The Beauty of TCM: Life Itself Is a Good Medicine
Love life, and life will repay us with boundless joy!
— Epigraph
Professor Ren Yingqiu once said that a person cannot truly understand TCM before the age of sixty.
As I grow older, I increasingly understand and agree with his words, and I grow fonder of TCM myself. One must go through many things before knowing whether one's past attitude toward life was right or wrong.
Unlike cold modern medicine, TCM has always been teaching us how to live. The life philosophy advocated by TCM, summed up, can be described as "calm and empty, spirit kept inwardly guarded."
The Shanggu Tianzhen Lun chapter of the Huangdi Neijing proposes an ideal way of life: "a relaxed will and few desires, a heart at peace and without fear, a body worked without becoming weary"; "content with their food, pleased with their clothing, happy in their customs, not envying one another's station—their people are called simple"; "desires cannot weary their eyes, licentiousness cannot bewitch their hearts." This is a simple, plain life, no keeping up with others, no overwork, no chasing—just simply living according to nature.
What the Shanggu Tianzhen Lun advocates is a moderate life: not too comfortable, not too overworked, without so many pursuits and comparisons in the heart, yet peacefully at ease and self-content. Without doubt, this is a very healthy way of life.
For many people, if not immersed in drunken revelry and sensual pleasures, they do not know what the meaning of life is. Almost everyone around us is keen on a comparative lifestyle; few can bear being looked down upon.
I may be a special case; my nature has doomed me to be a person detached from fame and gain. Before I systematically studied TCM, I was already living an uncontending life. Over these years, constantly reading TCM classics, imperceptibly and naturally I was influenced, becoming even more calm and harmonized.
After leaving university, I lived near Purple Bamboo Park in Beijing for nearly twenty years. The National Library and Purple Bamboo Park are separated only by a wall. For these twenty years, my life was so simple that I basically moved only within a radius of two or three kilometers.
On ordinary days I was either reading in the library or strolling in Purple Bamboo. Now I have rented a separate study nearby, working here and reading here.
Occasionally, when I feel a little tired, I take a stroll in Purple Bamboo Park (which is free); after one loop, my mood is wonderfully relaxed.
My life is frugal; I ask for little and already have enough. All year round I am immersed in books; when winter ends I do not know the year. No one ever controls me, and I am free. Perhaps there are not many who, like me, can always take such pleasure in themselves.
I grew up in the countryside, used to the hard life; so whether poor or rich, I have lived it plainly—plain meals and plain water, taking hardship as joy—and so there is no hardship to speak of.
My life is regular too: early to bed and early to rise. Because I deal with few people, all manner of interpersonal conflicts have been reduced to the absolute minimum.
I am a person with no lofty ambitions, knowing only to follow nature; gain is fine, loss is fine, so there is nothing to grieve over. I have neither faith nor pursuit; praised by people I do not care, abused by people I do not care, and in my heart there is naturally no anger, no delusion, no grievance.
Having seen much of life and death, now I neither fear death nor tire of life, so I feel the future has nothing to fear. When I was once penniless, this was my state; now that I have everything, it is still my state; I suppose when I finally leave this world, it will still be my state.
All my life I have neither been arrogant nor inferior. Whether others are rich enough to rival a state or wretchedly poor, I greet them with a calm smile. I am nobler than no one, baser than no one; neither servile nor overbearing, clinging to no one, comparing with no one. So though I live in the busy city, it is no different from dwelling in the mountains and forests.
This state of life accords with one of the four ideal states advocated in the Shanggu Tianzhen Lun. In the Shanggu Tianzhen Lun, the ways of four kinds of people are honored.
The first is the true person of antiquity, who could "uphold heaven and earth, grasp yin and yang, breathe in essence, stand alone and guard the spirit, whose muscles and flesh were as one; therefore he could live as long as heaven and earth, with no end."
The second is the perfected person of middle antiquity, who was of "pure virtue and whole Way, harmonized with yin and yang, attuned to the four seasons, leaving the world and separating from vulgarity, gathering essence and whole spirit, wandering between heaven and earth, seeing and hearing beyond the eight directions. These extended their lifespan and strengthened it; they also returned to the true person."
The third is the sage, who "dwells in the harmony of heaven and earth, follows the principles of the eight winds, adapts his desires within the secular world, with no heart of anger, not wishing to leave the world in his conduct, wearing robes and badges, not seeking to be observed by the vulgar, outwardly not wearing the body out in affairs, inwardly having no cares of thought, taking calm joy as his task and self-contentment as his achievement, his form not worn out and his spirit not scattered. These too could reach a hundred."
The fourth is the worthy person, who "models himself on heaven and earth, takes after sun and moon, distinguishes the stars, follows and opposes yin and yang, divides the four seasons, and, following antiquity, joins in the Way. These too can extend their lifespan, though with an end."
This attitude toward life advocated in the Shanggu Tianzhen Lun chapter of the Huangdi Neijing is a highly idealized philosophy. In the real world, only a very few idealists can truly carry it through.
As far as I know, even among TCM physicians, those who can truly live as the Shanggu Tianzhen Lun describes are few and far between. Most are inevitably drawn into the rolling world of dust, toiling for fame and fortune.
Many patients, meanwhile, are even deeper entangled in the worldly grievances and hatreds of life, struggling constantly, exhausted in both body and mind; so treating their diseases often ends in failure.
Only when a person extinguishes the various desires and pursuits in his heart can he see the essence of life clearly, see that we are merely children of nature and ought to live according to nature. Only then can one truly achieve non-doing, non-seeking, non-thinking, non-worrying, and non-fear.
Heaven and earth are silent, and great beauty is hidden there. People are full of clever tricks, and are instead harmed by them. A breath of clear wind is worth a thousand pieces of gold. A few birdcalls are wondrous words. Only when a person merges with nature and returns to the simplest state, without so many pursuits and cares in the heart, can he be truly relaxed and at ease.
Life itself is a good medicine. When a person understands this, though he cannot be entirely free of illness, his body and mind can be kept in a maximally healthy state.
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