage, was born from the spontaneous fusion of the Yin Yang energy in the autocreation of the world: later he, in his time, created the first men from statuettes of clay exposed to cosmic breath during 300 years to acquaint them with the four cardinal points thus permitting the explanation of the different appearance of men according to their geographic origin, by light and other climatic factors that they were affected by. Asia, for Europeans, is the Orient – and to get there one has to go past the Near East, the Middle East and finally the Far East -, and Europe remains the Occident, that territory bathed by the Atlantic, a definition which eliminates nothing less than Italy, Greece and others. This taking into account the nomenclature and kinds of differences that exist between both “sides”. In dictionaries it is said that the Occident is the place where, in the equinoxes, the sun sets (although we all know that the sun neither rises or sets it is the earth that turns) and the Orient is the point in the equinoxes where the sun rises, which perhaps is valid for agriculture, astronomy, fishing, aviation and most surely many other things. The Greek way of thinking, the Ionic, of which we are more knowledgeable, had its source in Asia Minor and received clear Indo-Iranian influences in that epoch, but in reality it is a conventional Occidental way of thinking which influences medicine and other things. At present some of the countries in this zone are trying hard to incorporate themselves into Europe, which is resisted because traditionally Turkey is further away from the European frontiers, and Europe is the Occident. The political frontiers are limiting, even sterilizing, although they don’t halt the influences which pass from one side to another, like the wind, the pollen, epidemics, languages, thoughts and this makes it difficult to determine exclusively which thought or idea belongs solely in one place. Despite the fact that it is old fashioned to use the parallelism/opposition both geographically and soci-culturally between the Orient and Occident, the theme requires constant explanations about how each one interprets this aspect. For me it is more of a form to get closer to the traditional yinyang of the Chinese, where everything is relative. This partition does nothing but share in the wise decision of oriental thinking when it maintains that everything divides in two to carry out its action and get back to a unit; in this case the planet earth or theoretically the paradigmatic opposite/complimentary of all the elements of daily life. To have obscurity at night the sun which illuminates the day has to leave, but the sun doesn’t leave, it is shining in another zone of the globe. We only recognize evil because we know there is good and so we can carry on until infinity with concrete themes and practices or theories and abstracts. Apart from the astronomic division in terrestrial meridians that establish correspondent spaces, between us if you wish to see the Orient as that site where religions are polytheist while in the West they are monotheist, or according to the British, that the Orient starts at the line that demarcates Palestine, which is converted into the occidental protective flank of its Indian colony of the Far East, or in the question of cultures or civilizations all that is in the planisphere in European style that stays to the right of Iran is the Orient and all to the left the Occident ;or is the Orient all places original sin is unknown which is the fundamental myth of the Occident …that is to say imprecise mobile references. Occident Occident: comes from the Latin occidere, to fall. It is the Cardinal point of the horizon where the sun sets in the equinoctial days. Place on earth or of the terrestrial sphere with respect to the other with which it is compared falls where the sun sets. Occidental: It is said where the planets position themselves after the sun sets. . In sociology all which is bathed by the Atlantic Freemasonry: the side of the lodge where the vigilantes are. History: a group of European nations of the West in opposition to those situated in the East, after the Second World War, the countries allied to the United States against the Soviet block. These definitions coincide with those that support that it is the Occident that looks at and is bathed in the Atlantic. The Occidental part of the Roman Empire since the partition of the Empire as a result of measures taken by Diocleciano which are associated with the power of Maximilian, but the real division happened with the death of Teodosio (395 A.D.) between Honorio (Occident) and Arcadio (Orient) The Empire of the Occident lasted until 476, when Odoacro overthrew RomuloAugusto. The imperial idea survived the disappearance of the Empire and was established by Pope Leon III, in favour of Charlemagne who was acclaimed Emperor of the Occident. Orient From oriens, participle of orior, that which is born or appears again. The point where the sun was born in the equinoctial days. Group of ancient countries situated in the East in relation to the occidental part of Europe (covers Asia, Egypt and including a part of Europe) The Roman Empire of the Orient is the Byzantine Empire In reality, that which we find isn’t, as Huntington maintains,(which seems to me erroneous)a collision of civilizations, for me it is much more Weltanschaung: a vision of the world, a concept of the world, a feeling of life, ideology, ideas, that which helps us with the rich interchange between one and another. In a certain way and in many aspects now we are living it as a daily experience. That of the Occident and the Orient is and isn’t cartography and lends itself to many other readings. It’s clear that sometimes east/west opinions are represented with a receptivity/power attitude. The Occident, in its way, aspires to dominate nature and thus its scientific attitude; science in essence isn’t only an explication of natural phenomenon but also discovering its laws and applying them transforming the means to serve man better. Life for the Occident is evolution and progress, a straight line. The Orient centres on revolution, permanent changes that come back to the starting point or near to it, relations associated between elements, a circle. But it isn’t so clear that the Occident is the path to follow, there are drawbacks, one doesn’t dominate nature in many aspects. In medicine, which has made a giant leap since the second half of the XIX century, there have appeared “new” illnesses which in a certain fashion are transformations of the previous “extinct ones” or, those that have been dominated return, and all generally in an atmosphere of apocalyptic fear of uncontrollable epidemics for which immediate cures are sought.. Humility is not learnt, arrogance places its stamp. Interchange It is said that Occidentals tired and decadent, anxious to anaesthetize their emotions, look for salvation, wisdom, the spirituality of the Orient and to even creating the term Orientalism which appears to denote the form in which the non occidental is presented before us in order that we can get the most of it and suppress that which doesn’t suit us, above all in political contexts.. Also it has been suggested less critically that Orientalism is formed by the distinct forms in which the West uses the Asian way of thinking to resolve its own kinds of problems … and it is said that something or someone has occidentalized themselves by an external form or its customs: dress, speed, illuminated advertisements, soft drinks, personal income, mediocre music with local influences, round eyes… in some occidental cities with a strong Asiatic immigration one can find newspaper advertisements for surgery on oriental eyes to give them an Occidental look. In turn it is also maintained that, in exchange, Asiatics look for our technology and material well-being, our ability in promotion. I don’t agree much with this. China since ancient times exported occidental products elaborated with their technology and I find it difficult to think that the Japanese or the Koreans only look for technology in Europe, when we enjoy a multitude of inventions coming from these places, they look for ideas to contrast with their own. Countries of great industrial development like U.K. or U.S. value the brains of Hindus and Chinese for computer astrophysics and other complex sciences although it is clear that actually the principal parts of technology were created and made in the occident. We could agree that if wasn’t for the numerical Indian and Arab notation much of European progress in science and technology would not have taken place. How could one do calculus using European Roman numerals? We know that the earth is spherical, that is to say it’s not possible to isolate one territory from another, ideas arrive and more so now in this world of communication and voyages. Also Europe originated spiritual movements which were later expressed in its art, its philosophy, its literature, its religion … nor is incense, which is so “oriental”, exclusively from the Orient, but these contributions were always marked by the perpetual dispute between theological spiritualism (gods, angels, spirits… ) an inheritance from the Jews, Egyptians Babylonians and the materialistic mechanism of the atom and the void of rationalist Greeks. (Needham Joseph, Dentro de los Cuarto Mares, XXI century, 1975). It happens that one system as much as another presents holes, large areas which don’t offer explanations or solutions to many problems which the public and /or students point out in their search, and these vacant spaces used to serve, as in the case of acupuncture in the twentieth century, to absorb techniques, ideas, focuses which come to fill these deficiencies. Or referring to the sanitary situation in China at the end of the19th century and beginning of the 20th occidental medicine could have been introduced in that country. We should recognize that in the last 500 years the Occident has predominated over the other half of the world, in initiative, technology, imperialism. When we say Occident we clearly mean the countries bathed by the Atlantic whose progress comes from the great power that they exercise over nature ever since the scientific renaissance movement. And in some way the pendulum looks as if it wants to return to the ancient position of a lost equilibrium, later maybe, to the predominance of the Orientals? In the Far East it seems that humanity matters more than the person, on the other hand in the Occident identity, individualism is beyond the knowledge of many. We look to the orient as an exotic space, colonial and able to be colonized and the fear of “the other” induces us to try to dominate them. It gives the impression that the Orient, near, middle and far each time looks at us more closely so we can observe the “other” through ourselves, experimenting, always asking ourselves how to understand them. Origins These reflections take us far in space