The Joy of Nurturing Disciples

The famous Jin-Yuan period physician Li Dongyuan is my idol.

According to the Yanjian's Biography of the Elderly Man Dongyuan, in his later years, after returning to his hometown, one day he said to his friend Zhou Defu (also called Zhou Duyun): "I am old and wish to pass on my teachings to later generations. Who might be the person?" Defu said: "Luo Tianyi, styled Qianfu, of Liantai, by nature honest and plain, has always regretted that his craft is not refined, and is determined to learn. If you wish to transmit the Way, he would be the one."

Thus, through Zhou Defu's introduction, Luo Tianyi became Li Dongyuan's disciple. When Li Dongyuan saw Luo Tianyi, he asked: "Have you come to study medicine for money, or to study the medicine that transmits the Way?" Luo Tianyi answered: "Merely to transmit the Way." So Li Dongyuan accepted him as a disciple and provided for his food and living.

Three years later, Li Dongyuan, "admiring that he persevered without tiring, gave him twenty taels of silver, saying: 'I know your livelihood is very hard; I fear your heart may be moved and you may stop halfway; you may use this to support your wife and children.' Qianfu firmly declined. The Master said: 'I do not begrudge the great; why begrudge the small? Do not decline again.'"

Thus Li Dongyuan patiently taught his disciple while supporting Luo Tianyi in life, so that Luo could study with him for over ten years and fully receive his transmission. Both Luo Tianyi and Wang Haogu among Li Dongyuan's disciples later became masters of their generation, not without reason.

We often say: "One day as a teacher, a lifetime as a father." This sounds as though it requires students to revere their teacher as a father. Li Dongyuan set us another model: to be a teacher is to be a father, treating the disciple as one's own son.

When taking a disciple, he carefully examined the student's character; once accepted as a disciple, he not only taught the craft and resolved doubts but also resolved the disciple's life difficulties and strengthened his resolve to study medicine. A great TCM master thus nurtured another great TCM master.

Han Yu said: The teacher is he who transmits the Way, teaches the craft, and resolves doubts. We Chinese expect a teacher to "learn so as to be a model for others, and act so as to be a model for the age"; then the teacher is indeed a hard role—not only must he have profound learning sufficient to instruct students, he must also have fine teacherly virtue and character, able to lead by example and set a pattern for later generations.

When I was young, I was fortunate to meet a teacher as kind as Li Dongyuan. He not only transmitted learning to me and nurtured me to adulthood, but also helped me resolve life's difficulties. I have been grateful to my teacher all my life and have always wanted to repay him.

I think the best way I can repay my teacher is to learn from the way he conducted himself, and pass on to my own students those things I absorbed in the depths of my soul while with my teacher, so that the humanistic and humanitarian spirit my teacher upheld may be carried on from generation to generation, the torch passed on.

In the second half of 2016, I intended to take on a few young disciples. By coincidence, two of my patients happened each to have a child the same age as my son, and both children wanted to study medicine with me. So I took these two young disciples, and with my own son, I had taken on three young disciples in all.

Afterward, every weekend, I led these three young disciples through the Daodejing, the Analects, the Buddha's Forty-two-Chapter Sutra, the Zhuangzi, the Medical Three-Character Classic, the Binhou Maixue, the Yaoxing Fu (Rhymex on Medicinal Natures), the Tangtou Gejue (Prescription Songs), the Shanghan Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage), the Huangdi Neijing, the Neijing Zhiyao (Essentials of the Inner Canon), and the Yixue Xinwu (Medical Mind-Awakening)—beginning from the shallow and going to the deep, embarking on a TCM teaching career of "teaching and growing together with two or three companions." Learning from the elder sage Li Dongyuan, I charged no tuition and no gift money, and provided their meals; between master and disciples we got along fairly harmoniously.

In a flash, these three young disciples have studied TCM with me for nearly three years. From knowing nothing about TCM at the start, they have now gradually entered the door and memorized quite a few TCM classics, laying a foundation. Though I am not a famous teacher, I also hope the children I teach can become outstanding disciples.

