Chinese Medicine: the Wisdom of Enough
My previous post reminded me of how deeply ingrained the underlying guiding principles of Chinese Medicine have become in my life, particularly those that pertain to the Techniques for Fostering Life, or 養生法 (yǎngshēngfǎ). It seems like a tricky subject to discuss these days, not only because of the unique challenges that we all collectively face whilst trying to living a long, healthy, and fulfilling life, but because as we age, our bodies change and it can sometimes be remarkably difficult to accept the changes. Personally, I confess that it’s been really difficult to acquire some firsthand experience with things that never hurt before starting to hurt, and changes in the way my body responds to the environment forcing me to accept that I can’t do things the way I used to. It’s not easy, and that’s a huge understatement.
However, this is all par for the course. Look around you. Things change — all the time. The seasons follow each other in an endless cycle (let’s all momentarily ignore climate change, for the sake of argument): Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter, and again. The lives of individual beings follow this cycle as well: birth, growth and development, up to the maximum expression of each being’s potential, then a gradual process of consolidation and divesting, and finally decline and death. Whether we like it or not, ideally each of us will also go through all of this process. More aptly put, we are going through this process, ever as I write this, you read it, and another day of watching cat videos on the Internet goes by.
My own personal suspicion is that the reason the teachings were recorded and passed down was because at some point, it became possible to pretend that this wasn’t the case. As human life became more sophisticated and comfortable, some people started living in ways that defied the cycle, accumulating food to eat during the winter, building up dwellings with increased permanency, both for people and people’s food, and finally, developing the ability to more-or-less predict when and where the next harvest would happen, both by availing oneself of the understanding of the seasons, and selectively planting the seeds of the appropriate plants nearby.
Those ancient, sagely, mysterious hunter-gatherers who lived thousands of years ago embraced the changes because they understood themselves to be an inextricable part of them. It was in their best interest to ensure that the next generation understood this, so they all could survive. However, once humans developed the ability to escape the living conditions of a hunter-gatherer, protected from the elements by the barest of walls, they forgot the bit where the seasons weren’t just happening only outside, but also inside.
We aren’t ‘in’, ‘away from’, or even ‘a part of’ nature.
Nature is in us. We are nature.
And even if we have it conveniently at bay by virtue of pavement, electricity, clear-cutting, and sheer numbers, the cycles and processes of change, life, death and renewal, survival and reproduction and flourishing that we call “nature” are working inside and through us, from the moment we are born to the moment we die, and beyond.
It follows, then, that the wisdom of the ancient hunter-gatherers still applies.
So, what is that wisdom, exactly, and how does it apply to us? Glad you asked. Let me introduce you to a concept that is really central to the teachings of 養生法 (yǎngshēngfǎ) that is a great place to start. Content warning: we’re going to talk about 陰陽 yīnyáng, a decidedly hippie-sounding concept you may have heard about, but bear with me. This won’t be as woo-woo as you might think.
The Chinese character 生 (shēng), which is in the phrase 養生法 (yǎngshēngfǎ), refers to the vitality, birth, and growth of all beings. It is a highly stylised drawing of a little plant, with the ground and roots, stalk, leaves, and even a flower or fruit on top. This character clearly reflects the view of the ancient Chinese about life: we exist between Heaven (陽 yáng) and Earth (陰 yīn), and health requires a balance between these two complementary and polar opposites. Their energies move around us and within us, but this balance does not come about on its own. Each of us creates their destiny through their complete participation in their own life.
“Fostering Life” (養生 yǎngshēng) is the highest ideal of all Daoist practices, whose purpose is health and longevity. Many of those practices are part of the life of cultivation of the Chinese Medicine doctor, such as meditation, qigong, diet, and even the prophylactic applications of therapies like moxibustion, massage, and herbal medicine. The famous Sun Simiao (孫思邈) laid down in written form a lot of these, which likely were already ancient by the time he wrote his encyclopaedic Essential Prescriptions for Every Emergency worth a Thousand Gold (備急千金要方 bèi jí qiān jīn yào fāng), which I've talked about before. The common denominator of all these practices is the intention to foster optimal conditions for life to flourish. Following the analogy of our little plant, we need:
- Enough soil and water, i.e., ways of receiving 陰 yīn energy. This means eating properly and getting enough rest, relaxation, and sleep.