and time and we should annotate them in space and time. When we speak of the Occident we refer to Europe, which is more homogenized despite its diversities. Its culture, simplified, comes from two roots, Greek and Hebrew and its religion, with a variation of rites and differences in the interpretation of the texts is Christianity. These roots in turn were nurtured by previous cultures, Egypt, Babylon … The Greek roots being pagan, do not speak of the Being, because it exists in everything. The Greeks did not recognize the nothing, nothing doesn’t exist, everything flows, nothing can emerge from where there is nothing, but what there is negates the nothing. On the other hand the Hebrew or Jewish roots give us a creator, which is not creation and so the nothing existed before this as opposed to a creator, and man –his child- the only objective of In the orient there is not a homogenized philosophy, ethic and /or religious order: Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Brahmanism, Sintoism are not the same because of the different nuances. This limits us to China where all these forms of ethics have coexisted. Religious structures, the composition of society and its habits, ecology and many more factors are the product of a great many of all types of dynamics and also religions condition the form of capturing the realities surrounding the inhabitants of a zone. There are millions of people who continue to think according to the Greeks of the past and there are, who knows, millions more who continue reacting in accord with the Taoist concepts and or Confucians of the orient. M. Heidegger in one of his writings mentions that “the confrontation with Asiatics was, for the Greeks, a fertile necessity, today it is for us, in a completely different way and in much greater dimensions, what will decide the future of Europe, and of what we call the occidental world. And you encounter, as in my case, two types of actual medicine which, who knows, in the past were not so remote. The greater mobility and the undoubted facility of movements allow that anyone who wants to could get to know the other. This in general brings preconceived concepts, common prejudices that inevitably condition what we see. And if the spirit is tolerant and intellectually lively the judgment will be positive.. .these Orientals !… And I imagine that they would say these Occidentals!… A definition of what signifies being Occidental isn’t easy because above all it escapes imprecise racial limits. For example Australians in the middle of the Pacific are Occidentals when a little more to the north you find Indonesian archipelagoes inhabited by people of an oriental race, religion and customs that we visit with Occidental interest for its exoticness. The economic factor is no small issue, as apart from the Japanese, Orientals don’t come to see what we have here, they can’t, if they come it’s because they are attracted by the commercial and labour possibilities, for the well-being of the Occident which is enviable, above all that of the enviable occidentals, since there are legions of people in that part of the world who cannot be envied. Cultural and Social Fabrics The individual attitude reflects a collective attitude, intrinsic characteristics of every community, every social group and the reverse. I don’t have the arrogance to want to define the concept of culture, but to reason a little about this will help us to understand each other. Culture leads us to etymological relatives, cult (worship), cultivation… Every one individually and in all societies are confronted by “the unknown” “the other” which at the very least awakens curiosity, distrust, astonishment. We try to control this new host, this new surrounding, the unknown, the mysterious. To this end an effort is necessary. If it involves a group, guidelines should be established and laws passed to enforce events and relationships in order to co-exist. In societies a pact and an organization are established which determine acts and official communication: the cult (sometimes even sacrificial) to communicate with “the other”. This is all very well but it won’t advance if we don’t cultivate these rites and that signifies rules that should call for periodic reiteration. So with the cult and cultivation of these we establish customs that convert into tradition, transmission, culture. Included in this are beliefs, religions with their collective and individual components. If a “religion” doesn’t initiate its followers in the first place into the “knowing of oneself” it will only be a system of politically useful beliefs and cults that will obtain that which is looked for from the people but is sterile in other ways. In a closer Orient, with Islam resisted strongly by us, civilization and culture assimilates into a tree, roots, trunk foliage, they say specifically that the foliage is the variety of Islam, leaves to communicate with the exterior, be pollinated, and if this foliage is cut all the tree could die. Metaphors that we would like to be reality. I can’t speak of philosophy. But I am capable of knowing that the Chinese thinking is far from the European rationalism of Descartes, although we consider Descartes a “newcomer” in the large history of Occidental thought , which imposed the cogito ergo sum, so influential and not always for the good, in the theory and practice of medicine. The Chinese thinker is more of a sage, erudite, learned (Confucian) and a good connoisseur (Taoist) of life and nature. To the Chinese in ancient times it was clear that knowledge in itself did not serve as simple conjecture, but rather that its utility lies in helping to understand life itself and establish rules of behaviour that facilitate it. Large and detailed psychological studies of groups of Occidentals, of Orientals and emigrants in one or the other place who keep strong social ties with their origins, show the differences; in the Occident it is necessary to measure everything and furthermore show it. However, although this isn’t bad, it occurred to me that differences are born with the world so it is impossible that everything is equal in all places because when it is day here it is night there and it is as well the following day, this circumstance establishes differences, and it conditions, because it occurs during millenniums, so that even as much as we go on learning co-existence or the closeness of both hemispheres and their interchanges are not new. I would like to give some guidelines that can help us understand the differences in thought and also language and in many other cultural expressions, using the term culture with the idea, as I said from the beginning, of transmitting cultivation to the cult. We as Occidental inheritors of Greek thought do not accept contradiction, we cannot accept it, it’s either black or white and in medicine doctors live with the opposites benign/malignant for example or acute/chronic, something cannot be one thing and the opposite at the same time. I know little of philosophy but I understand that this attitude derives from the thinking of Aristotle who established categories that subdivided the thinking and knowledge that existed in that epoch. It was the Greeks who were great observers of nature but their interpretation of this differs from that of the Chinese. It is a lineal way of thinking, of cause and effect that gives rise to this or that occurring for some reason. However in Greece there were some very original thinkers like Democrito who in his Fragment 9 maintains:” we in reality know nothing true, only the changes which are produced according to the disposition of the body and that which is introduced into it or offers resistance”. A shared thought with other fellow Orientals. Between the Chinese, as far as we understand, things are not like this. Firstly, contradiction is essential; if all were equal there would be no dynamism, movement, interchange. In the Greek classic Heraclito of Efeso the concept of contraries is assimilated into a dialectical notion of reality, but the idea didn’t get transcendence despite its originality in that epoch. The observation of nature indicates to the Chinese the circulation and return of movement, things move and have the tendency to regress, spring always comes back, for example, or the polar star turns in the sky according to a rhythm which will be the same each year as it was in the previous year, man is born, grows, reproduces, dies… This dynamism has maximums and minimums, we could call tides, which is a clear example of what is meant. If the Greeks think in a straight line, the Chinese do in a circle, almost I would say in a spiral, things turn, go away and return not perhaps to the same place but very close. The idea of a being without its counterpart of Non-being doesn’t exist nor the idea of above without under. This theme leads to more differences. The Occidental in his environment looks at objects, stresses individuality, the Greeks established democracy to realize the role of the individual, there are social relations and relatives but personal interest represses the rest. The Oriental looks globally and associates with environments, for him relationship is important, he associates with nature as well as society, he doesn’t place importance on objects, it’s an overall look, details will come later, if they arise. These forms of looking at one another establish, for example, a type of writing and on the other hand the writer teaches one to look in a manner convenient to him. All civilizations begin by expressing themselves with small drawings, ideograms but only China, Japan and Korea emphasize the conservation of this form of writing and lectures. Curiously despite the resistance that the ideograms unleashed in the Occident (the French alphabetized Vietnamese hieroglyphics, few colonial functionaries knew the local language) they copied these. I know it isn’t the same but ideograms are signals, syntheses, indications, like those that we see in airports, railways, public places, graphics without words explaining a service. Airplanes shown facing upwards leaving, airplanes facing downwards arriving, and anything else we want to interpret.. It is clear that this system between us does not permit abstract concepts, the truth, the patience, justice, liberty … but surely this was how many ideograms developed. That is to say with a global view, it incorporates, it grasps a message. In Occidental language it has to be spelled out, to look at one letter after another, usage accelerates the process, but studies of the theme show that before a painting, the oriental looks at the whole, at best he is not capable of recording or describing details, but the Occidental cannot talk of the relation between levels without describing objects. When Nissan wanted to make itself known in the States they put advertisements on T.V. of landscapes, trees, stones, very attractive places where one could drive to in a car and at the end of the ad came a brief image of