Disillusioned with "ancient wisdom"

[Taomeow]

Yes, but my taoist teacher and my taiji teacher are Chinese from mainland China.  My taiji style flourishes in Chen village, and my taoist teacher's methods are practiced in those monasteries that are not frequented by tourists.  I have great respect for Westerners keeping taoist arts close to their hearts, I am one of them, but I don't credit us with more than our due.  We produce some bright disciples and occasionally masters, this is not unheard of in taoism, one of the most prominent taoist deities was foreign born after all, I'm talking about Quan Yin...  but I wouldn't put the cart before the horse, or forget who invented the bicycle we ride along the Way.

[KuroShiro]

The spirit is strong, the body never gets sick...indeed going against the yin and yang and the 5E is a cause of disease but ultimately when one transcends these they are no longer a cause of disease.

 

Remember the Barefoot Wayfarer of Opening the Dragon Gate?

 

Bhagavata Purana

 

Five siddhis of yoga and meditation

 

In the Bhagavata Purana, the five siddhis of yoga and meditation are:

 

2. advandvam: tolerance of heat, cold and other dualities. Buddhist monk self-immolation

 

 

How many practitioners really reach this level? A handful (or maybe less).

 

 

The body can already have problems the day you're born, you may inherit some of your parents issues. Our parents/we are not perfect beings and don't live on a perfect world.

Please bear in mind I'm talking about ordinary people living in the 21st century.

 

Saying "The spirit is strong, the body never gets sick" is in my experience simplistic. Problems in the body may affect both mind and spirit, nowadays the simple act of eating can cause havoc in the long term.

[dawei]

Yes, I'm viewing the pessimistic side of the coin, but I am wondering if I should just commit and/or revivify my relationship with TCM or choose another career path altogether...

 

This is coming together with a deeper longing of abandoning all these so-called ancient traditions; ALL the religions, all philosophies, and dream up something much bigger and more embracing of our current times.

IMO, TCM is part of the journey of a living path... discovered over millennia, many are called but few are chosen, in a sense.  If you're not born into it, then adopting or absorbing it is challenging...  if it comes slightly more easy or natural then your path is tracing.   If it feels like study and indoctrination, you can still pursue it but it comes with road hazards.

 

My path took me through TCM and I was quite gun-ho to get into acupuncture and meridian theory... was asked to do a single fill-in class at a local acupuncture school, on Taiji, but ended up teaching Qigong by request of the students in the moment.

 

To make a long story short, my Medical Qigong master showed me that TCM is good up to a point but if one is able to sense Qi, then why do you need to know the point when you can feel the point; meaning, deviation is not always exactly at the theoretical point in question.  This distinction is more about what leads your interest and path rather than what is right vs wrong.  Follow your deepest desire and if it comes with academic instruction, so be it.

 

China is still home to ancient traditions, just go there and with some help you'll find it.  Ignore the comments of folks who talk about it from afar.  I've meet more ancient wisdom in china than I can recount here or in a book.   And most of it is with everyday folks but several about the ancient arts.

 

Try a practice within Taiji or Qigong to get practical application of Qi in the body to understand TCM better... just a thought.

 

Never give up your dream and desire but realize the road is sometimes less traveled and you should just follow your path.

[3bob]

Part of Taomeows description of people struggling in China reminded me of seeing people struggling in India, so many countless hard working and good natured people !! People with very little or even no material possessions yet having life shinning in their eyes and simple joy and kindness in their hearts (of Namaste) amid an almost unbelievable hustle and bustle taking place in the cities... It's true that such spirit can be found all over the world yet when we (or many in the "west") who are commonly locked behind steel and  glass doors of our cars going to and from work, along with keeping our noses to the industrial grind stone at the sacrifice of enriching culture and close connections to the earth, then its no surprise that some our humanity also gets ground away.

Edited October 15, 2016 by 3bob

[Gerard]

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Edited October 16, 2016 by Gerard

[Gerard]

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Edited October 16, 2016 by Gerard

[Taomeow]

Nah...  the West was messing with China for 250 years prior to Mao.  Mao was one outcome, not the cause. 

Read up:

