Principles, Methods, Formulas and Herbs of TCM Cancer Treatment (1)
The Principles, Methods, Formulas and Herbs of TCM Cancer Treatment
Part One Principle (Li)
1. Beginning with Dongba Culture
In Lijiang, Yunnan, lives a small ethnic group called the Naxi. Though few in number, the Naxi have their own culture, religion, and medicine; people customarily call Naxi culture Dongba culture.
The Naxi have their own pictographic script. Their indigenous religion is Dongbaism; the Naxi call their religious leaders Dongba. The great Dongba masters of the Naxi not only master the knowledge of various religious rituals but also a great deal of primitive medical knowledge.
For 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 world-famous.
Dongba culture has infinite charm, and Rock was utterly captivated by it. In 1962, as he lay dying, he told friends: rather than die of illness in bed, I would rather die among the flowers and grasses along a riverside in the Tibetan region.
In the spring of 2017, invited by the daughter of a Naxi lung-cancer patient, I went to Lijiang to treat her father and had the good fortune to encounter Dongba culture and visit Rock's former residence. In talking with the old caretaker, I learned some stories of Rock's anthropological work in Lijiang.
Rock's former residence lies at the foot of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain. Sitting in its courtyard, quietly watching the flowers, trees, stones, and grasses, one feels a happiness of being cut off from the floating world. Although Lijiang tourism is booming, almost no out-of-town visitors come to Rock's house, because few tourists care about an anthropologist.
The Naxi family that invited me left a deep impression. The two daughters' gentle, calm, friendly personalities, and the patient's own quiet, composed attitude to life, are rarely seen in my consultations.
In that small Naxi courtyard, I admired the various flowers and medicinal herbs the patient had cultivated over years. Listening to the old man explain Naxi customs, the peaceful, contented life at the foot of the snow mountain unfolded in his unhurried rhythm.
Because of his late-stage lung cancer, this Naxi elder did not have long to live. Cancer pain tormented him, but as he lay in his reclining chair, looking over the garden of flowers and grasses he himself had planted, happiness still shone on his face.
Dongbaism is a polytheistic religion; the Naxi believe that heaven, earth, and all things have spirits. The Naxi live in harmony with nature, love nature, and believe in another world after death. The Naxi family I met, besides believing in Dongbaism, also believed in Buddhism.
Their attitude toward life and death moved me. I use this passage to begin a medical monograph not to court attention, but to ask readers to consider one question: what is the ultimate purpose of medicine?
In an age when cancer has not yet been fully conquered, when a person gets cancer, the popular Chinese saying is that the doctors have sentenced him to death.
Among the Naxi, He (和) is a common surname; I do not know why the Naxi people
Junichi Watanabe, The Essence of Life