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Do You Believe in the Yellow Emperor? By Matthew D. Bauer, L.Ac. Oh, East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat. - Rudyard Kipling Kipling's poem sums up the perceived incompatibility of Eastern and Western thought that has perplexed thinkers from both cultures since they discovered one another nearly 2,000 years ago. When I originally began studying Taoist history, philosophy and spirituality with a 74 th generation Taoist Master some 25 years ago, I suffered culture shock from trying to wrap my mind around teachings that might as well have been from another planet as from another age. My interest in the differences between these two modes of thought intensified when I decided to write a book I hoped would explain Chinese medicine to the Western public by exploring its earliest roots. As I went about my research, I found myself drawn to one particular cultural difference: how the East and West perceive their connections to the past. I found an example of this difference in Chinese Medicine , in which noted historian Paul Unschuld discusses Western medicine's introduction into Chinese culture: The only thing that was new for the Chinese men of medicine was Western medicine's belief in progress. Science seeks fulfillment in a future golden age: traditional medicine, including traditional Chinese medicine, always proceeds from the assumption that the golden age of medicine lies in the past. Unschuld's sentiment applies to far more than merely science and traditional medicine; it captures the essential difference between Eastern and Western culture as a whole. For more than 2,000 years, Chinese thought has proceeded from the assumption that their culture's golden age lay in the past, when great Sages with extraordinary insight discovered how to breed livestock, cultivate crops, produce silk and invent the calendar, the compass and the mysterious concept of yin/yang. Because such beliefs relate to much more than traditional medicine, Chinese culture as a whole has been thought to be 5,000 years old. However, just as medical-history scholars are beginning to date acupuncture as closer to 2,000 rather than 5,000 years old, archeologists and other scholars now hotly debate the notion that Chinese culture itself is 5,000 years old. One might wonder if the present lack of definitive proof that China 's golden age ever existed is proof that it never did. Are there reasons to believe the traditional legends may have some basis in fact - to believe in the Yellow Emperor? According to the historians I have consulted, no historical evidence of this age exists; any support for such a claim, therefore, would be pure speculation. Fair enough. Let's speculate. VIEWS OF THE PAST How do the East and West view their relationships to the past? Chinese folk history credits several individuals for the great milestones in human-culture evolution: Suiren for controlling the use of fire, Eu Zang Ssu for the first man-made dwellings, Fu-Shi for herding, Shen Nong for crop cultivation, Yellow Emperor for inventing the calendar and compass, etc. While many today might scoff at such stories and consider them unsupported romantic legends, the fact that the Chinese of 2,000 years ago thought these accomplishments were brought about by a linage of particular individuals is itself quite telling. In contrast, what little Western culture has had to say about individuals of the prehistoric past is not too flattering. For most of the last 2,000 years Westerners have accepted interpretations of biblical scripture, especially the Old Testament, as literal history. Here, too, we learn of a lost golden age - the Garden of Eden - inhabited by Adam and Eve. Biblical references to Adam and Eve, their sons Cain and Abel and a paradise lost hint at similarities to Chinese legends, but contain a critical difference: where Chinese folklore hails the early Sages as heroes who gave us shelter, food and high culture, Adam and Eve are largely remembered as the ones who gave us Original Sin. Similarly, while Fu Hsi and Sheng Nong are praised for their food-production methods, Cain, the first herder, and Abel, the first cultivator, are remembered instead for their fatal dispute. The Garden of Eden's golden age is depicted as short-lived; most of the Old Testament's subsequent historical accounting deals with tracing Adam and Eve's offspring after the Fall. Based on this genealogy, medieval biblical scholars concluded that those first beings and the world itself were created some 6,000 years ago; that is, the entire world, with all its oceans, mountains, deserts and so forth, was created at that isolated point in time and has remained unchanged ever since. The beginning of the 19 th century brought about a new view of the past to the West when modern science introduced the concept that the earth's mountains, oceans and deserts have been evolving, surfacing and resurfacing, over millions of years - an idea the Chinese knew for over 2,000 years. Conflicting as they did with previous biblical interpretations, these ideas were initially rejected in the West. So, too, was the notion that the discovery of proto-human fossils indicated these creatures had lived hundreds of thousands and even millions of years ago. Although some Westerners today still prefer Scripture interpretations as their source of early history, modern science has managed to push back the origins of life to much earlier time periods in most minds. In doing this, however, nothing has emerged to encourage a sense of positive, personal connection with our prehistoric ancestors. The Homo Sapiens sapiens - people just like you and me - who roamed earth for tens of thousands of years before recorded history, are largely depicted as brutish, violent creatures who had more in common with animals than civilized man. In my studies, I was struck by the respect and important role afforded to Stone Age Hunter-Gatherers . In the Taoist accounting of history, the Three August Ones - Fu-Hsi, Sheng-Nung, and the Yellow Emperor - are credited with not only leading the transition to civilized Herder-Cultivator life but also with salvaging all-important knowledge from their Hunter-Gatherer ancestors - an understanding of nature's deep rhythms and delicate balancing act, humankind's place within those dynamics and humanity's potential for spiritual fulfillment. The ancient Sages buried guideposts for their beloved descendants deep within the mystic symbolism of yin/yang as seen in the trigrams of the I-Ching (another gift from Fu-Hsi) and other ancient knowledge systems inspired by hundreds of generations of living as one with nature and influenced by observations gleaned from prehistoric astronomy. Even if we scoff at such legends and write them off as romantic speculation, we should acknowledge that our own culture has evolved without any sense of personal connection to the hundreds of generations of fellow humans that lived, laughed and loved before recorded history. Can we, as products of that culture, objectively critique the thinking of those who sought to carry forward a sense of personal, family connection with their fellow beings in the deep past? Before we write off legends of a lost golden age, perhaps we should remember the lesson of Flores Man ( Homo Floresiensis ), the amazing, hitherto-unknown cousin-of-man dwarf species that shocked the scientific world when it was recently discovered on the Indonesian isle of Flores. Although Flores Man had become extinct some 12,000 years ago, local natives still told legends of the "little grandmas who would eat anything." Never taken seriously by scientists, those legends were considered romantic speculation - until remains of the species were unearthed. How should we, as 21 st century practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine, think of the legends regarding the roots of our beloved healing art? Before we decide, perhaps we should take the time to look deeply within ourselves and ponder the bias inherent in all cultures, including our own.
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