the car. But what increased by a lot was the sale of trees, rocks and bamboo but not sales of the car. A lesson for the Japanese. Social relations in the Orient are very intense, among other reasons, in my opinion it is because there are so many inhabitants it makes individualism and to pass unnoticed very difficult. One has of necessity to take heed of the other. In the Occident we look for isolation, the island lost in the sea where there is only us and no one else. The Chinese look for the circle, the family, the neighborhood, the district, the city… For the Chinese the concept of change is basic, nothing is permanent; the only permanent thing is change. When Chinese medicine occupied itself with the organism, its structure and composition, it was given priority and described in great detail, the study of the movements of energy, that is to say the function, the processes, the physiology, more than anatomy which cannot be described when it is isolated from the dynamic Yinyang and Wuxing. Naturally, despite its theoretical content, both concepts are linked to material organic elements, the base for the development of physiology. Yinyang are the opposite and complementary terms of unidualism, they are two but form a unit which, if broken, signifies the disappearance of that which is represented. Wuxing, which means five phases, are the five movements of energy inside nature (and as well inside the human body) during the year and in every moment of the day, that is to say, action movement. And as Prof. Gustavo Pis-Diez so finely defined in a personal communication “ anatomy in China is “a verb” and in Greece a “noun”. Where the sustained thinks itself separated from the sustainer. Regarding this statement, which I share, maybe a brief comparative digression on nouns and verbs is helpful as seen from Greek culture and Chinese thinking. The Greeks, with Aristotle as champion, classified the world in a n attributes they passed as belonging to the same class, which came to be called horizontal thinking. But for the Chinese things fell into one classification when they were influencing one another through resonance. For example in the system of the five phases the categories of autumn, west, drought, metal and white all influenced each other and as so belonged to the same class and are represented vertically, vertical thinking. If the climate changed everything else changed as well. It was the similarity between classes and not the similarity between individuals that interested the Orientals, they were not preoccupied with the relation between an individual of a class ( fish) with the class in toto (vertebrates). In one of his writings Zhuang Zi tells us “.. to classify or limit knowledge breaks down greater knowledge”. The Chinese conceived the world as composed of continuous substances, so a relation of opposition between part/whole made sense. For the Greeks the world was composed of objects so that they encountered it natural an individual/class connection. That is to say when they knew that an object belonged to a specific category that possessed a specific attribute it could be deduced that other objects of the same class shared the same attribute. As Richard Nisbett so relevantly exemplified in The Geography of Thought (N.B.London 2003), if a mammal has a liver it is reasonable to think that all mammals have them. To center oneself on the categorization in the Greek fashion of one/many, brings by inference the knowledge beginning from the category individual/class but it doesn’t fit in with the representation part/whole. Objects in themselves were not the unit of analysis for the Chinese, they were their interrelation, mutual influence and resonance (verb, action). In regard to this Jorge L.Borges (Otras Inquisiciones, El Idioma Analitico de John Wilkins, Alianza Emece, Madrid. 1960) he attributes to a Chinese encyclopedia Emporio Celestial de Conocimientos Benévolos, that animals are divided into those that a) belonged to the Emperor; b) embalmed; c) trained; d) sucklings; e) sirens; f) fabulous; g) dogs on the loose; h) also included in this classification; i) those that agitate as if crazy; j) innumerable; k) that are drawn with a fine camelhair brush; l) etcetera; m) that have just broken a jar; n) that from afar look like flies. This is an impossible product of an Aristotlian Greek mind because these animals do not share any similar attributes to constitute a classification. . The above mentioned brings one to understand the large lists of questions related between them, the result of the movements between the five Wuxing phases. I could enumerate many other psychological studies or stories of individual or collective observations and answers which assert these differences, but maybe it would be convenient if I keep to the theme which was proposed to me by the organization of the Conferences of the Solstices: Is there a reciprocal attraction, that is mirrored between the Orient and the Occident? Is it true that there exists attraction between both worlds that focuses on the reality in a disparate form? There are individual sensitivities, but some people keep trapped in Occidental forms or the opposite, which seems more common, that the sensitive Occidental tries to understand the Oriental form of thinking and life different to ours. I see that multitudes travel in planes, boats, traveling kms, in long uncomfortable voyages to sunbathe when the sun also shines here, to see, buy and return satisfied to their house, very satisfied with their lifestyle. And all in exchange for anonymity, rest without anyone annoying them. I believe that among the Japanese, who are economically the most stable and at this point of time do not travel to emigrate, the same thing occurs. At the moment the countries of the extreme east are on the route to Occidentalism but without involving their essences, that is to say copying, they imitate to survive, and from what I could confirm, they try to fulfill in an exterior way, they see themselves committed to this, globalization is an economic reality and the economy is all powerful. The U.S. designed the Japanese constitution after the 2nd war, but the great democracy of the North had to necessarily include the monarchy into the system, it would not have been viable in any other way. And to copy does not appear to be in itself censurable because to copy one has to learn, understand the theory of that which is being copied and as learning is not static it follows that frontiers of knowledge will be amplified. In China copies have always been made, say of famous paintings, with the intention of attaining the same excellence as the original, if one is capable of reproducing such, if it is to the level of the grandmaster then it is emulated, it is perpetuated. Also in the Occident roman strategies were criticized for “appropriating” visual Greek culture and this critical attitude impeded for a long time the appreciation of the artistic merits of the Romans. Roman copies, exact or freehand not only reproduced Greek works, but also parodied them, referring to and above all emulating them in successful rivalry. Now in China they continue copying at an industrial level and they maintain that intellectual ownership should be, for example, that car manufacturers pay for the rights of design to the horses or to the carts. In every way there is an intense battle going on for the payment of rights. The interchange became more active at the end of the XVI century, with the Jesuits as prominent protagonists. The attempt at evangelization was not successful, it also triggered off various controversies in the Vatican. Finally the transcendental spirituality of the Orient came to resemble the meditation and trances of our mystic Catholics. For example the “quietism” of Miguel de Molinos, who was persecuted and died in prison because he encouraged introspection minimizing the observance of the rituals of the Catholic church, which was considered a “nihilist” deviation. That is to say he eliminated the theological fundamentals; looking at it from religion and from the vantage point of “correct thinking” this deviation is the essence of oriental doctrines. To resume it appears that “quietism” questions the hierarchy of the church and even more resembles the oriental doctrines where there is no creator, nor origin: beliefs without god. This circumstance coincided with the disapproval to the attitude of the Jesuits because in order to assimilate they attempted to participate in civic-religious rites of the Chinese, The Chinese Lord Of the Heavens was not the equivalent of the Catholic Lord of the Heavens. They reproached them that in forcing the Chinese texts they wanted to find in themselves an equivalent of God the Creator which characterized Christianity. That is to say our foundations (notions of truth, being, evolution) are not comparable, there are other ways of thinking, to which was added the concept of void that impregnates the oriental philosophies. The Occident fled from the void, as if it signified lack of foundations, the loss of theological tutorage of a Christian God who assured these foundations as a reference. Following this loss of tutelage, the world of Reason developed apparently equally sound which appears to have substituted theological ministry. But Reason opened new perspectives, new perplexities. The horror vacui continues to horrify. There were important dichotomies in the XVII and XVIII centuries when the physic notion of void was accepted after the definitions of Torricelli, Galileo, Newton , but the intellectuals, laity or religious, could not accept the void as it was accepted in the Middle Ages, there was no room in the cosmos for the Void, the void was impossible. For the Orientals only nothingness and the void constituted the principle of all things. In the Occident fear of losing confidence in absolute truths, or in secure foundations, is a eurocentric critical attitude, the product of ignorance and leads to nihilism, which is a reproachable flight before the horror of nothing. All these truths, which are not universal, will lose their equilibrium if we approach the orient. How can you convince an oriental that he should repent for original sin when not only has he not committed this but has never heard of it? There are numerous Occidental thinkers who are attracted by Oriental concepts, they try to understand and interpret the similarities and differences between the two worlds. It is clear that when one looks for something outside one’s habitual environment it is because this environment is not satisfying ones needs.. The Taoists constitute of a sort of “anarchism” that observes nature: if one fell ill it was because one had transgressed some natural law and to be cured one had to follow the rhythm of nature. Many times they were considered irresponsible and lazy but it wasn’t so, they respected the natural environment in which they lived, sometimes very isolated. Great observers, botanists, zoologists