• In the 1800s China simultaneously experiences major internal strains and Western imperialist pressure, backed by military might which China cannot match. China’s position in the world and self-image is reversed in a mere 100 year period (c.a. 1840-1940) from leading civilization to subjected and torn country.
• The Japanese witness China’s experience with the military power of Western nations, and after the arrival of an American delegation in Japan in 1853, Japan is also forced to open its ports. Japan is able to adapt rapidly to match the power of the West and soon establishes itself as a competitor with the Western powers for colonial rights in Asia. In 1894-5, Japan challenges and defeats China in a war over influence in Korea, thereby upsetting the traditional international order in East Asia, where China was the supreme power and Japan a tribute-bearing subordinate power.
• Through the 1700s, China’s imperial system flourishes under the Qing (Ch’ing) or Manchu dynasty. China is at the center of the world economy as Europeans and Americans seek Chinese goods.
• By the late 1700s, however, the strong Chinese state is experiencing internal strains — particularly, an expanding population that taxes food supply and government control — and these strains lead to rebellions and a weakening of the central government. (The Taiping Rebellion, which lasts from 1850-1864, affects a large portion of China before being suppressed.)
• Western nations are experiencing an outflow of silver bullion to China as a result of the imbalance of trade in China’s favor, and they bring opium into China as a commodity to trade to reverse the flow of silver.
• China’s attempt to ban the sale of opium in the port city of Canton leads to the Opium War of 1839 in which the Chinese are defeated by superior British arms and which results in the imposition of the first of many “Unequal Treaties.” These treaties open other cities, “Treaty Ports” — first along the coast and then throughout China — to trade, foreign legal jurisdiction on Chinese territory in these ports, foreign control of tariffs, and Christian missionary presence. By the late 1800s, China is said to be “carved up like a melon” by foreign powers competing for “spheres of influence” on Chinese soil.
• From the 1860s onward, the Chinese attempt reform efforts to meet the military and political challenge of the West. China searches for ways to adapt Western learning and technology while preserving Chinese values and Chinese learning. Reformers and conservatives struggle to find the right formula to make China strong enough to protect itself against foreign pressure, but they are unsuccessful in the late 1800s.
• The Qing dynasty of the Manchus is seen as a “foreign” dynasty by the Chinese. (The well-known “Boxer Rebellion” of 1898-1900 begins as an anti-Qing uprising but is redirected by the Qing Empress Dowager against the Westerners in China.) As a symbol of revolution, Chinese males cut off the long braids, or queues, they had been forced to wear as a sign of submission to the authority of the Manchus. The dynastic authority is not able to serve as a focal point for national mobilization against the West, as the emperor is able to do in Japan in the same period.
• China finds its traditional power relationship with Japan reversed in the late 19th century, especially after its defeat by Japan in the Sino-Japanese war in 1894-95 over influence in Korea. (The Japanese, after witnessing the treatment of China by the West and its own experience of near-colonialism in 1853, successfully establish Japan as a competitor with Western powers for colonial rights in Asia and special privileges in China.)
• China is impressed by Japan’s defeat of Russia, a Western power, in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05; additional reform efforts follow in China and the examination system, which linked the Chinese Confucian educational system to the civil service, is abolished in 1906.
• Internal strains and foreign activity in China lead to rebellions and ultimately revolt of the provinces against the Qing imperial authority in 1911 in the name of a Republican Revolution. (New scholarship, by writers such as Edward Rhoads, challenges the notion that the 1911 Revolution was “inevitable” and suggests that reforms leading to a constitutional monarchy, recommended by the Chinese reforms of 1898 and similar to reforms of Meiji Japan, might have been possible were it not for court politics and military delays that facilitated the 1911 Revolution route.)
• Chinese military leaders, “warlords,” step into the political vacuum created by the fall of the Qing. The warlords control different regions of the country and compete for domination of the nominal central government in Beijing. Sun Yat-sen and his nascent Nationalist Party (Kuomintang or Guomindang) struggle to bring republican government to China.
• The terms of the Versailles Peace Treaty of 1919, ending WW I, enrage the Chinese urban populace by recognizing Japanese claims to former German rights in the Shandong peninsula of China. This leads to an outpouring of nationalistic sentiment on May 4, 1919 and to the subsequent “May 4th Movement” to reform Chinese culture through the adoption of Western Science and Democracy. The Confucian system is discredited and rejected by those who feel it did not provide China with the strength it needed to meet the challenge of the West.
• For some Chinese, Marxism a) represents a Western theory, based on a scientific analysis of historical development, that b] offers the promise of escape from the imperialism that is thwarting their national ambitions, and c) promises economic development that would improve the lot of all. It also offers a comparative philosophic system that can for some fill the vacuum left after the rejection of the Confucian system. The founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 follows the success of the communist revolution in Russia of 1917-18.
• The Nationalist Party and the Chinese Communist Party (founded in 1921) work and compete to reunify China politically.
• The very rapid change in China’s international status and self-image as a leading civilization leads the Chinese on a quest to reestablish China’s place in the world — a quest that continues today.

Edited October 15, 2016 by Taomeow

[Walker]

Hi guys,

 

I just began studying Acupuncture at University and although I've been a huge fan and practitioner of Taoism since 2012, I'm starting to get a bit "oversaturated" with Chinese medicine and the sheer amount of theoretical knowledge in our curriculum.

 

I'm halfway through my first semester and I'm starting to get sick to the stomach at the thought of having to memorize all the theory. With all due respect, a lot of it (TCM) seems to be slapped together in a kind of non-chalant way, is completely subjective and is at the end of the day, moderately effective at best. I find it bland and boring as hell. At least with science you get the excitement of discovering something new, but with TCM it's like studying religion.

 

Yes, I'm viewing the pessimistic side of the coin, but I am wondering if I should just commit and/or revivify my relationship with TCM or choose another career path altogether...

 

This is coming together with a deeper longing of abandoning all these so-called ancient traditions; ALL the religions, all philosophies, and dream up something much bigger and more embracing of our current times.

 

Reeeeeeeeeeeturning to the OP, believe me, I feel you friend. I've been through years of everything you're talking about here, except I've got to live it out in the utterly soulless hallways of institutions of higher stultification in the People's Republic of China. Foreign student attrition rates here are probably at about 50%. If you decide to withdraw from your studies, don't worry, you're normal.

 

It's a good idea to take a good, long, clear look at the pessimistic side of the coin, because it's a coin that's going to eat thousands of hours of your life. Many of those hours will really and truly be wasted, because much of what you do is going to be jumping through hoops. You will be forced to "learn" many things which you will never use, from people who do not use these things, via books whose trustworthiness, veracity, and practicality is impossible to question from your standpoint as a person who lacks the experience and knowledge necessary to judge with any accuracy whatsoever how much of what you're reading is going to be of real use to you.