I have no special skill, only patience and perseverance. I plan to teach these three children for at least eight years (to teach them wholeheartedly, I will take no other apprentices during this period), and then let them go to other teachers for further study, rising still higher, so that in future they may add a bright luster to the revival of TCM.

If in future they can become TCM practitioners with outstanding outcomes, then my years of effort will not have been spent in vain. If they can inherit the transmission I received from the Elderly Man Dongyuan and from my own teacher, continuing to take disciples and teach the craft from generation to generation, then I will be even more fully satisfied.

I have always held that the core of medicine is the humanitarian spirit. But the humanitarian spirit is not mere words on paper; there must be teachers who embody it, who nurture students with all their heart's blood, before there can be students who embody it. As Confucius said: "It is people who can broaden the Way, not the Way that broadens people."

I have also always held that Confucius's "education without discrimination" is the highest realm of nurturing people; it is the greatest joy to obtain the finest talents of the world and nurture them, and to discriminate against students of ordinary ability is to lose the purpose of education.

So I am not strict in choosing students. As long as a student's heart is not crooked (in truth, among these underage students, few have crooked hearts; a teacher can use his own personal charisma to influence students in forming their own life outlook and worldview), one should not be too picky.

The revival of TCM lies in talent, and the nurturing of talent requires teachers. The current system cannot contain me, but outside the current system, I can in my own way nurture a few successors for TCM. So in this mode of private schooling, I quietly and patiently nurture my students.

This also gives me great joy. A teacher who, disregarding personal gain, takes joy in nurturing his students—I believe that given time, the students can surpass their master and become bluer than the indigo from which they are dyed.

Nowadays there are very few TCM doctors who still treat patients with TCM thinking. This is mainly because under the present education system, those who study TCM, from their first contact with it, form prejudices against TCM's concepts and always try to understand TCM with the thinking of today's natural sciences. Some even, when using Chinese herbs, refer entirely to modern pharmacology and abandon the TCM approach of pattern differentiation and treatment, ultimately with the result that outcomes are greatly affected.

My own humble view is that TCM is a kind of "evidence-based medicine" different from modern medicine. TCM uses formulas and herbs according to TCM's "formula-pattern" and "herb-pattern" correspondences, which are, over several thousand years, the rules for using formulas and herbs summarized by our ancestors on the basis of human experimentation.

If one wishes to cultivate TCM practitioners who can truly think with TCM thinking, one must begin with children; this is the fundamental reason I take only young children as disciples.

I encourage my young disciples to learn the natural sciences well; moreover, as a top student with a science-and-engineering background, I am also qualified to guide them in how to learn the natural sciences well. But at the same time I firmly grasp the root of TCM and teach them TCM's pattern-differentiation thinking.

I am confident that the young disciples I teach will, in future, be neither TCM's despisers nor TCM's gravediggers, but rather TCM people who can carry TCM forward and carry on the tradition while opening new ground.

From the start of taking disciples, I chose children from families who had a basic understanding of and trust in TCM. One of my young disciples, Chuwen, is the granddaughter of a cancer patient I treated. The other, Yihan, comes from a family with a deep Western-medicine background, but his father, because of severe allergic rhinitis that prevented normal work and after seeking help everywhere to no avail, was cured by me with five doses of Chinese medicine. Three years later the rhinitis recurred; I changed the formula and again cured him with five doses. The medicines used in both treatments cost only a few yuan a dose.

So the families of these two young disciples are convinced of my medical skill and very willingly and sincerely beg me to take their children as disciples. Because of this affinity, between teacher and students, and between me and their families, there will be no disagreement about TCM.

My own son goes without saying: from small to large, I as his father have always safeguarded his health; when he fell ill a few times, it was basically cured at once by me using ancestral secret formulas or classic famous formulas from TCM classics, and he has been able to drink Chinese herbal decoctions easily since childhood.