and artists copied them imitating the animal and vegetable life in which they lived. With ideas that they believed similar, the hippie movement of the 60’s headed en masse to the orient looking for the sources. There was no need to travel, the source is in oneself, the hippies looked for the forms, the wrappings. The Confucians understood that man could govern and be governed through laws and rules some of which were taken from nature but others were adapted to daily reality, establishing an order which facilitated life, above all that of the governing class. A society with a social scale, where each one fulfilled his job respecting order. They are the inventors of competitive exams, theirs was an ethical system governed by morals. Buddhism came 200 years after Christ to a China in a moment of decadence, grave economic crisis and a government distanced from its people submerged in misery. Buddhism maintained equality and reincarnation into better lives. It’s not surprising that there would have been followers in a society so castigated. But the upper classes also approved, maintaining Buddhist monasteries so that rebellions were not fomented which the Taoists, more independent, didn’t have any qualms in supporting if they found it necessary. Indian texts were translated despite their complexity and abstractionism. But in many ways they coincided with Taoist ideas and these were translated amalgamating Buddhist notions to the corresponding Taoist ones. Essentially both schools coincided with their search for liberation, liberating oneself from oneself in reality from what we are not: separate individuals. If the self never existed it could not die because it didn’t exist, so the fear of dying loses sense. It is true that the Chinese spirit is more concrete and the Indian more abstract. That which the Indians called sunya, void, the Chinese call wu and nivana/samsara passes to become wuwei/you wei. Although the Chinese put greater importance in practical meditation manuals. For us in the Occident to meditate is to concentrate on a certain object and to focus mental activity around it. For the Oriental it is the contrary, not to focus, to let thoughts turn like a carrousel of pictures that go disappearing one after the other. I would like to define the theme recounting my personal experience regarding oriental thought, and in my case, everything relates to medicine, on how medicine is linked to culture Apart from having lived in Peking I might not have been interested in Chinese medicine and on the supposition that this interest was satisfied it could be that I would not have preserved and practiced this knowledge. What attracted me? I was attracted by the fertile idea of complementary opposites, the unidualism, the concept that all is relative, that the absolute is Tao which is further away from the differences and embraces them all. This questions God, who, if he is infinitely good, should confront the world, infinitely bad, then he loses his quality of absoluteness. God and the World form a clashing duality. It is attractive to try and free oneself from that which, inherited from the Greeks, we do not find appropriate to our position, the intolerance before the contradiction, we Occidentals desire precise definitions, fixed, and in life, step by step although if one is neither doctor or philosopher we realize this is not possible. That everything is alternative that nothing is forever, for subtle changes but in the end changes, that things go but return, or on the other hand, that eternity is a temporal instant and not of infinite duration And to understand Chinese medicine one has to understand yinyang, one of a pair of complementary opposites, a normal form of Chinese thinking, that is to say the acceptance of a creative contradiction, live, an expression of a natural reality. Day, night, cold, heat, humidity, drought, health, sickness… The practice of applying the thought of yinyang in daily life is another thing, it is difficult to understand, to integrate it into daily reality, and when it comes to applying a diagnosis and treatment for a sick person, the effort is great. The opportunity to simultaneously practice both medicines enriched me, it permitted me to choose which technique was the most adequate at that precise moment. I find this possibility very creative and it makes for better results. We can compare this with the position of a medical intern who has to refer a patient to surgery. He can do no more for the patient, it needs another technician, surgery will treat his illness. And nobody considers this process irregular; the same attitude should be taken in regard to doctors who practice complementary medicines. If it was a yinyang situation, as we previously described about the Orient and the Occident that are the opposite faces to the same reality, we all have a frontal plane, that of the face, chest, abdomen and we have a posterior plane, the nape, shoulder, buttocks. And all this constitutes a single person, a single anatomy. For my sensitivity and way of thinking I make use of this method of thought which remains attractive and with the years I am hardly conscious of applying it in every moment of my life, in the beginning I incorporated it as an exercise but with practice it becomes incorporated into one’s personality. It isn’t arrogance, on the contrary, or I try for it not to be, it is the humility of being able to practice something studied with much effort and be able to give a service. Another factor that adds to the attraction of the orient for me is the concept of void, which seems very abstract and difficult to conceive but studied and applied is very creative both in medicine and all orders of life. We see the Greek and Chinese perspective on this theme as I have come to understand. It took more than 20 centuries, from the V century B.C. until XVII A.D., for the Occident to accept the atomic theories of Leucipo and his disciple Democrito. Both philosophers attempted to explain reality based on a different conception of the Being and the void. That which IS is corporal, this makes more firm than before the identity between Being and corporality and following Meliso of Samos in his Fragment 8 “if indeed there were many beings , it is necessary that these many were similar to one”; despite this was written to uphold the oneness of Being it was converted in a manner to argue the opposite. Democrito considered the plurality of Being perfectly possible with identical characteristics which unite them. And so as the matter is uniform, only one multiple physis. There exist infinite indivisible (a-tomo) particles of one being. But what separates this “being” distributed in miniscule units? The answer: the void. The void is not because it is not corporal, but at the same time it exists. The void is a non-being related to the being that consists of atoms, and as the void exists it should have the same rights as a solid. With it the qualitative differences in beings are due to the distinct proportions of atoms of which they are composed. That is to say atomists conceived the existence of a unique original matter scattered in infinite particles separated by the vacuum that co-exists with the matter, atom particles which group together or separate by chance, by mechanical forces, but it isn’t a mixture, it is related to continuity. For Eleatic atomists who accept the Ionic conception that this movement was a normal happening, it was the void that made possible the movement and with this it was explained why objects did or did not move. It is a constant process that originated an infinity of distinct worlds given that the atoms are infinite in number, and as such there is no reason that they form one world. We see how fertile was the conception of the idea of the atom and the void, which were very advanced theories for that epoch. Indian Buddhism, imported into China and adapted and modified by Taoism, had luck in its new country because the Taoists already supported the concept of the void, which is not nothing and at the same time is. Of all the Buddhist schools it was the “Doctrina del Vacio” which had the widest repercussion in China. The void is not a reality in itself but more a negative definition that we know as nirvana is a state of vacuity, without mental production, with an interior silence, it is a reality which one tries to attain. We talked before about the nothing that the Greeks did not accept and the Hebrews acknowledged, and consequently the Christians. But for the Chinese the nothing IS, not ordered, full of potential, everything comes from nothing. The void also exists, look in the dictionary and see that void as a noun is that which contains nothing, as such it infers the existence of a container, it is a noun with the face of an adjective. This is how the Chinese define it, the void of the vessel is that which makes the vessel accomplish its function. The utility of the flute resides in its holes, the void. And so I understood the circulation of blood, or the digestion, the language of the arterial pulse in the wrist, to give some easy examples. The concept of the void, is to me, more of a sensation than an idea, as if one could capture it more through feelings than reason, that they are contrary although complimentary. In an exercise of the imagination think of the void not like a negative place but like a constant and living place, alive because it is a space where breath surges, grows and is constant because being there always permits mutations, the void never changes, it is the center of vital strengths where they are born and recreated to carry out a harmonious and lasting mutation. Heidegger, a well known Occidental philosopher, who is translated in Japan, confronted himself with the concept of void as meditating in the varied idea of vacuity, language has to help us to communicate, vacuity is the Buddhist insubstantiality which establishes a difference between vacuity and nothing but not the negative nothing of the Occidental philosophers which the Orientals call nullity, but as the Asians think: the total present with all its processes and contradictions. Apart from theories and beliefs and elaborate abstracts, the knowledge of nature does not belong to any specific person, one who wants to take control of the world will lose it. It is impossible to keep advances secret, the improvements brought by modern Occidental civilization, and the Asians strive to reach these levels, sometimes in large leaps; therefore the Occident should be disposed to share all the treasures and progressions that there are on earth and to learn with humility numerous concepts which the orient is capable of teaching. Borges, on one occasion, surely in an agnostic moment said that “god is probably something towards which the universe is attracted to ”and “an evolutionary channeling towards perfection.” You manage to love god at the final process of cosmic creation, as an end of a well-trodden road and not before having lived.

