This blog post originally went online March 5, 2021. It’s a topic I’ve been thinking of lately, so I thought I’d repost it. Enjoy!
It is a common trope in stories we hear about medicine – the secret technique or formula. I also used to hear this (and see it in movies) in relationship to martial arts, my initial entry point into Chinese medicine. We’ve also all heard the idea that even widely known medical texts like the Huang Di Nei Jing are of less value without some special oral teachings that make our medical interventions really work.
This idea of secret techniques or methods has fascinated many of us, including me, for a long time. Over the last two decades a lot of other doctors or martial arts teachers have shared with me their secret methods. I can honestly say while some ideas were perhaps interesting, mostly they just left me… Unimpressed…
Enter the Tengu
One of the books I’ve been reading lately is a Japanese text on martial arts, the Tengu Geijutsu Ron (天狗芸術論), the ‘Tengu’s Treatise on the Martial Arts’. Written by Niwa Jurozaemon Tadaki (1659-1741) under the pseudonym Issai Chozanshi, it is a discussion of the philosophy behind training in martial arts in late Imperial Japan. The device Issai uses is the story of a warrior overhearing a group of Tengu discussing martial arts. Tengu (天狗, tian gou in Chinese) are mythical creatures that are said to inhabit the mountains and other out of the way natural places in Japan. Having both avian and human qualities, these creatures are often expert swordsman and practitioners of esoteric religions such as Shugendo.
Issai himself was a talented swordsman, and clearly from his writing an expert in Ruist (i.e., Confucian), Buddhist and Daoist teachings. For example, in his text he frequently quotes the Analects of Master Kong (Confucius). What struck me though while reading through the text was just how much of what Issai said was equally applicable to the practice of Chinese medicine. Interestingly to me, in the third chapter of the Treatise the Tengu discuss the idea of secret technique. In the quote that follows feel free to substitute the word ‘swordsmanship’ for the word ‘medicine’. The ideas are applicable to both.
At one point in this chapter one of the Tengu asks, “Swordsmanship is the mysterious function [principle] of the heart-mind. Why then are there secret techniques? 剣術は心体の理なり。何ぞ秘する事あるや。” To this, the head Tengu replied, “The principles of swordsmanship are the principles of Heaven and Earth. How could there be no one else in the world who knows what I know? Secret techniques are for the sake of beginners! 理は天地の理なり。我が知る所天下何ぞ知る者なからん。秘する者は初学のためなり。”
Very forceful, very straightforward, and very true…
And this should sound familiar to students of Chinese medicine (at least those students who dare to read anything other than basic standard textbooks). In my opinion one of the most important quotes in the Su Wen is from the Zhi Zhen Yao Da Lun (SW74; 至真要大論) where it says:
天地之大紀，人神之通應也。
Heaven and Earth are the Great Principle.
Human’s Shen-Spirit penetrate and resonate with it.
Just like swordsmanship, the principles of Chinese medicine are simply the expression of the grand principles of Heaven and Earth, just in medicine they are applied in diagnosis and treatment.
The Tengu goes on the explain that secret techniques are just an expedient method of teaching beginners. It allows them to perhaps value or trust something given by their teacher. Or the teacher may be waiting to explain something (i.e., the secret) until they believe the student can understand it. In the worst-case scenario, a secret technique is a cynical way a teacher hides his or her own lack of understanding, or a way to string a student along with the promise of something deeper later. Either way, the Tengu explains that the secret technique in no way is some deep principle, because the deepest principle itself is the movement of Heaven and Earth.
Sometimes a teacher (in my experience the best ones) wants the student themselves to work out a problem. Working out the problem by themselves – in other words thinking deeply without being spoon fed the answer – allows the student to see the deeper principles. Master Kong in the Analects mentions this when he says:
不憤不啟，不悱不發，舉一隅不以三隅反，則不復也。
I do not open up the truth to one who is not eager to get knowledge, nor help out any one who is not anxious to explain himself. When I have presented one corner of a subject to any one, and he cannot from it learn the other three, I do not repeat my lesson.
Issai even quotes this passage in his Treatise. The closer the student gets to understanding core principle, the less the need for details, including so-called ‘secret’ teachings. The closer the student gets to understanding core principle, the more they realize there really is no secret technique.
Qi Bo practically bends over backwards trying to impress this idea on physicians (and yet somehow many still can’t hear it). In the first chapter of the Su Wen he says:
上古之人，其知道者，法於陰陽，和於術數。
The people of very ancient times knew the Dao.
They modeled themselves on Yin and Yang, and complied with the Arts and Calculations.
The Dao itself is Heaven and Earth. It is the great principle. Yet in its completeness and complexity it is hard to penetrate directly. So, the sages created symbols that allow us to make sense of it, such as the symbols of Yin and Yang, and the Arts and Calculations, which include ideas such as Five Phases and Ten Stems. In essence, there is no secret technique above Yin and Yang. Why? Because Yin and Yang is the foundational movement of the cosmos. Yin and Yang is the Dao. The Shuo Yuan says that “One Yin and One Yang are the Dao” (一陰一陽之謂道).
The basics are the highest level of teaching. To believe there is a secret to making the basics work simply shows a lack of understanding of the basics. Don’t believe me yet? Here’s Qi Bo again, this time in the fifth chapter of the Su Wen:
陰陽者，天地之道也，萬物之綱紀
變化之父母，生殺之本始，神明之府也。
Yin and Yang are the Dao of Heaven and Earth, the essential principle of the ten thousand things, the father and mother of change and transformation, the basis and start of birth and death, and the palace of the Spirit Brilliance.
And now here’s Zheng Qinan, the founder of the Fire Sage current:
醫學一途，不難於用藥，而難於識證。
亦不難於識證，而難於識陰陽。
On the Path of Medicine the use of herbs is not difficult. What is difficult is knowing the syndrome pattern. Also, knowing the syndrome pattern really isn’t difficult. What is difficult is recognizing Yin and Yang.
If a practitioner believes that there is no underlying theory that explains the natural world and the universe, if the construct of channels and zang-fu are just fantasy, and if acupuncture is simply trial and error, then there can be secret techniques. However, if we believe that Yin and Yang or Five Phases are fundamental natural laws, and that the channels are something that describe, albeit perhaps in an imperfect way, human physiology, then the physicians who wrote books like the Neijing and the Nanjing have already spelled everything all out for us. There cannot be secret techniques that are fundamental to the application of medicine, because nothing is greater or more fundamental than what we already have in the basics. It’s just up to us to really understand it.