Windstone Press

In the most recent issue of Chinese Medicine Times (Spring 2009), Dr. Leon Hammer wrote an interesting article about pulses in Chinese medical classics: http://www.chinesemedicinetimes.com/section/320/1/a_discussion_on_wang_shu_he_pulse_classic___part_one).

I have no major qualms with the article itself, but take exception to one of the quotes he uses to make the point that studying the classics can be “dangerous.” Any disagreements I have with Dr. Hammer’s article are the same disagreements I have with the quote from James Ramholz, which reads:

“Unfortunately, the classics are actually poor teaching tools. They often mention things without clear details or explanations. Commentaries sometimes sound as if they’re about completely unrelated topics. Even if when we read the original text in Chinese, its meaning, translation, and interpretation are frequently in dispute. The classics are actually the starting point for study and research, not the accumulation or final arbiter of what can be known.”

Let me say first that I entirely agree with the last sentence. Every aspect of Chinese medicine, including the classics, is indeed a starting point. This is a big part of what makes the medicine, for me personally, a study which I never tire of. There is no final arbiter of what can be known. Thousands of pages of classical Chinese medical texts sit in libraries and have yet to be analyzed, much less written about in English. What can be known about Chinese medicine? Every piece of knowledge is the beginning of the next discovery.

I find all of the other statements are based on common misunderstandings of classical texts. Below, I will take each part of this statement and explain my thoughts on why each one misses the mark:

Unfortunately, the classics are actually poor teaching tools. They often mention things without clear details or explanations.

No specific classic is named here, so I will be forced to follow suit and also make generalizations. The assumption here is that the writing of the classics is flawed because modern readers find them unclear and want more explanations. A lack of explanation can be simply explained by the author assuming the reader would understand the text. The authors of classical texts could not have possibly had western readers of the future in mind when they wrote. They were writing for the audience of their time and based what they wrote on the “common knowledge” of their time.

It is also important to remember that the literacy rate in China was extremely low up until the last 30 years or so. The author’s audience was small and consisted of the period’s brightest scholars. Only the most wealthy and educated could read such classics. These texts were written for people well versed in not only medical classics, but in every aspect of current and historical literature. We shouldn’t be surprised that we are not as equipped to easily comprehend these texts.

Expecting medical books to give readers “clear details” is also a very modern notion. The classics were not written as treatment manuals, but as foundational theory books. The cosmology that underlies classical texts was known by readers of the time. Practical application of that theory was not learned through books, but through apprenticeships.

If the classics are poor teaching tools today, this is our responsibility. Our inability to use them shows a lack of knowledge on our part and has nothing to do with the authors of those texts. If we want to use the classics as teaching tools, then we need to first find out what pieces of information we are lacking.

Commentaries sometimes sound as if they’re about completely unrelated topics.

I have never found this to be a problem when reading texts in classical Chinese. At times, I find commentaries that do not seem to address the preceding passage directly. In the mind of the commentator, what they wrote is related, so the modern reader’s challenge is to find that connection.

Again, we have to look more closely at the period a text was written and when it was commented. A 16^th century text commenting on a 2^nd century text is explaining the text for 16^th century readers. If hundreds of years separate a text from its commentary, we must assume that what was common knowledge during the time of the text was no longer common when the commentary was written. Historians even use data on which parts of a text were commented and compare them with which parts were not to gleam important historical data. For a modern reader to say that commentaries seem unrelated misses the most basic reason for a commentary, which is to explain the text to their audience.

The above sentence repeats the same mistake from the first, which  is to assume that any historical text was written for us, with our current notions of culture, the body, and medicine. They were not. Assuming such texts should address our needs is unrealistic.

Even if when we read the original text in Chinese, its meaning, translation, and interpretation are frequently in dispute.

We must remember that, in spite of modern China’s wish to proclaim otherwise, there was not a wholly unified China that existed over the last 3,000 years. China’s history is complicated; when we consider all of the changes in dynasties, wars, famines, movements, rebellions, plagues, religions, uprisings, and regional distinctions over time, we have a very complicated history that occurred in the geographical region we now call China.  The cultures of the Han and Tang dynasties, for example, cannot be treated as part of some imagined “one China.”

Each new era had its own distinct culture that needed to reinterpret the classics according to that culture. Many of the historical periods of China faced the same problem we are facing today: how do we interpret and use this medicine? This is not a new problem, as evidenced by the need for the commentaries spoken about earlier.

I find the disputes about meanings of the classics to be one of the most interesting aspects in the history of Chinese medicine. What is the Triple Warmer? What is the Shen? What is the Ming Men? In my own work, I have no desire to try to define these things concretely. I could argue that the Ming Men, for example, is the eyes. I could use the Nei Jing to back up my claim. However, I would be ignoring the many other writings that claim that the Ming Men is the right kidney or the space between the kidneys, among other possibilities. In my view, the need to define these things concretely does not reflect the spirit of the classics, but is a projection of our own culture, which wants conclusions based on concrete evidence. The classics had no such expectation.

In Classical Chinese Medical Texts (Ch. 6), one of the texts I used is from The Classic of Difficulties. One sentence makes a statement about the San Jiao, which was debated in later times. I find the sentence impossible to interpret with 100% certainty. Initially, I wanted to take this chapter out of the book because I was afraid readers would want something more concrete. In the end, I left it because readers need to know classical medical texts contain many statements that are wide open to differing interpretations. I do not see this as a problem, but more as one of the most fascinating aspects of the medicine.

I think Dr. Ramhoz’s quote above has helped to illustrate what I find to be the final barrier to entering the next stage of development in Chinese medicine: drop all assumptions and expectations, forget the world you live in just long enough, and the world of the classics will become wide open to you.