THE FAR EAST IN THE WORKS OF CLAUDE DEBUSSY AND GIACOMMO PUCCINI - DOWNLOAD PDF VERSION

Claude Debussy, among the circle of painters and friends in the plastic arts to which he belonged and frequented by preference, maintained a relationship with Camille Claudel (1864-1943) the student and model of August Rodin. Camille, as well as her brother Paul Claudel, passed on to Debussy their enthusiasm and fascination for the culture of the Far East, feelings which were intensified more by articles on China written by his friend Victor Segalen. Debussy used musical elements from the Far East in “Pagodas” one of the three typical pieces by the composer who, without any thematic relation between them, composed “Estampes” considered the first complete, stylistically mature work for the piano and at the same time the first with poetic titles. We know that pagodas are temples in the form of a tower of various (several) superimposed floors narrowing vertical to the top.

In the “World Exhibition” in Paris 1889 and also in 1900 Debussy heard, for the first time, a “gamelan” group from Java and immediately felt enthusiastic and inspired by this music which was unrecognized in Europe and started to incorporate these new musical elements into his compositions.
The “gamelan” orchestra typically composed of an instrumental model, consisting of various types of gongs, metal cymbals and tambourines. Its tonal system, contrary to the European tonal system divides the octave into five intervals and not eight. Fundamentally they use two kinds of scales: Slendro and Pelog which to European ears are heard like pentatonics or whole tones.
Also typical is its musical structure: simplified, we could describe this style saying that the bass instruments play long tones, thus forming a foundation , the central instruments execute moderate notes while the high pitched instruments realize agile and rapid notes, and Debussy consequently used these elements in “Pagodas”.

In the first two beats one can recognize optically the form of a pagoda. The higher voices in the course of the fragment develop in a linear movement of great extension over various octaves until the end of the piece is reached. Due to the almost exclusive use of the pentatonics the piece acquires a very static character, a character that intensifies exceedingly because of the use of repeated ostinatos that is to say on account of the numerous repetitions of the motives.

We also encounter oriental musical elements in the works of Puccini. His operas “Madame Butterfly” and “Turandot” stand out especially for this reason. The composer, a native of Luca, had an enormous interest in Japanese musical techniques and wanted to delve deeply into understanding these. The wife of the Japanese ambassador, who in 1902 was in neighboring Viareggio, acquainted him with the Nipponese culture and also sang songs of her country to him.

In Milan he met with Sado Jacco a Japanese singer of tragedies whom he asked to recite different texts so that he could familiarize himself with the sound of the language and he also looked for books, scores and a large quantity of records. With great patience he dedicated himself to acquiring the technique of this difficult notation. We could presume that the score of Butterfly overflows with Japanese melodies but it is not so. He only used six Japanese original melodies of which he selected some parts. So,for example, the horns and violins are only heard in the second part of the Japanese national hymn at the entrance of the imperial commissary and the official of the civil registry at the wedding of Cho- Cho-Sans.

A passage of the popular song “My Prince” appears as the theme of Prince Yamadori, and Puccini briefly cites a reason on the Japanese song of spring in the orchestral postlude of the first act when Butterfly and Pinkerton enter the house. For the oboe and violins he used the complete melody of the song “Cherry Blossom” and takes an original citation from the popular melody “Nihon Bashi” while friends congratulate Butterfly and she tells them that from this moment she is called Madame F.B. Pinkerton. To finish, at the beginning of the second act an ancient Japanese religious melody underlines the oration of Suzuki “Izagi,Izanami…” It is really admirable how with such artistic ability Puccini used these oriental elements to create local colour. But why do so many passages of the scores sound typically Nipponese? Because its form relies on the peculiarities of Japanese music. The contemporaries of Puccini used principally the entire tonal scale to produce the exotic colour sonore. He himself profited with this successfully in the theme of Scarpia in his opera “Tosca” although in “Butterfly” he however used this recourse very economically. For instance in the scene with uncle Bonzo in the first act. But almost always it is the pentatonic and the characteristic jumps in the third minors which achieve the oriental colour. Often he also used long pedal tones and parallel chords which accentuated even more this special atmosphere.

We cannot finish without mentioning what subtle instrumentation achieves in giving an exotic touch to this magnificent composition. Puccini did not use the “Japanese flute” or the typical “koto” of strings. Only bells, gong and metalophon were useful to achieve this effect accompanied by a delicate and clear instrumentation which, heeding especially to the sound of the winds, backs up this exotic atmosphere with success.

CHEEK BONE IN CHINESE MEDICINE - DOWNLOAD PDF VERSION

International Acupunture Magazine. Barcelona June - September 2009 Electra Peluffo

CHEEK BONE IN CHINESE MEDICINE

Abstract

For Chinese Medicine, the zigomatic bone (cheek bone) and its variations in shape and color are, at the same time, clinical diagnosis markers and a predictive tool of health/sickness. Both anatomy-physiology and semiological quotations mentioned in Nei Jing Suwen Lingshu are studied here. Key Words

Bone- Zigomatic bone – Cheek bone- Classical Chinese medicine reference books Introduction and Goals The temporomandibular joint is relevant in biomedicine; therefore we consider that reviewing the ancient Chinese medicine books contents is an excellent tool of anatomy-physiological and semiological knowledge

Nei Jing Suwen Lingshu provides the information this paper is based upon, taking into account the relevance of bones role in classical Chinese medicine morpho-physiology. Chapter 11 of Suwen, sums up the description of body organization and, mentioning them only once, explains about qi heng zhi fu –extraordinary viscera with lasting activity- extraordinary organs also known as curious organs.

All further reference to these organs found in other texts, are more or less accurate quotings from this Suwen chapter. Extraordinary viscera are fu-viscera which function as zang organs, that is to say with yin quality because they store but they do not evacuate. Such viscera are: nao-brain, sui-marrow, gu-bone, blood vessels-xue mai, gall bladder-dan and uterus-zi gong. They constitute a six- viscerum group which form yinyang pairs in the three levels Heaven- Man- Earth, following a water-fire archetypical combination.