- Enough growth and change, i.e., ways of expressing 陰 yīn energy. This refers to finding enough challenges and goals in life without losing our sense of freedom.
- Enough leaves to catch the sunlight, i.e., ways of receiving 陽 yáng energy. This is accomplished by finding enough companionship and intimacy in our lives, while also allowing us to enjoy periods of being alone.
- Enough flowers and seeds, i.e., ways of expressing 陽 yáng energy. We need to get enough exercise, space to express our feelings, ideas, and activities in the world, and perhaps even exploring our spirituality.
Did you notice how often I used the word "enough" for that explanation? It is because this is the crux of the matter. How much (or how little) is "enough", exactly? In today's health-conscious world, we find tons and tons of guidance about how to lead a "healthy" life. Many people who seek to help others in the so-called ‘alternative’ medicine world are frequently doling out such advice: eat like this, exercise like that. However, regardless of how good our advice is, as the current so-called "health crisis" in industrialised countries shows, our advice frequently falls flat on its face and fails to produce the desired results.
In my not-so-humble opinion, the reason for this is that we don't know about "enough". There isn't a lot of advice out there on how to determine "enough", just on how to do more. Even when the advice is “don’t do this”, our collective cultural assumption is that you should take that “not doing” as far as it will go. We even go as far as labeling foods, activities, and lifestyle choices as altogether “good” or “bad”... In my opinion, this kind of thinking is exaggerated, because underlying it is still the concept of “doing more”.
So, and since we’re talking about it, what is 陰陽 yīnyáng, anyway? The most appropriate way to think about 陰陽 yīnyáng is as a standard measure of quality, describing complementary, polar, opposite aspects of a given something. What this means in plain English is that, in order to talk about 陰陽 yīnyáng, we need to know three things: first, what is the phenomenon (the "something") that we're describing; second, what aspects of that phenomenon are we talking about; and third, how are those aspects related. This is important because, as those ancient hunter-gatherer shamans realised, in ‘Nature’, when things reach their extremes, they turn into their opposites.
When we ‘modern, civilised’ folk talk about self-expression, or relationships, or eating and exercising properly, the underlying assumption is that of making things better, bigger, or ‘more’. Too frequently we forget that there is also benefit in doing worse, smaller, and less. We learn from our mistakes, and also from uncertainty and confusion. Boredom spurs creativity. Illness lets us recoup and grief and suffering bring us to look at things in perspective. The really skilful question is this: can you conceive of these seemingly ‘negative’ aspects of life as also necessary and complementary to the whole of your experience?
We're talking about what constitutes a human life -- any human life. The 道德經 dàodéjīng, that abstruse, poetic sacred book of Daoism, says that we should "accept misfortune as the human condition". Why? Because the misfortune that we experience is as much a part of our experience as the joys and pleasures we experience. It is a necessary outcome thereof, even. Each of us has to find the measure by which all of these aspects are fulfilled and manifested in the world, and here's the real secret: no two answers are the same, and they are all correct.
So, how do we know what is enough? Can anyone tell us how any of these aspects work for us, individually? I don't think so.
Each one of us has to make this decision.
Enough is up to you.
Enough can be just right, or it can be too much… but the decision is up to each one of us.
Enough is NEVER up to anyone else.
The search for this balance is the ultimate aim of practising the techniques of 養生法 (yǎngshēngfǎ).
We don’t have to live in a hide hut, huddled together with all our relatives through the winter, follow the reindeer herds, or rummage around in the mulch to find our food before night falls (thankfully). We also (again, thankfully) don’t have to toil endlessly in the fields and hope for the rains to fall at the right time so there will be grain and potatoes to eat and store next winter. We have all of our ancestors’ ingenuity, creativity and hard work to thank for that.
What we do have to do like they did is find the limits of our own life, both positive and negative, and strike a balance between them. A lot of us live like we’re going to be young and beautiful forever, like achieving and owning and possessing and controlling and exaggerating is everything we’re meant to be here for. But, to quote a recent fantasy novel-turned-TV-series, Winter is coming, and each of us will have to turn around and stop.To know this and embrace life in all its ever-changing, ever-returning cycle of flourishing and withering beauty — this is the wisdom of Enough.
I invite you to find and foster your own "enough".
