The Principles, Methods, Formulae and Medicinals of TCM Cancer Treatment (2)
The Principles, Methods, Formulae and Medicinals of TCM Cancer Treatment
Part One: Principle (Li)
1. Starting with Dongba Culture
In Lijiang, Yunnan, there lives a small ethnic group called the Naxi. Though few in number, the Naxi have their own culture, religion and medicine; people customarily call the Naxi culture Dongba culture.
The Naxi have their own pictographic script. Their native religion is Dongbaism, and the Naxi call their religious leader a Dongba. The senior Dongba masters not only possess knowledge of religious rituals and sacrifices but also a great deal of knowledge of primitive medicine.
To anthropologists, Dongba culture is a living fossil of ancient human culture.
In the early twentieth century, the Austrian-American anthropologist Joseph Rock came here and studied Dongba culture for decades; through Rock, Dongba culture became famous throughout the world.
Dongba culture has infinite fascination, and Rock was deeply captivated by it. In 1962, as he lay dying, Rock said to his friends that he would rather die among the flowers and grasses by a river in the Tibetan region than sicken and die in bed.
At the turn of spring and summer in 2017, invited by the daughter of a Naxi lung-cancer patient, I went to Lijiang to treat her father. I had the chance to encounter Dongba culture and to visit Rock's former residence in Lijiang. While chatting with the elderly caretaker of Rock's house, I learned some of the stories of Rock's anthropological research in Lijiang.
Rock's former residence lies at the foot of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. Sitting in its courtyard, quietly watching the flowers, trees, grasses and stones, one feels a happiness of being cut off from the floating world. Tourism in Lijiang is booming, but hardly any out-of-town visitors come to Rock's former residence, because few tourists pay attention to an anthropologist.
The Naxi family that invited me to Lijiang left a very deep impression on me. The two daughters' gentle, calm and friendly dispositions, and the patient's own quiet, composed attitude toward life, were things I rarely encountered in my practice.
In that Naxi family's little courtyard, I admired the various flowers and medicinal herbs the patient had spent years cultivating. Listening to the old man explain some Naxi customs and habits, the serene, peaceful charm of life at the foot of the snow mountain was fully evident in his unhurried rhythm.
Because of advanced lung cancer, this Naxi old man did not have long to live. Though cancer pain tormented him, when he lay in his reclining chair looking over the garden of flowers and grasses he had grown himself, happiness still shone on his face.
Dongbaism is a pantheistic religion; the Naxi believe that heaven, earth and all things have souls. The Naxi live in harmony with nature, love nature, and believe that another world exists after death. The Naxi family I met, besides believing in Dongbaism, also believed in Buddhism.
This Naxi family's attitude toward life and death moved me. I did not begin a medical monograph with such a passage merely to court attention. I hope readers will consider a question: what is the ultimate purpose of medicine?
In an age when cancer has not yet been completely conquered, when a person gets cancer, in the folk saying of our China, it means the doctors have pronounced a death sentence.
Among the Naxi, He is a common surname. I do not know why the Naxi
Watanabe Junichi, The Essence of Life