 

You need to view your TCM education institution realistically. In addition to serving its own ends, your institution mostly exists to make sure that you memorize the information that will show up on licensing exams; to make sure that you know not to stick a needle straight into somebody's liver or spinal cord; to ensure that you hopefully will not throw 200 grams of ginseng, 200 grams of astagalus, and 200 grams of ephedra into a pot to create homemade "energy drinks" for your chronic fatigue syndrome patients; and to give you a diploma which will lend you a degree of prestige, believeability, and the right to make money without fear of prosecution.

 

Your institution is almost certainly peopled from top to bottom with professionals who are middling practitioners, if not worse. Its curriculum is almost certainly almost a photocopy of the PRC TCM university curriculum, which is a piece of shit, and will continue to be one for decades and decades to come, because the Chinese Communist Party really decided, with bloody finality in 1989, that it is willing to accept the consequences of stifling the intellectual growth of its promising youth if that is the cost of maintaining its grip on power. By which I mean to say, your education was not designed in China, nor by your professors overseas, to provide you a platform from which you will encounter Chinese medicine with academic rigor, critical thinking, serious hands-on experimentation, and whatever else your heart may call for. You are paying to get boilerplate, from people who stole their boilerplate from the Orwellian-Kafkaesque-Joseph Helleresque shitshow that anything the Chinese Ministry of Education has its hands on invariably is.

 

Just be thankful that you're probably in a place with much more breathable air than where I am.

 

Now, what's the positive side of your position?

 

If you plan to devote your life to the study of TCM, you will need a diploma, and you will need to pass those licensing exams, so you do need to do all that rote memorization. It's like coughing up the money to get through a toll booth. Once you're on the highway to a career as legally-recognized non-MD, non-RN health practitioner, you are no longer romping freely in the wildnerness the way a reiki practitioner or shaman is, and therefore you will need those precious pieces of paper which instill legitimacy as well as protection from lawsuits and prison.

 

What else?

 

Even though you will certainly have to memorize information that is poorly translated, poorly explained, misinterpreted, never used in the clinic, and even flat-out wrong, you will also, somewhere in there, be memorizing the basic vocabulary and knowledge base that a TCM doctor needs. Thus, as bad as things are, if this is your chosen career path, you actually still do need some of what your university gives you, because its curriculum will instill in you a certain level of basic competence.

 

Furthermore, if you really do make this your life's study, then you're going to need to know thousands and thousands of obscure Chinese medicine vocabulary words and concepts, or else you'll never be able to read the works of great doctors nor further your education by taking courses with some of the highly talented teachers who are indeed out there. Without the basic vocabulary of terms, you're TCM illiterate. The books will be ever impenetrable to you, and the teachers you encounter will find your lack of basic TCM knowledge so frustrating that they will not teach you their advanced knowledge. Showing up at their doorsteps without having a basic education would be like showing up to driving school and expecting to be taught what words like wheel, street, and traffic light mean. Your driving instructor would kill you.

 

Does Chinese medicine work? Yes, it can yield amazing results. It can also fail spectacularly. Most often, I suspect, it's just something ho-hum in the middle. Your university will hopefully give you enough to be ho-hum. Not killing people, not making them (too much) sicker, but also not pulling off too many miracles. That's what you get for four years and tens of thousands of dollars. So it's a pretty good idea to be really, really sure that you're willing to throw so much coin into such an expensive, slow moving toll booth before you continue.

 

If you have the kind of passion that will see you through to the end, then you will need to see beyond the narrow confines of a TCM university education into what's beyond. The best suggestion I could possibly make to an English speaker is to watch everything that Andrew Nugent Head has produced for free (you might want to start with the lecture that's titled something like "the state of Chinese medicine education today), and then pay $120 to join www.traditionalstudies.org and watch some of his videos there. When your level is high enough that you've got some actual needling experience, go to some of his seminars. Nugent Head is not only a very skilled practitioner, but a really, really good teacher who is committed, wholeheartedly, to transmitting practical knowledge in as short a period of time as possible. And he's very good at doing so.

 

But if all this sounds like too much trouble, or you're really not that drawn to learn more about TCM now that you've seen it up close and personal for six months, well, then run, the further the better, because I know waaaaaaayyyyy too many guys and gals who put in four, five, six or more years trying to learn this stuff and left it all behind, so starkly that when their toddlers get sick it's still straight to the hospital for antibiotics without even thinking twice about what else one might do. After all those years of tests and listening to profs drone on and on about yin and yang? Not to mention all that money and lost opportunity, well shit. Now that's a fucking way to waste a solid chunk of your youth!

Edited October 16, 2016 by Walker

[Gerard]

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Edited October 16, 2016 by Gerard

[Taomeow]

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Edited October 16, 2016 by Taomeow

[CloudHands]

needles stuff

 

Not sure but it probably started with fingers... and you probably have 2 hands maximum !

[Taomeow]

Walker,

 

that was a very interesting and stylistically rewarding read.  Reminded me that quite a few disillusioned doctors abandoned medicine to pursue a successful literary career, from Anton Chekhov to Michael Crichton...  who incidentally had many, many unkind things to say about Harvard medical school in his autobiographical book, "Travels." 

 

Did you ever go to a med school in the US?  What are you comparing the picture you have observed in China to?

 

Not for the medical arts, but I did go to school both in an Orwellian enough country and in the US.  Both shocked me with the level of the unnecessary, the undoable, the bureacratically insane, the intellectually disabling and the spiritually deflating aspects of their respective curricula.  And I hear in the med school it is way, way worse.

 

I think it's not something one can blame a particular country or area of study for.  Wherever you go and whatever you learn, you'll be climbing over barricades of garbage to get to the --

well, in many cases, to the dumpster. 

 

Zeitheist...

