From Medicine to the Dao

In July 2012, about two months after my mother passed away, I stayed home by her grave in mourning. Both my father and I were grief-stricken, especially my father, who often lost control; anything that stirred a memory of my mother would bring tears streaming down his face.

Fearing that my father's grief would overtake him, I took him on trips to places nearby. One day we wandered into the Qichun medicinal materials market, where we met an old Daoist who ran a Chinese medicine shop. He was dressed in full Daoist garb yet kept a herbal pharmacy there, which struck an incongruous note and caught our attention.

We stood watching him for a long while. The old Daoist may have been over eighty, but he was truly a man with white hair and a youthful, ruddy complexion. He shouldered a sack of medicinal materials as if it were nothing. On top of that he gave acupuncture and wrote prescriptions. I was deeply curious about him.

He too began to notice us, and we fell into conversation. In the course of our talk I learned that he was a native of Jiangxi, separated from our Hubei's Huanggang only by the Yangtze River. He was both a Daoist and had treated people with Chinese medicine for decades. I earnestly asked him to take me as his disciple and pass his medical skill on to me.

The old Daoist was quite straightforward and agreed at once, but he set one condition: he wanted me to find a Daoist temple for him to settle in. He did not wish to keep selling medicines in the wholesale market, and he needed me to study with him at the temple for three years.

That year my son was only seven, and I still had the duty of caring for both my son and my aged father. After thinking it over, I felt it was unrealistic. Besides, finding a Daoist temple where he could spend his old age was not easy. I was willing to take him in and care for him myself, but I could not find a temple willing to receive the old master. So the matter had to be dropped.

This was my first encounter with Daoist medicine. In the years since, because the articles I write carry some influence, Daoist healers have kept coming to meet me. I have studied with and exchanged views with some of them, and both sides have gained something. Among the Chinese medicine shelves of the National Library and the Xidan Book Building, I have also run into Daoist healers several times. These distinctive readers in full Daoist dress stand out all the more.

Recently I went to visit another Daoist healer who has hidden himself away in the ordinary world. The Daoist is a man of few words; our talk was very plain, and our friendship was exactly as the ancients described it: "the friendship of gentlemen is as plain as water."

On the day I visited him, a breast cancer patient of mine with whom I had been close for nearly ten years messaged me on WeChat. I told her I was sampling the life of someone who is both a Daoist and a physician. She laughed and said that a person as hot-blooded as I am could hardly ever become the kind of Daoist healer I aspired to be.

I was indeed a hot-blooded youth. Liang Qichao once said of himself, "Drinking ice for ten years cannot cool hot blood," but my life experience has been somewhat different from his. For more than a decade I have been dealing with the ultimate themes of human life—birth, aging, illness, and death—and my hot blood has indeed cooled.

Yet this "cool" is not the coldness of ice, but the coolness of refreshing breeze—the "cool" of which the ancients spoke when they said, "even in the midst of a fiery gathering, one may attain the gate of coolness."

The process of studying medicine and treating illness has also been my process of entering the Dao. Though I have not bound my hair and donned the crown, I am step by step drawing nearer to a true, world-renouncing Daoist. In my own way, I shall eventually hide myself away within the human world, living without contention with the world, without resentment toward others, letting go as circumstances dictate, and following the course of nature.

The Dao and medicine are the best and most natural of pairings. When a physician has practiced long and, day after day, witnessed birth, aging, illness, and death, anyone not obtuse will inevitably grasp the way of life from what he has seen and heard.

At the same time, the Dao is the best intellectual tool for physicians to relieve their own pressure and extend their own lives.

According to a report in the Beijing Evening News, a large-scale survey showed that 39.1% of medical workers suffer severe stress and 45.5% suffer moderate stress—together 84.6% of medical workers live under pressure. The average lifespan of medical workers is about three years shorter than that of the general population.

Doctors are less healthy than ordinary people; this is an objective fact. Doctors are more exposed to bacteria and viruses than laypeople, and they also bear greater mental stress.

To save oneself within Daoist thought and the Daoist way of life is one way out for doctors. Among the Chinese physicians from ancient times to the present, many eventually became outstanding Daoists, such as Ge Hong and Sun Simiao. The Chinese medical classic Huangdi Neijing (The Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon) is also an important Daoist work; the Huang-Lao school places the Yellow Emperor and Laozi side by side.

I do not think that someone who wishes to live according to the Daoist way must necessarily become a Daoist priest. Any kind of leaving home risks becoming a mere formality. If a person can put the essence of Daoist thought into his life, then whether he leaves home or not, whether he becomes a priest or not, whether he can draw talismans and chant incantations or not, whether he reads the Daoist canon or not, makes little difference.

Returning to simplicity, following nature, and doing everything in moderation—this is the life attitude a Daoist should hold.

The age I live in is the age of the greatest change in several thousand years of China, and one of the fastest-developing eras in human history. The traditional way of life has been shattered by the tide of modernization. People have lost their old spiritual home but have not yet built a stable and reliable new one; the rift in our society is greater than in any period of history. Many people live bewildered, and inner peace has become a luxury.

I know it is impossible for me to return to the mountains and forests, or to return to tradition. For one thing, there are no pure mountains and forests left now; in modern society, the so-called hermit's retreat has itself become a fast-moving consumer good. For another, as Tao Yuanming said, "if the heart is far away, the place naturally grows quiet." Wherever one stays, once the heart has settled into stillness, it is no different from dwelling in the deep mountains and ancient forests.

So I choose to practice the life of a Daoist within the city. No need to put on airs and go through endless rituals, no need to toil after fame and gain. Withdrawing from the world without leaving it—this is just fine.