In Heaven, the symbol of macro and microcosmic life order brain and marrow are paired up. The brain represents both fire and water; fire through the heart where Shen, the spirit, is located, and water through the kidneys because they produce the Marrow The Earth gathers bones and mai-vessels. Suwen 23 states that bones are ruled by the kidneywater pair. The skeleton is a rigid and protective structure which holds brain and marrows, kidneys and heart and inner genitals and such structure remains after death as the genealogical lineage foundation of human beings. Fire comes from mai (vessels/blood/heart) At Man level we find the gallbladder-fire, this viscerum is the one in charge of managing both beginnings and decisions and is related to gestation, therefore linked to the uterus which protective membranes are, as water is, source of change.

Gall bladder and gestational dynamics (bao, another word for uterus) belong to the man realm. Chinese language is metaphorical and so are the words it uses, that is the reason for the expression gestational dynamics since it talks not only about uterine fecundation but also about the bao in men, a creational function rather than an anatomical organ. The gall bladder is a decision-making organ and so it takes care of gestation, both physical and spiritual. Among these six extraordinary organs we are going to focus now on gu-bone which is related to bone and vertebral marrow and any other tissue contained in a bone. When using the term gu, Chinese refer to alive bones and not to isolated bones. The ideogram which represents this idea talks about bones coated with flesh because they are able to function just due to its union with muscles and tendons.

The definition of bone in ancient Chinese medical dictionaries points out that bone is that which can be found in the depth of flesh, the frame that holds the organism, the trunk of the tree; it also states that it has both a protective and a dynamic function; protective in head, thorax and pelvis and dynamic because it allows the body movements. The anatomical functional metaphor shows that everything that flows needs to be guided; as the stones guide the river stream so the bones- due to their firmness- guide liquids, blood, essences and energy.

The sinogram gu is the radical base of other characters as well and in ancient graphic representations gu is part of sui-marrow. The relationship between bone and marrow gets established by the common source of the kidneys essences producing marrow, which in its turn, nourishes the bones; they form a yinyang pair, the inner and the outer, the hard and the soft, constituting the body structure, the natural duration of life. Several bones are worth noting in the human body, some of them are: gao-gu eminent bone protruding from the mingmen region, the gate of life, second lumbar vertebrae; dazhui…big vertebrae, the seventh cervical vertebrae as well as quan ….cheek bone or zigomatic arch formed by the zigoma and the malar bone; the S I 18 point called quan liao where the three yang tendinomuscular meridians of the foot meet and both arm tai yang and shao yang. Also worth mentioning in the cheek bone area are: the prominent bone below the eye, and finally jia che gu (vehicle, supporting structure and transport of teeth) which refers to the jaw joint, the area before the ears related to E6 point.

Anatomical and clinical information on the Zigomatic bone can be found in NeiJing, this bone is considered to be the root of all bones: it protrudes and is the most standing out bone before reaching the cranium, it also gives support to the eye and Ling Shu 46 says that “the cheek bone shows us the proportion of the whole body right from the face” The Zigomatic area, with its changes in color, clinically marks health or disease. Suwen 32 says that when it shows a blackish color, clearly different from the forehead or other parts of the face color, a kidney condition is revealed; if it’s red the information points to heart pathologies. Because of yang predominance due to insufficient kidney water, everything damaging the kidneys, especially cold, will have its repercussion for bones and marrows. Excess of heat in spleen will produce a heavy head in first place and then sore cheeks and pain in both jaws.

If reddish tone is moving downwards from cheeks to the cheek bones, an important abdominal congestion is marked; if color comes upwards from behind the zigoma, hypochondrium pain is marked and if it comes from above the arch, pathology is located at diaphragmatic level. Suwen 42 describes the Wind in the Kidneys and mentions that it can be diagnosed through the presence of coal black skin especially on cheek bones among other symptoms. Ling Shu 49 when talking about the semiology of diseases related to the four limbs highlights the cheek bone as a shoulder reference, and we have already mentioned that both TR and ID meet under the zigoma.

The central area of the cheek is related to pathology in large intestine while the area below the cheek bone (kidney diseases) reflexes umbilical area suffering. Cheek bone prominence and size indicate the strength of the individual and its natural completion. Lingshu points out that when the physical body is solid and the cheek bone does not stand out as preeminent, the skeleton is too small and a person with an over small skeleton will die at a young age. Watching a person’s face we may realize how long he/she will live, if the bones around the ear are flat and depressed and they do not reach the muscle in front of it, this individual will die before reaching the age of thirty.

Conclusions

In order to design a prognosis and a treatment in the practice it is really important to know the semiological data clinical observation bring us. Classical Chinese medicine books constitute a constant and detailed information source when dealing with a health-sickness approach. Their reading and their study are at the base for professional training for Medicine Doctors both in Asia and Europe.
Unlike what happens with their contemporary counterparts in western medicine where respectful reading of Classical books is confined to both medicine historians and medicine scholars, reference books dating from Ancient China are a day-to-day tool for the new generations of health professionals in their formation and training.

Data and quoting brought to us by such books constitute excellent guidance for clinical practice and, in my opinion, this is so because they explain the conceptual theoretical basis of the Chinese medicine which has not lost the philosophical references it is based upon.

Bibliography
(1) Unschuld, P. Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen. Nature, Knowledge, Imaginery in an Ancient Chinese Medical Text. University of California Press. Berkeley Los Angeles London 2003.

(2) Larre, Claude. Rochat de la Vallée. Su Wen Les 11 Premiers Traités. Maisonneuve. France 1993.

(3) Peluffo, Electra. Apuntes de Medicina China. Miraguano Ediciones. Madrid 2003

(4) Kespi, Jean-Marc. L’Homme et ses Symboles en Médecine Traditionnelle Chinoise. Albin Michel. Paris 2002.

(5) Larre, Claude. Rochat de la Vallée, E. The Extraordinary Fu . Monkey Press London 2003

(6) Larre, Claude. Rochat de la Vallée. Su Wen Les 11 Premiers Traités. Maisonneuve. France 1993.

(7) Larre, Claude. Rochat de la Vallée, E. The Extraordinary Fu . Monkey Press London 2003

(8) Wiseman, Nigel. Feng, Ye. A Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine. Paradigm Publications. Brookline Massachusetts 1998

(9) Lingshu, (Eje Espiritual) versión de García, Julio. JGEdiciones. Madrid 2002

(10) Suwen (Preguntas Sencillas), versión de García, Julio. JGEdiciones. Madrid 2005

(11) Idem

(12) Lingshu (Eje Espirutal), versión de García, Julio. JGEdiciones. Madrid 2002

(13) Idem

ZHUANG Zi,THE VOID, MINGMEN, TANZHONG - DOWNLOAD PDF VERSION

University of Valencia. Acupunture Master 2º Foro FEIAP. Valencia. September 2008

ABSTRACT

In Chinese Medicine, the silent and constant flow of the energies indicates the health of the bodymind. One of the variants of the energy flow arises from the relationship between the fundamental notion of void (represented by more than one sinogram) and two anatomical spaces mingmen and tanzhog, whose existence is suggested by Zhuang Zi in Qiwulum he second chapter of his work. The present paper studies the terms of that relationship from the description of the siesta of Nan Guo Zi Qi who moves energies in his harmonious breathing. Since the Chinese admit breath and its dynamisms as a fundamental reality, the void will never lack so harmonically balanced energies that are imperceptible… once again the void.