[gendao]

China is still home to ancient traditions, just go there and with some help you'll find it. Ignore the comments of folks who talk about it from afar. I've meet more ancient wisdom in china than I can recount here or in a book. And most of it is with everyday folks but several about the ancient arts.

Agreed. Anglosphere media pumps out a steady smear campaign ONLY FOCUSING ON NEGATIVE ASPECTS against China - which is like saying all of the US looks like Detroit, lol.

 

Reality is that despite the modern additions of KFC & McDs, the streets are still flooded with authentic Chinese food (to make an analogy). Chinese health treatments (like cupping) are probably about 2-3X as extensive, but only 1/3-1/2 the price, as in the US. The mainstream culture is still permeated with "minor" traditionally healthy lifestyle customs like water being served hot/warm (NEVER ICED) with meals and squat toilets for better elimination, etc etc. And "qi" is not a LITERALLY FOREIGN concept! True masters are not likely to be found in temples, though - but just as private citizens wearing ordinary clothes just living in their ordinary homes. So, I guess if you're looking for John Chang conveniently teaching classes on levitation at White Cloud Temple - you would be disappointed, lol.

 

But if you've never been to China, you really have no room to talk. If you have, then there's a lot more to discuss. One thing I found interesting was how open the topics of spirituality and health were for debate among loose groups there. It's a lot like Daobums or any community - a lot of different views & opinions from each person, with some conflicting. There is no absolute authority or dogma, really. A lot of the general thrust is agreed upon, but there's infinite room for interpretation, especially regarding different paths or details. That's probably why TCM or CCM get so complicated - because that would be like trying to compile all the varying opinions on Daobums into 1 coherent theory.

 

 

But to get back to the OP, healers are usually drawn into the art from having to heal themselves, first. Which usually starts one out on the shallow end with actual personal experience (rather than just jumping in the deep end of theory). And which then tends to personally corroborate for them the starting point of Chinese medicine as the classic axiom from the Huang Di Nei Jing: 不通這痛, 痛則不通 (if not clear then pain, if clear then no pain). I feel this is the essence of Chinese medicine - clearing the blocks allows your body to naturally heal. And if you can just do the first part, your body can do the rest (that all the complicated theory describes).

Of course, finding and clearing out the responsible blocks is not always so simple...and there lies the rub...lol.

Edited October 19, 2016 by gendao

[Orion]

I'd like to contribute my experience to this thread. It's a mix of positive and negative.

 

I realized in my mid-20's that I'm a healer, so I better learn some modalities. I combed over the different things out there, and opted on TCM. I had the greatest heart connection with it. I also chose it specifically because I did not have to endure years of obnoxious training in western sciences. Although I did a lot of biology and biochemistry in university, I do not value biomedicine as much as I value medicines with a spiritual bent. I almost became a Naturopathic Doctor, but after realizing they are basically the natural version of biomedicine, I opted not to. (To this day I don't understand why, in most districts, NDs can practice acupuncture with only 200 hours of training or less. It's kind of a joke.) I'm also a registered western herbalist. The western schools of herbalism have their own traditional, non-scientific approaches that are really amazing. It's also harder to control western herbalists because our plant medicines grow here in this country, and the government can't stop us from formulating them. You eventually learn, the more and more that you get into these practices, that you have to become a little subversive in order to do well.

 

I have been a licensed TCM practitioner for 4 years now. School was very difficult. Our dean was corrupt and a lot of information was withheld for the purposes of greed. Our school was middle rung, but mandatory in order to gain access to the board exams. In my opinion, the entire TCM system in North America, from the schools to the boards, is corrupt as hell. There is very little respect for this sacred tradition in the SYSTEMS that the western world has created. But... it is what it is. I had a great passion for the medicine and such a depth of personal learning that I got a lot out of school. I suspect I have a past life connection to this medicine that drew me to it. I also lived in China and learned Mandarin. Where my classmates performed in a mediocre way, I excelled. It was all my own doing. If I did not have that passion then I would have nothing to show for it. I am meant to do this. I am a healer.

 

TCM education in North America is generally abysmal, with a few exceptions. There are some top tier schools. I disagree that TCM is just old stuff recycled over and over. There is a lot of tradition but there is also a lot of research. It is an evolving modality. You can trace the evolution throughout the centuries. Some of the content taught in schools, like San Jiao theory, 200 years old or so. Texts are constantly being translated. There are some authors and professors who are more trustworthy than others. Mostly, the technique is going to come down to a personal understanding of the foundation, combined with your personal energy practice. Most western practitioners aren't very good because they are too focused on the intellectualization of the practice. They don't see a connection between the refinement of their own being and their practice success rate. The PRC is to blame for this disconnect, combined with western schools of thought being inserted into TCM. I had classmates who did better than me on the exams, they tested well. They are all licensed practitioners now. I would never let any of those people work on me because of their sewer level energy bodies.

 

I have seen miracles performed with TCM. I have performed some of them. I have taken hopeless people who had no other recourse and made them better. I have also failed miserably in other areas, which were learning curves. Over all I feel that TCM is something that deserves a place in the modern world and has powerful applications. People accuse TCM of being "too traditional", but actually what most people are practicing isn't even traditional, it's modernized. The PRC modernized it and then the west took that and added their new agey mumbo jumbo and scientific jargon. It has become a chimera of sorts. The Canadian government is currently in the process of further limiting TCM herbs. In my district, the registrar of our licensing board is a Registered Nurse. She became a DTCM in school before the license even existed. She practiced for 1 year and then the government handed her control of the board, because her husband is a big pharma shill. So the most important position of my TCM board is controlled by someone who doesn't really know TCM, and her position is permanent as long as she wants it. Within the past 5 years she somehow got the TCM board to pass an allowance which lets midwives and nurses practice acupuncture after 50 hours of continuing education. I had to go to school for 2.5 years and do 1,000 clinical hours, AND take a two-part license exam before I was allowed to insert a needle into anyone, unsupervised. This should give you an example of how corrupt things are. (I ended up doing a 4 year program to complete the herbal component.)