Even these two young disciples, since following me to study medicine, have repeatedly had small ailments cured by me with one or two doses or a few days' worth of herbs. So these children are firsthand beneficiaries of TCM; they have deeply experienced TCM's efficacy, and in learning TCM they will not raise questions about whether TCM is useful or useless.

Recently, because of some personal matters, I interrupted teaching for several months. Last weekend these two young disciples came to class: one had rhinitis with incessant runny nose, using a pack of tissues a day; the other had suffered insomnia for months, unable to sleep day or night.

After examining them, I gave the rhinitis patient the Chinese patent medicine Biyankang Tablets, and the insomnia patient Gancao Xiaomai Dazao Tang.

This week in class, the rhinitis patient, young disciple Chuwen, said she had taken it only a few days and the rhinitis was already much better, now using only one or two tissues a day.

The other, the insomnia patient Yihan, had taken Gancao Xiaomai Dazao Tang to no effect. So this week I took a detailed history; Yihan told me he had had this symptom for months, and besides insomnia also had shoulder and back pain, bodily tightness and discomfort. When he fell ill I happened to be away; his parents, fearing a serious illness, did a series of tests. They also had someone give him massage; though the shoulder pain eased somewhat, the bodily tightness and insomnia worsened day by day, with little sweating and cold hands and feet.

So today in class, I first gave him one packet of the Chinese patent medicine Gegen Tang (Pueraria Decoction), to be dissolved and taken at once. Not long after taking it, Yihan said he felt some relief but it was not obvious. With an impatient teacher like me, of course I would not stop there; I then gave him one packet of Mahuang Tang (Ephedra Decoction), dissolved and taken at once, and after taking it urged him to drink hot water to promote sweating. Once a faint sweat appeared, Yihan told me his whole body felt relaxed and the illness had left as if lifted away.

So I used the two young disciples' illnesses as examples to teach them how to treat the root of disease, how to grasp the principal contradiction, how to differentiate patterns and use herbs, and how to flexibly apply the thinking of classical formulas.

As I was speaking, young disciple Chuwen said to me: "Teacher, Yihan has already fallen asleep." Turning around, I saw that Yihan, the young disciple plagued by insomnia, had indeed drifted off to sleep, less than twenty minutes after taking Mahuang Tang.

When he woke I asked Yihan; he answered that his body no longer ached or felt tight. Having slept poorly for months, once the bodily tightness and pain were gone, he was so drowsy he could not control himself, and so he fell asleep while listening to the lesson. After the midday nap, Yihan told me that today's nap was the most restful sleep he had had in these several months. This is TCM's "effect like a drum responding to the drumstick" and "recovery as soon as the cup is turned over" when the right formula is used.

The four of us, teacher and students, laughed heartily as we talked about the amusing business of treating illness while holding class today. I encouraged them to dare, in future, to use what they have learned, boldly writing prescriptions for themselves and their families to treat the small ailments they can treat.

This kind of firsthand, immediate effect will leave a lifelong, indelible imprint on their minds. Tell me, how could such TCM learners and beneficiaries, who have laid TCM's foundational skills from childhood, ever despise TCM?

Of course, I never despise Western medicine either; I always encourage my students to become, in future, people who master both Chinese and Western medicine and who have some breadth in both physical and mental medicine, not becoming frogs at the bottom of a well, arrogant and ignorant; at the same time they must dare to question authority and be able to carry on the tradition while opening new ground.

A person's life is very limited, and his spiritual life too is limited; whether bodily or spiritual, if it is to endure unbroken, the only way is to cultivate successors. I do not want to wait until I am old and lacking in energy before cultivating successors, so on the eve of turning forty I taught these few children.

Now I greatly enjoy this joy of nurturing disciples. Money and rank can certainly bring sensory stimulation, but the joy of nurturing people far exceeds the pleasure brought by sensory stimulation. In educating them, though I have taken on some toil, it is truly insignificant compared with the joy felt in the depths of my heart.