1- ZHUANG ZI’s QIWULUN
Nan Guo Zi Qi

We know that both in Classical Greek culture and in Ancient China, medicine was a part of philosophy from which the practitioners obtained many of their theoretical foundations. Thus, the wise thinkers when addressing the nature included the study of the human body both in health and disease interweaving the different elements of the universe in their conceptions. It is common that classical Chinese texts, whether philosophical, literary, historical or technical, approach issues directly linked to the human body and its functions -medicine in any case- or that after being interpreted, notions applicable to medical subjects can be obtained from them. In order to do so and in this particular case, comes to my assistance Zhuang Zi, whose work reflects the close relationship that thinkers of the time had with the conception of nature and therefore with men. Numerous are the statements, sometimes symbolic some other times metaphorical and also direct ones, result of observations on natural phenomena or geographical details linked to morphophysiological characteristic of men or its emotional-moral modalities, which allow their concepts to be applied to Chinese medicine contents.

From the inner chapters, reputed as authentic, I would like to distinguish here Qiwulun, the second, that allows me to study the concept of void (which was also conceived by Greeks who were, approximately, contemporary of Zhuang Zi) void needed for the energetic dynamisms of the body and, thus, explaining the functionality of the mingmen and tanzhong spaces. Zhuangzi translations show his sensibility before the subtlety of sense in language and the beauty of this language as well, and on behalf of our logic, surely not like his, his texts cannot be enclosed in a fixed frame, therefore translations of the title of this chapter from Zhuang Zi into our language differ according to the translators. Thus, in this redaction we will use different versions as appropriate for the understanding of the text, we find all translations useful since, without ignoring the different senses of Qiwulun, we reflect on which of them, in every given moment, helps us in our work. To the characteristics of the Chinese language the characteristics of the author, philosopher and poet are added.

Qi has the sense of equal, from the same rank, to make equal, to reach an agreement…Wu means object, everything perceived as real. Lun •is dissertation, gathering texts to compare them, meditate upon them and develop them. In this way, according to one version the chapter is called “everything returns to the same” due to its proximity to Lao Zi II which affirms that everything goes back to the sameness when it reaches the unity from where everything proceeds.

2. VOID

When describing the nap of his character Nan Guo Zi Qi, Zhuang Zi suggests the existence of mingmen and tanzhong through the Taoist notion that the formless can acquired form through the movements of breaths in those functional areas without organicity which process a high charge of energy.

Nan Guo Zi Qi was napping in an almost ecstatic state; his disciple Yen Cheng Zi Yu, watching the scene, was restless because he did not recognize the one who had been napping the day before, surely it was his Master but not in his habitual state, familiar to Yen. Zi Qi with his back (yang) against a footstool attached to the ground (yin) and his abdomen-chest (yin) receiving light and heat from the sun (yang) breathed placidly, exhaling a mild blow that proved he was alive. There is a space between these two organic referents (back/chest-abdomen) through which subtle breaths and energies can flow. To exhale a mild breath is expressed by the ideogram xu which, when prived of his right side (kou mouth) is read xu as well but with the meaning of void. This sinogram is one of those ones used in medical texts to express void in the sense of a space of circulation: we can see on the upper side of the character an uncultivated surface, naked, that favours the passage of the wind, the circulation of breaths between heaven and earth; the lower part shows small sprouts coming from the ground surface which are really tiny because the lack of obstacles is important.

The silent and undisturbed regular breaths represented by Zi Qi breathing which when circulating make use of the void of the organism so as conceive life, creating it through its movement and keeping it alive as well. Another ideogram to express void is chong that has, on the left hand side, the semantic element of water that talks about the passage of the fluid par excellence, constituent basis of life. And on the right hand side, appears zhong, square target which indicates that the fluid is captured rightly and with strength, an arrow that reaches the target. And lastly the void kong •phonetically very sonorous, as if resounding in an empty hollow, void, the one from the blue vault where the universal breaths move and which Tao Te King equals to a never exhausted bellow. Nowadays, among us, void is synonym to nearly nothing; very little says the notion of void to a western spirit and when it does, it is in a negative sense. To the Chinese if something is empty is because what was there before is not there any longer or because the place is filled with something imperceptible, or that being emptied out awaits being treaded or filled up again. Naturally, it is very difficult in our language to find another suggestive term capable of substituting the word void, especially when talking about more abstract significances. The void means inane (empty, unoccupied) as Lucretius named the emptiness “namque est in rebus inane” (“because inside the things exists the void”): “So, there is an impalpable space, imperceptible, unoccupied, not rendered, and virgin. But, in reality, is the container empty? Let us remember that Democritus imagined the void to be that which allows the movement between atoms, and their rest as well.

In order to create a harmonious, balanced current the yinyang breaths should flow without a single squeak in the empty space for that matter determined. This completed flowing is health, that is to say, it is not an absence but a serene, regular trade of energies in the organism. He who is healthy perceives no symptoms, but when disharmony-disease appears, becomes aware of the imbalance. A very simple explanation of the presence and role of the void is given by the flight of a kite which by stopping the wind with its sail creates, on the opposite side, a void that drives the kite upwards. A number of functional roles in our daily life presuppose the void, concept which makes me understand blood circulation: each systole drives a contents in a container which once emptied, awaits (diastole); the pleural space (virtual) uses the void, created by its negative pressure to cooperate in both blood and lymph return; appetite occurs when by evacuating the rectum, stomach has room for more, and so many other activities of our physiology.

China gives special resonance to the generational void, fertile ground for grandfather-grandson relationship. The void between father and son is scarce, particularly during the youth of both of them, they are very close; the void existing between grandfather and grandchild is much bigger. Whatever is said between grandfather and grandson resonates differently, creative void that allows dynamisms. The Greek thinkers participate of this concept. Let us remember Heraclitus who spoke about opposites that become the other due to their mutual convertibility: awake/asleep for instance and young/old. The latter does not seem to be reconvertible even though Heraclitus mentions it because he shares the idea that the grandson is the continuation of the family lineage and therefore, the first grandson was named after his grandfather. We clearly see that vacuity is, in no way, absence or something that does not exist but quite the opposite, even though sometimes we cannot perceive the content. Let us remember, as an example, that the ball in very popular games does not contain anything, it is empty despite having the effectiveness of the vacuity: it is never completely depleted. Let us see the fruitful Greek conception of the idea of atoms and void which postulated quite advanced theories for the time, approximately coeval with the writings of Zhuang Zi. The West took over twenty centuries, from V century B.C. until XVII A.D., to accept the atomic theories of Leucippus and his disciple Democritus. Both philosophers try to explain reality based on a different way of conceiving Being and Not Being-.
What is is corporeal, and this affirms the identity between being and corporeity and Democritus considers perfectly possible the plurality of the being with identical characteristics to the one, that is to say the atomists conceived the existence of one sole original matter dispersed in infinite particles separated (by the void) particles-atoms which group together or separate randomly through mechanic forces, not in mixture but in a contiguity relation. Because what separates the tiny units of this being so distributed in atoms is the void which coexists with matter. The void is not, because it is not corporeal, but at the same time it does not fail to exist.

The void is a not-being related to the being that atoms are and, since void there is, it enjoys the same rights as the plenty. Movement was a normal fact and what made the movement possible was the void and through that, it was already explained why the objects move as well as why they do not move. It is a constant process which originates multitude of different worlds because atoms are infinite in number and therefore there is not any reason for them to form a single world. Democritus had come to conclude that, conventionally we say colour, sweetness, clarity but actually, there are just atoms and void. By Democritus time, the idea of the man as a microcosmos has been accepted not in the Chinese sense of man as the reflection of the environment but as anthropocentrism when cosmology and its variations (wind, light, heat, night, rain, seasons) are taken so as to explain their influences on health.