 

People say TCM is ineffective, yet biomedicine is constantly stealing from this tradition... which is typical. We have chiros and physiotherapists doing "dry needling", using all the meridian points but calling it trigger point therapy. They puncture people's lungs and insert needles in dangerous ways because they get to do "dry needling" after a weekend course. MDs do intramuscular stimulation and trigger point injections. The point selection by all these copycats was taken from TCM. Biomedicalists are no different than colonialists. They usurp ancient traditions, claim they invented it, and then actively discredit their sources.

 

My challenge as a student and later as a practitioner has not been that the medicine is incomprehensible. I find it rather straightforward so long as I have been able to relinquish my western epistemology and upbringing in order to learn a whole other paradigm of perceiving the reality and the human body. My issue has been sifting through all of the contamination due to modern thinking and political corruption, in order to get at the gold. If you practice from that gold standard, you will always be of service.

 

A factor that would considerably aid the North American process would be to allow apprenticeships. We are currently denied this tradition in Canada and the U.S. You *HAVE* to go to the shitty schools and deal with the systemic corruption because it's a giant cash grab. It's also a means to limit the field. I know many gifted healers who would become leaders in society if they could apprentice; but they will never be because they cannot afford the enormous amount of money required to go to school. That, or school is not their learning style. A lot of healers are more right-brained and academia would suck their soul. I have seen it. People who are already talented try to get qualified and then they abandon healing altogether because they can't play the game. The last thing our systems of healthcare care about is healing. It's about money, power and control. People should be able to apprentice for their training. It would allow North Americans to begin establishing their own TCM lineages, and over the course of many years we could have a very rich system. But biomedicine doesn't want that. Big pharma is just too powerful here.

 

My own city has a very large East Asian population, and in the 1970's a hospital here experimented with having an acupuncture ward. I found this out just last year and couldn't believe it. Patients were given the option of acupuncture or biomedicine, or both. The program was eventually shut down because patients began to decline biomedicine in favour of TCM. As far as I know it was the only hospital in Canada to try a fusion system. One of my colleagues was part of a funding program that was trying to open Canada's first TCM hospital in a neighbouring province, but both the Federal government and Provincial government wouldn't allow it because the medicine was "unaccredited". So the government will give us student loans to go to school on the one hand, but on the other they won't acknowledge that what we're studying is real. Figure that one out. They won't even allow this education to be on the degree system. In the USA I would have a Masters in Oriental Medicine. In Canada it's just a college vocational diploma. Not that I care because I am still doing what I want to do, but it's just an example of the kind of insulting, corrupt behaviour in the upper echelons. They don't want us having equality with biomedicine.

 

I would say, with great heartache, that the main obstacle to being a successful TCM practitioner in North America is the licensing process itself. You have to dish out so much money and put up with so much crap just to get permission to practice that our field has a very high abandonment rate... something like 70% I believe. It's because by the time people get their licenses they are so leeched of passion and so burnt out that they forgot the reason why they even started. It's really depressing. This could be easily remedied with a system of apprenticeship -- real clinical practices, real traditional knowledge, real real real. But that's the last thing biomedicine wants. So, we are stuck with what we have.

 

The reason why I kept with it is because I had additional outside training with a Japanese master who was a lineage practitioner, and taught me about fully utilizing the spiritual component of the medicine. The PRC completely obliterated the spiritual component of Classical Chinese Medicine because of their fanatical ways, but the knowledge is still preserved in other countries. I was only able to work with this master for a short time, but it was enough experience to completely blow my mind and my open my eyes to a whole other reality of not just medicine, but of seeing the world. Humans are only tapping into a tiny potential of what they are capable of. Even though the ancients had their problems, their view was a lot more holistic. Not only do I feel this knowledge is relevant to the modern world, it is completely necessary to save modern humans from destroying themselves. Even if I were to stop clinical practice tomorrow, I would never regret what I've learned. It has greatly accelerated my personal progress in this life and probably beyond. If I had to do it all over again I would.

 

My final words... it's up to you to look inside yourself and find your true inner virtue. If your true inner virtue is calling you to a certain modality, then throw yourself into it with all your heart. Money and career are practical concerns, but they are ultimately temporary. Everything we do on this planet is. My trajectory before TCM was international business. I was headed for the corporate world. I would have hated it and probably had mental health problems. Fortunately life detoured me in a major way. If you are worried you're doing the wrong thing, then take a break and try something else. If you are really meant to do TCM or another healing modality, you will not be able to ignore destiny. Part of what drove me to get into medicine was that I was on the wrong path, and ignoring this fact brought me terrible illness. When I got into TCM my health improved greatly with the knowledge I learned, I made life long friends and connections, my personal energy got a lot stronger, and I started to attract everything into my life that was part of my path work.

 

There are too many people in this world not being true to themselves. Don't be one of them.

Edited October 19, 2016 by Orion

[Walker]

@ Orion: great post!!!

[TheWhiteRabbit]

I like everyone's posts.

 

Sometimes things get... boring.  Sometimes just doing something you like or having fun helps.

