Published by The Chinese
University Press
The Chinese
University of Hong Kong
2019
I would like to start my review of Liu Lihong’s
book with the words with which he ends it:
"Why is this book
titled “Contemplating Chinese Medicine” in Chinese? What is it that we are
contemplating? It is nothing other than these underlying principles, nothing
other than the mysteries of nature and life as deciphered through the
orientations of time.”
Liu Lihong was the person who
invited me eight years ago to come to China to give an introductory
seminar on five element acupuncture, and has since then steadfastly promoted
five element acupuncture as a valid discipline of traditional Chinese medicine. It was therefore a lovely moment of recognition
for these years of my work in China
since then to read the following in Heiner Fruehauf’s introduction:
…”Liu Lihong has
developed the Institute (for the Clinical Research of Classical Chinese
Medicine) into an influential platform that has reintroduced multiple classical
lineages to contemporary scholarly discourse, most notably the Fire Spirit
School of Sichuan herbalism (huoshen pai), the traditional system of emotional
healing synthesized by the Confucian educator Wang Fengyi (1864-1937), and
classical five-element-style acupuncture. Each one of these efforts has had a
considerable impact on the grassroots momentum of Chinese Medicine education in
China.”
Joyful at thus seeing evidence of the importance of my work in China, I was
delighted at last to be able to read the book which was the catalyst those
eight years ago for Mei Long to write to Liu Lihong,
urging him to acquaint himself with this discipline of traditional Chinese
medicine, one which she recognized was very close to his own approach. It has been with much surprise and delight now
to receive confirmation that all that I was taught by the great master of five
element acupuncture, JR Worsley himself, all that I have since learnt for
myself and from my readings of the classics through translations by Father
Larre and Elisabeth Rochat, all of this finds strong, almost eerie echoes in
what Liu Lihong
writes.
Though the book includes much detailed discussion of herbal remedies,
since Liu Lihong
is a herbalist, I have come to regard it much more as a
profound philosophical exposition of Chinese thought, and it could well have
been entitled Classical Chinese
Philosophy. Certainly the profound
insights about Dao, yin yang and the five elements, which are the main emphasis
of the book, also form the bedrock of my five element practice. In particular, he emphasizes, as JR Worsley
always did, the importance of regarding ourselves as embedded in nature. As he says:
“When discussing
Chinese Medicine, the backdrop of the natural world cannot be forgotten. If you
have a thorough understanding of the natural world, your foundation in Chinese
Medicine will be sound and your understanding can progress.”(p. 375)
Of the many insights I gained from my reading of this book, none impressed
me more than the clarity with which he compares traditional Chinese medicine
and modern Western medicine, clearly seeing that they spring from different
approaches which cannot be melded together into one system as so many people
now attempt to do. Instead he regards
them as complementing each other, provided that their fundamental differences
are acknowledged. For instance he
writes:
“Western Medicine is
clearly biased towards objectivity rather than subjectivity…..Chinese Medicine
is vastly different in this respect and places great emphasis on the subjective
experience.” (p.262)
I also find the humility he shows in relation to his own
understanding of his discipline quite startling and very impressive, such is
his respect for his masters whose influence on his development he acknowledges. I always feel that teachers who are not
afraid to know that they have more to learn are the ones I can truly learn
from.
And here I encounter a slight problem, for though, quite
rightly, he claims that the best, if not the only true way of learning is to
sit at the feet of an acknowledged master of whatever discipline we wish to
practice (and did I not do exactly that when I was fortunate enough to find my
way to JR Worsley?), how are we to find such masters in a world, as he says,
where institutionalized classroom learning is valued more highly than the kind
of personal transmission from master to pupil?
And even more pertinently, where are the great clinical teachers without
which there can be no transmission of such profound age-old disciplines? Liu Lihong,
too, is also deeply concerned about the increasing depletion in the number of
those who have sufficient clinical experience to warrant being given the name
of masters of their discipline, whilst there are ever-increasing numbers of
those eager to learn from such masters.
This is something I have had to struggle with during my time
in China, for I often ask myself how can I and my small cohort of two other
five element teachers, Guy Caplan and Mei Long, alone pass on as much as we can
in the form of personal transmission through our seminars to as many people as
we can. It is with great relief,
therefore, that, thanks to Liu Lihong’s
efforts and that of those working at his Tong You San He foundation, I can at
last be reassured that there is an ever-larger group of Chinese five element
teachers who can now pass on their understanding of five element practice to
others.
The world needs people of vision, such as Liu Lihong, and I am honoured to have been able to
work with and for him. I am profoundly
grateful that my efforts to re-introduce five element acupuncture to the
country of its birth have been recognized by him as making a significant
contribution to his work in so firmly and courageously ensuring that classical
Chinese medicine, including five element acupuncture, now takes its rightful
place at the forefront of modern medicine as a profound medical discipline in
its own right.
Finally, I want to
express my admiration for the team of translators, led by the book’s editor,
Heiner Fruehauf, who have made such a tremendous job of creating an English
version which reads so beautifully and eloquently. As a former translator in another life, and
still a translator from French into English of Elisabeth Rochat’s work, I
appreciate from a very personal point of view the many hours, days and weeks of
hard work such an excellent translation would have demanded.