In Fragment 9, Democritus states that “we really do not know anything true but only the changes produced according to the disposition of the body and what is introduced into it or offers resistance to it”. Thought that is shareable with any other eastern equivalent. In China the void, a notion most cultivated by Taoists, lies in the center, in the most intimate core, in the place where vital forces raise and are harmonically processed, that is to say the center as the origin, therefore the void, the empty space which is nothing other than energy. The idea of empty space is shared, in its abstraction, between Greeks and Chinese even when for Chinese it is wider and more dynamic than the Greek mechanicist approach, useful for their purposes. We know that Chinese thinking works upon complementarities, so in order to speak about void, its yinyang opposite plenitude, has to be considered. Pairs of antonyms do not establish a dualistic disjunctive way of thinking but a ternary one because the breath circulates bonding together both terms. The creative relation is the third member. That is why we write yinyang and not yin/yang, the slash (western) suggests an excluding opposition. Talking about this and without leaving Qiwulun, Yancheng the disciple asks the Master who is already awake, how he could turn his body into a dry trunk (yin) and his mind into dead ashes (yang) and the answer says that it is possible in the loss of the individual Self in benefit of the universal Self. Ziqi, due to ecstasy, manages to penetrate the void that is nothing else other than a metaphor of Dao.

3. MINGMEN and TANZHONG

Here we talk about two spaces inside the thoracic – abdominal cavity that process breaths: mingmen “the gate of life or the gate of fate”, between both kidneys at the second lumbar vertebrae level, residence of the original energy yuanqi capable to generate a new being; and tanzhong “center of the chest” that takes a position which is equivalent to the former but in the upper part of the esplacnic cavity between the two lungs. In the constant search of the yinyang harmony, needed for function, mingmen work (there is no organ) is ascribed only to the right kidney yang, hormonal, and not to the left kidney yin, urinary. In mingmen resides yuan the source, the origin of every human being and that is the reason why it is a region where energies, quite mobile, get transformed, evolve: door of life, that is to say that life and its activities depend on mingmen and on the dynamic of qi (energies), both in the kidney area. Dumai 4 is the acupuncture point mingmen. Qu Lifang’s illustration below, explains the vibratory field between kidneys, where the energetic axe linking mingmen with tanzhong is clearly shown.

Journal of Chinese Medicine.Nº 40/sept.1992 The constant interrelationship between theory and practice is manifested, for instance in the Tai Ji Quan positions, in the exercise of holding the ball of energy which covers the area round the navel up to the thorax on the sternum zone. Access to tanzhong “in the middle of chest” is gained through the acupuncture point renmai 17, important place of energy interchange and resonance of the heart between 2nd. 3rd and 4th intercostal spaces as well, area covered by three points of acupuncture: RM 17, 18 and 19 which, from the center of the sternum relate with the major arterial, venous and lymphatic vessels. Through tanzhong passes zongqi, the ancestral energy that mediates between the genetic lineage we come from and the singular being each one of us is; this energy is also known as thoracic energy because it is stored in the center of the thorax, center that is no other than tanzhong. Here we are facing the zones where yuanqi and zongqi are processed, initial biological energies, fundamental ones. Tanzhong also known as shanzhong, center or sea of upper energy, also conveys the meaning of container with fat-tan - fat that smells. Shan means “ram smell”. Usually, tan the fat, whether in cholesterol form or in lymph form, as well as the membranous tissues (peritoneum, aponeurosis, pleurae) tend to have a strong and particular odour. The mediastinum is an important crossroad of organic elements, membranes and lymphatics.

In Suwen 8 it is explained that “The liver system is the Office of the General, planning is its product. The gall bladder is the office of the Fair Correctors (judges) who issue decisions. Shanzhong is the Minister counselor who rules the office and the transmission of the messages of happiness sent to the monarch”. These two spaces –without organicity but indispensable- are symmetric, tanzhong between the two lungs and mingmen between both kidneys, only functional, with a large mobile energetic charge, one in the thorax and the other in the abdomen; just like the parallelism between the two places which stand out when contemplating the description of Zi Qi nap told by Zhuang Zi in his Qiwulun, for which “The leveling which makes things equivalent” is at this point of our work, the proper translation.

Mingmen is the conception of an abstract function ruled by the element fire and without a corresponding organ. It is a “presence” justified by its action, without a precise organicity and without equivalence in the anatomical or physiological concepts of Western medicine. Here, in this place resides yuan, principle, source, energetic origin of the human being in the conception from which a new being arises from chaos. Yuan •means original, firstly, raw, like a water spring sprouting in the mountains. Ming means order, destiny, and the order that configures the life of man, the one who designs the destiny of each and all energies. Men •u20204 is gate, door. In reality, mingmen is the archaic remembrance of the anterior heaven in the posterior one and this memory is topographically equivalent to the navel that is the place from where the fetus absorbs the breath which nourishes his body. Chongmai to reach, to attain, crossroad- is a meridian born in the small pelvis together with other two meridians dumai and renmai jointly described with an image of vegetal nature: a trunk and three branches which together, administer weiqi , the defensive energy protecting abdomen, thorax, back. Furthermore, chongmai as vertical axis is adjoined to daimai that transversally fastens to it, leaving both attached to the spinal column. Thus we have four extraordinary meridians running through the trunk and the head. Let us remember that this area of the small pelvis which reunites the four extra meridians is the one that is mentioned in the Zhuangzi as a space of free flow of energies represented in the nap of Nan Guo Zi Qi.

Tanzhong, center of the chest (in the center of the chest) is symmetric to mingmen gate of life (in the center of the abdomen). This is clearly related to the Taoist concept of void that is what allows energetic flows and interchanges and so, when heaven and earth transfer their most delicate essences for a new being to arise, there is a new biological reality in the established development. For Embryology – science that provides the scheme for the functioning of life- the conception is the beginning where biologically, the body is accompanied by the simultaneous development of a psychic movement; no Chinese will ever come up with the idea of separating the soul from the body, or the man from the universe or the adult being from his-her intrauterine life. Naturally, without complications, the body is the self, the own self.

Let us remember the description in China of chaos-cosmos through the existence of two heavens which show the models of the universe. Mingmen belongs to the anterior heaven (previous) the one before origin-conception, where statically lie all the cosmic matters or essential innate energies (heaven, earth, water, fire) later used in the conception. Out of this, arises the notion that the relationship between kidney and mingmen is that of water with fire, opposites but complementary elements, mutually needing and interinfluencing each other and are the origin of yinyang (water and fire) Strength and vital capacity depend on the two kidneys, the place where wisdom, willpower and reproductive function seat. Mingmen is a region, a place between both kidneys where the principle of conservation and preservation of jing vital essence and of qi inborn energy, are found. The combination of both of them composes a firm embryological organizer where heart (fire) and kidneys (water) constitute an axis around which revolves the genesis of the individual; in this genesis participate mingmen and yuanqi the original subtle energy both mental, due to being linked to heart and hereditary as well through the kidneys. Traditionally, kidneys constitute the meeting point of authentic yin yang, or what is the same of water and fire (archetypical) previous to conception. Mingmen is not an organ but a field of strength for life, the place where resides the hereditary charge that will ensure the development of the individual from conception to death; it is the seat of the original breaths (yuanqi) where primeval yin yang conjugate and the one that materializes itself for treatment in dumai 4.

From Qiwulun we rescue the description of the universal movement of the energies that explains the dynamisms in the two spaces of the body we are talking about here. Even though is that second chapter in the Zhuang Zi the one which inspires this work, in the third one called Yangshengzhu “Nurturing the Vital Principle”, the notion of void is anatomically mentioned: Ding the cook, slaughters an ox utilizing the interstices (the void) that exist between the components of the animal. If there were not interstice between parts, whichever they may be, there would not be movement. The world of the Chinese thinking, whether it be technical, literary, philosophical, provides useful concepts to different branches of knowledge, among them Medicine; the process is very fertile because it preserves, nowadays, the possibility of the existence of valid interpretation of ancient texts so as to apply them to modern reflection. This can be helpful in understanding important concepts involved in our work.

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