It sounds ridiculous but I know if I don't I get cranky or get into heated discussions.

[Jetsun]

Studying anything gets tiresome and boring at a certain point, even if your into it, G.I Gurdjieff explained this phenomenon of energy by law using what he called the 'law of octaves'  which describes how we start out with a lot of enthusiasm and energy doing something but then eventually it becomes difficult and tiresome so we give up, but if you persist and give extra energy when it is most difficult, or get a shock to motivate you, then it will revert around again to being easy and flow with energy rather than being destroyed. 

Edited October 20, 2016 by Jetsun

[cheya]

Thanks, Jetson! I needed to hear that this morning!    

[Walker]

that was a very interesting and stylistically rewarding read.

 

Why, thank you kindly.

 

Did you ever go to a med school in the US?  What are you comparing the picture you have observed in China to?

 

Nope to the first question. As for the second, not really trying to make comparisons. Just a bit of show and tell, is all.

 

Not for the medical arts, but I did go to school both in an Orwellian enough country and in the US.  Both shocked me with the level of the unnecessary, the undoable, the bureacratically insane, the intellectually disabling and the spiritually deflating aspects of their respective curricula.  And I hear in the med school it is way, way worse.

 

Sure, I've heard all sorts of less-than-stellar things about med school in the US from friends and family. I highly recommend that anybody considering any kind of medical work read The House of God--from what I've seen in western medicine hospitals here in China, I tend to believe that the author is not lying nor even exaggerating. But. Look. How to put it? The PRC is on a whole 'nother level. In the US and much or most of the west you can march in the streets in fury if your university is that bad and not only get away with it, but maybe even make things a little better while you're at it. Here? Here, to unite students to sign a petition complaining about the full-bore 100 dB broadcast of a Cultural Revolution-era exercise routine that the entire library is subjected to EVERY DAY at 10am, well, even that is taboooooooo, 'cause you don't wanna do nothing that has echos of 1989 coming off of it, even alls your doing is pointing out the absurdity of making hearing one's own thoughts downright impossible for ten minutes each day so that a red guard can screech at you to touch your toes. And nobody ever, ever, neverneverneverever stands up and does so, save for the one crazy lady who occasionally mans the front desk, and that's 'cause she was probably busy whipping real-life Dao bums with her belt in one hand a Little Red Book in the other forty years ago. And while you learn to shut up and wait for the tammany to run its course, you still silently wonder if making sure for ten minutes every day, in 2016, you still gotta sit back and let the red guard do her ululating, is an accident or something that's very much on purpose. I dunno. Nobody wants to talk about that sort of thing here. But let me paint for you a picture of a typical day in a Chinese TCM university classroom:

 

"Professor" walks in. Boots up aged computer--these are never replaced and in ill repair (just like the foul toilets) because "the school doesn't have enough money," or so the apparatchiks who all drive Audis and Benzes tell me, "their skin smiling but their flesh not smiling." Aiya, I'm already digressing. Next the prof plugs in the USB card. Sometimes asks class what s/he is supposed to be lecturing on that day. Hopefully gets PowerPoint presentation loaded. PowerPoint presentation is dated 8 years prior. So blatant. It is just a copy-and-paste plagiarism of information that probably reads exactly word-for-word like the textbooks we bought, and if not the textbook, then it's just taken from some page on Baidu. Often (usually?) there are no diagrams. Often (usually) there are dozens and dozens of lines of small-print text filling slide after slide. The presentation has never been changed in all its 8 years, and will continue to be used to who knows when. "Professor" proceeds to drone on under the dim fluorescent bulbs until the bell rings. Anybody who is capable of reading aloud could do this job. If your prof is a ranking cadre, and therefore particularly cynical, then you may have to wait while he plays with his phone, sending messages and maybe even buying and selling stocks, upwards of 25 times in a class (yes, I have counted, many times... the fuck else am I supposed to stave off encephaloatrophy or whatever it is they're trying to give me over here?) Seven to nine out of ten students are either playing videogames on their phones, watching videos, playing with social media, taking dozens of selfies, or asleep. The remainder are passionate study-a-holics who are disgusted almost all of the time, except for the Korean study-a-holics, who betray very little of their inner worlds to anybody who is not Korean--I don't even know if they open up to each other. They say it's because they "understand Confucianism." Chrisamighty, well, my gasface proves I don't. Occasionally a question is asked. Answers range (in increasing churlishness) from (a) a re-reading of some sentence in the PowerPoint presentation to ( I don't know, to © that's not in my field of specialty, to (d, by now in openly sneering churlishness) you should already have learned that 3 years ago, to (e) please don't interrupt, I have to deliver this entire presentation to you before noon, and all of this information is going to be on the test. Phheeewwww. If any point is emphasized by a professor, 95% of the time you hear, "listen up, this is important, it's going to be on the test! The test! THE TESSSTTTT!!!" Oh, yes, the test--the TEST! Any emphasis on the actual clinic is almost unheard of. We one day will treat patients? Actual human bodies, that maybe even have hearts and minds inside of them? Then again, when you actually get to see the clinic, then you will know why the professors don't want to talk about the clinic any more than they have to. And to be fair, in a small minority of cases you hear interesting stories. There are a few diamonds in this rough, it's true. But, well, just as likely, when a prof strays from the PowerPoint, you get a nonsensical digression, which may or may not (no, just may), consist of self-aggrandizing anecdotes, like, "I went to Taiwan to teach and they all told me I'm quite amazing." Well, shucks, the Taiwanese are a famously polite people, now, aren't they? Finally, the bell rings, the prof skedaddles licketysplit, the class snaps out of its smart phone glaze long enough to pack its bags and wave cutely at each other, and the weirdos who give a fuck gather to share their bitterness for the ump-hundredth time before schlepping off in despair, reminding themselves, "well, at least I don't have to go $250,000 into debt to study here." For that is our mantra--now you know our secret.

