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Traditions of Transmission

By Ken Rose

Throughout the history of Chinese medicine, the knowledge of each age has been passed from one generation to the next by various means. These include modes of transmission that are familiar to students of a wide variety of disciplines, from folklore to mathematics. There have been stories, myths, legends, venerable old sayings deduced from each of these, along with a host of other literary forms. There have been songs, poems, couplets, and all other manner of metered, rhymed and unrhymed verse. Such compositions can be further categorized into those that have been committed to writing and those that have been spoken from teacher to student, from father to child, and have survived as the living breath of each successive generation of those who listen and who learn.

Coming to terms with this array of information can be a staggering challenge. The study of ancient texts alone can be a lifelong undertaking, and after a life of devoted study even the most capable and intelligent of students has to admit that they have only scratched the surface. How can we come to terms with the oral transmission, with the words that have perhaps never been committed to paper? And what are we to make of the wordless teaching, which according to Lao Zi, is the method preferred by the sage? Clearly such challenges are worth nothing as we consider the continuing development of the field and of the profession that purveys Chinese medicine to the growing portion of the population that turns to it for care. Judging from the sheer magnitude of the body of knowledge that we invoke when we use a phrase l ike "Traditional Chinese Medicine" we had better prepare ourselves for the work of receiving it, studying it, and transmitting it to future generations by becoming comfortable with the fact of how little we can really know. This is not the conceit of an Orientalist nor an affectation of false humility. It is a simple and straightforward assessment of the task at hand when we study, teach, practice, research and write about traditional Chinese Medicine.

In our first book, Who Can Ride the Dragon?, we attempted to outline the range of topics that students of the subject should bear in mind when taking up the task of its study. Among the questions we hoped to raise in readers minds in the very first chapter of that book was the following: "What is Qi?" And in the wake of the completion of that book, we came to recognize that there was a great deal m ore material that should be taken into consideration by those who ask this question and who seek to discover answers. The rationale behind this line of questioning is spelled out in that book as well as in its sequel, compiled to present this additional material, A Brief History of Qi. In short, we reasoned that anyone who seeks such answers would be well served by having a collection of Chinese sources from across the centuries that have yielded pertinent information about Qi. We see this pivotal word as a prime illustrative example of the scope and magnitude of the chore of knowing what the Chinese meant in their various descriptions of the human body and the dynamics involved in its interactions with the environment in which humans exist. And we believe that anyone who studies, practices, teaches, researches, or communicates about Chinese medicine might be well served by having ready access to a compendium of knowledge about this word and the various meanings that have appended themselves to it for thousands of years.

People often ask if it is necessary to know the Chinese language in order to properly study and practice Chinese medicine. The answer is yes.and no. Certainly a student needs to have a basic grasp of the meanings of the basic terms. Too many students sit through too many hours of classroom lectures and read through too m any pages of theory and clinical textbooks in a misty haze of miscomprehension of the integral sense of the most basic terms in the nomenclature of Traditional Chinese Medicine. This has come about for a variety of reasons and reflects a long-prevailing approach to the transmission of knowledge about the subject in the English language that has neglected the importance of clearly defining terms. To be sure, such clear definitions are not easy to come by, but their importance and value is increased rather than decreased by this fact. And people all around the world have come to recognize that the successful long-term adaptation of Chinese medical theory and practice always include a careful treatment of the language and literature of the subject.

Those who grapple with the subject in English face precisely the same challenges as those who have come to Chinese medical lore from a native background of Japanese, Korean, and any other language, for that matter. And anyone who has begun to progress on the path that leads to acquisition of knowledge and understanding of Chinese characters and the medical books that are composed of these characters realizes all to clearly that it is a lifelong path at that.

It is in this sense that we can say that the answer is both yes.and no. For as a practical matter, how can we establish as a requirement for the study of medicine a fluent ability to read and think in classical Chinese? And here we should point out, as a comment on the ongoing discussions in various forums about the pertinence of the study of language and literary sources to the study of Traditional Chinese Medicine, that all such study should indeed by aimed at developing in students the capacity to read.and to think in the language of the original materials. In order to put the knowledge of the subject to use, one must be able to think with it in the clinic. To aim for anything less is to ensure that a high level of understanding never takes root in English language environments. But in the same breath that we recognize the obvious truth of such assertions, we also confront the pragmatic factors that come to bear.

What are we to do?

Here a saying we first saw on a tee shirt in Chengdu comes vividly to mind: We are all in the same boat: Row!

What do we owe to those who wrote the Huang De Nei Jing? What do we owe to the author or authors of the other great works such as Shan Han Lun, Nan Jing, Yi Xin Fang, and a long, long list of books that extends to the thousands.tens of thousands of titles? And what do we owe to those who follow us? In the end these are quite personal questions. Each of use must deal with them as we see fit and are able. But the basic issues seem quite clear. We have to know what we are talking about. We have to make the investment in ourselves and in each other to understand the meanings of the most basic terms and then proceed to build up our individual vocabularies of terms and concepts in a way that suits our individual situations. For a student of Chinese medicine, there is no other way. And with those who sincerely seek to explore the depths of meanings contained in the ideas of the subject, we enthusiastically join in working together to develop an ongoing discussion of these ideas. They are the qi of the subject that must connect and move freely from one mind to the next if the body of Chinese medicine is to be whole and healthy in the years to come. And this is what brings us back time and again to the simple yet perplexing question: What is Qi?