 

Experiences with the administration and the hospital "internship" are par for the course. Except with the administration to the churlishness is added reflex dishonesty and irresponsibility, and to the clinic, a mind-numbingly drone like attitude ("well, yes, we could tailor treatments to the patient like TCM says you're supposed to, but we're too busy for that. And more to the point, if I make up an individualized protocol on the basis of my diagnosis, and then something bad happens, then the responsibility is mine. However, if with every single cardiac patient I just use the exact same 'standard cardiac protocol' every time I do acupuncture, then even if the patient up and dies right there on the table, I won't get into any trouble, 'cause I was using the standard, and the standard is safe, because it's the standard. Standard, get it? Always go with the standard. I just use the standard and I'm safe--after all, patients killing doctors is a big problem these days, and I don't wanna get fired for doing my own thing, either--we've got rules here." Thank Hua Tuo for getting the doctor teaching us that day to at least be honest, instead of pretending to be doing TCM for the sake of wowing the foreign class, 肏!). 

 

Administratively, flabbergasting bullshit that causes you to once again push your expectation bar into uncharted netherrealms happens, at minimum, every week. Every fucking week, sometimes more often. No, really. Most recently? The mail box in the foreign students' dorm disappeared last week. With all the mail in it. Noone, not nobody, not noone in any department whatsoever, will admit knowing who eliminated the mailbox, and all the unclaimed mail that was in it. After much prodding and investigation, the mailbox returned, fetched from oblivion by a nice member of the custodial staff. The mail? Well, gone. All of it. Forever. But don't say nothing, don't lose your little smile, don't go too far with your protests, because you've thrown half a decade or more into this hole, and these vindictive little people, well, they're gonna remember it if you rub their nose in any shit, and they will just maybe fail to release your diploma when you're applying for a license a year down the line, and hell, they might even do that even if you never rocked the boat not one inch in all your years here, because really, most people eating from iron rice bowls don't give a damn about anything but gripping that next rung and slurping that next ass up the line (just a wee House of God reference for ya). So we all smile and nod and make that little polite Chinese "ah ah ah" sound as we ram our fury back into its nebbishy little cage, deep down, to not be the nail that sticks up. Oh, and that mailbox thing? You've gotta be either a fresh off the boat or princess-and-the-pea sensitive to let that get under your skin. That ain't shit, even though I do so wish I had my forwarded copy of Mother Jones to thumb through. Dag.

 

Anyway, not being that nail, well, that's really what this is alllllllllllllll about, all of it, really. Going all the way back how and why TCM became what it is (again, watch Nugent Head's video on the history of modern TCM). The seldom-spoken reality never far from anybody's mind is that this entire sprawling monstrous edifice is a thumping, beating, quivering, metabolizing, metastasizing organic mass of Party power. It's that thing in Akira that Testuo turns into, except Kaneda just doesn't ever win, and it sprawls its guts over 1/5 of the world's population. Oh yes. And it's a Party that's damn fucking sure what it wants the smart, energetic, educated, potentially "empowered" youth of its realm doing in their dangerous years between the rigid rigors of only-childhood and the exhausting rigmarole of parenthood, home ownership, and the career ladder. By which I mean to say that the party-pooping Party wants to be damn sure that the yutes are not sitting around engaging in critical thinking, organization, or, Xi (our noble and glorious Xi Da Da!) forbid, expressing any dissatisfaction with the official China Dream and its enablers. And it just happens to be that those who run this university, are just those very same enablers--you'll only find obedient little cadres here. And so almost everybody--even a grand portion of the foreign students--just shine this shit and call it gold, and smile meekly and politely, and never be that nail, 'cause you know what, the scary thing about China today isn't that it really has to kill or imprison or disappear all that many people any more (save for, amongst the Han, a few rascally reporters and lawyers and Hong Kong publishers, and then a few Tibetans and Xinjiangese whose demise quite possibly comes in the form of a paradox--a quiet machine-gunning). Nah, by and large, the State doesn't have to work hard like it used to back when that lovely red guard work out tape was recorded. It did all that blood and guts work for so long and so well, and to boot has nowadays more or less mastered the internet, that people don't even need to see any bloodshed to know that it's best just to shut the fuck up and get busy carving out one's own little cave in the dungheap, 'cause suggesting that we might have more to aspire to than a lifetime of backbiting in a shitpile is anathema. Anathema that can get you rubbed out with the quickness. And even if it doesn't, well, ain't nobody about to take to the streets with you, so why waste time and breath you might better be using carving out your hole in the dung?

 

So yeah, are any institutions in any lands perfect? Hell nah. Helllllllllll nah. But the PRC's brand of imperfect is something else altogether from what I ever witnessed in the three western countries I've lived in (the US, one in Scandinavia, and one in Oceania)--except for the "grey mass" that is the criminal justice system in the US, which I'm thankful to have only encountered as a white male US citizen, just as I am happy to have encountered this Red Mass as an outsider who can leave at any moment.

 

Anyway, to tie this deluge back into what we've been attempting to talk about in this thread, well, let's just say that it's best not to have any illusions about what one is buying when one pays one's tuition fees at at a Chinese university of traditional Chinese medicine. And for those of you who might be looking for an acupuncturist, nor do you want to be under illusions about what you're paying for when you fork over your hard-earned and accept treatment from 9 out of 10 of the graduates of these institutions, a solid chunk of whom have firm and definite plans to emigrate to western countries. And I don't blame 'em--I just wouldn't let those fuckers stick a needle in me, 'cause a sizable portion of em haven't needled anybody more than 10 or 20 times in their entire five-year university careers, and that's real talk, word is bond!(!) Chinese medicine, with PRC characteristics. Yes indeed, yes indeed.

 

Hot damn, writing that was cathartic. I need to go outside and do some Cultural Revolution gymnastics while I'm still feeling all spry and youthful, 步行者万岁，万万岁！！！！！

Edited October 22, 2016 by Walker

[Taomeow]

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Edited October 22, 2016 by Taomeow

[Orion]

Chinese medicine, with PRC characteristics. Yes indeed, yes indeed.

 

Hot damn, writing that was cathartic. I need to go outside and do some Cultural Revolution gymnastics while I'm still feeling all spry and youthful, 步行者万岁，万万岁！！！！！

that the author is not lying nor even exaggerating. But. Look. How to put it? The PRC is on a whole 'nother level. In the US and much or most of the west you

 

I think I need to go cleanse myself after reading this.

 

Gave me flashbacks to my time in China, and why I decided to leave. I got offered a 4 year scholarship to a TCM school there and even though, materially, it looked amazing, something in my heart said to get out and go study in North America. That year enriched my capability to understand the culture of TCM and read some of the classics on my own, but man... if I had to stay one more year in China I would've lost it.

 

I'm talking eastern China, mind you. I liked western much better, would've even settled for Chengdu because it would give easy access to all the stuff I wanted to experience. But in the end I just decided to move out.

 

Kudos to you for actually having the grit to do TCM school there.

[Karl]

@walker

 

Reminded me of getting on the Chinese mono-rail and as the speed ramped up and the buffeting began, in my head I heard the words "fuck, this is built by the Chinese Government".

[9th]

This is coming together with a deeper longing of abandoning all these so-called ancient traditions; ALL the religions, all philosophies, and dream up something much bigger and more embracing of our current times.

 

When you truly set out on a path of evolution - there will be no system, no tradition, no cultural heritage to help guide you or fall back on.  The only reason to learn a system of cultivation and follow it with total discipline is to get to the point where you dont need it anymore.  You are supposed to grow out of it.  All effective systems of self-cultivation (whatever they may be) help you develop your will to the point it becomes an effective tool rather than just an enticing possibility.  Once you have developed the power of doing things for yourself, you must take the next step and actually do them.  That is the real point.  Ritualized adherence to traditionalism for its own sake is not only a dead-end, its completely harmful in every way.  The desire to become "comfortably numb" doesnt go away once you become established in a particular tradition - in fact, it actually becomes much more desirable due to the support systems in place, as well as the community and so forth.

 

Bruce Lee was a legend and a true champion fighter for a damn good reason.  He invented a fighting style based on all he had learned, just like the many Grandmasters that have come before and after.  While the extent of how "radical" it was is certainly open to debate - I think its probably the most well known example for most people, especially those who are less familiar with martial arts.

“Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.” 

“Using no way as a way, having no limitation as limitation.” 

 

- Bruce Lee

 

Real "Taoists" should already be on this same page.  Its literally baked into the basis of the tradition.  Its made very clear from the outset.

 

Perhaps some of you are familiar with the Buddha's parable about the raft and the river?  That is another indication of the same thing.  Here is the original text from the Pali Canon:

 

"Monks, I will teach you the Dhamma compared to a raft, for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of holding onto. Listen & pay close attention. I will speak."

 

"As you say, lord," the monks responded to the Blessed One.

 

The Blessed One said: "Suppose a man were traveling along a path. He would see a great expanse of water, with the near shore dubious & risky, the further shore secure & free from risk, but with neither a ferryboat nor a bridge going from this shore to the other. The thought would occur to him, 'Here is this great expanse of water, with the near shore dubious & risky, the further shore secure & free from risk, but with neither a ferryboat nor a bridge going from this shore to the other. What if I were to gather grass, twigs, branches, & leaves and, having bound them together to make a raft, were to cross over to safety on the other shore in dependence on the raft, making an effort with my hands & feet?' Then the man, having gathered grass, twigs, branches, & leaves, having bound them together to make a raft, would cross over to safety on the other shore in dependence on the raft, making an effort with his hands & feet. [7] Having crossed over to the further shore, he might think, 'How useful this raft has been to me! For it was in dependence on this raft that, making an effort with my hands & feet, I have crossed over to safety on the further shore. Why don't I, having hoisted it on my head or carrying it on my back, go wherever I like?' What do you think, monks: Would the man, in doing that, be doing what should be done with the raft?"

 

"No, lord."

 

"And what should the man do in order to be doing what should be done with the raft? There is the case where the man, having crossed over, would think, 'How useful this raft has been to me! For it was in dependence on this raft that, making an effort with my hands & feet, I have crossed over to safety on the further shore. Why don't I, having dragged it on dry land or sinking it in the water, go wherever I like?' In doing this, he would be doing what should be done with the raft. In the same way, monks, I have taught the Dhamma compared to a raft, for the purpose of crossing over, not for the purpose of holding onto. Understanding the Dhamma as taught compared to a raft, you should let go even of Dhammas, to say nothing of non-Dhammas."

 

 

 

So if this is some kind of new information for you, some kind of new idea or revelation - then you havent actually accepted the complete depth of wisdom that the most profound traditions have to offer.  This is the point.  This is the goal.  This is the purpose.