Sunday, March 3, 2019

How a Ming Dynasty TCM doctor Zhao Xianke got real qigong alchemy training all wrong!

To associate "Ming Men" with the "yellow court" is not problematic in itself - that's NOT the issue.
But it does specify - how the TCM doctors were trying to justify Qi as a "substance."
Here's a quote to shows what I am stating:
  Quote
Zhao further equates the the gate of life with 'primordial spirit' (Yuanshen)
the quote is on my blog - I can copy and paste from the pdf onto my blog.
OK I found the quote:
  Quote
Zhao Xianke  ....in his opinion....the kidney region is the origin of three formless primordial (yuan) physiological entities in the body: yuanshen (primordial spirit; the gate of life), yuanjing (primordial essence; authentic water) and  yuanqi  (primordial qi; minister fire). They form a trinity, the gate of life is the one spark from where authentic water and minister fire emerge.
OK  - is that clear enough for you now!

In Neidan - the Shen is the fire and the jing is the water - and the Yuan Qi creates the shen and jing - as I quoted Pregadio above.

 Primordial Spirit and Primordial Essence become enclosed in entities of the opposite sign.

Zhao Xianke turned that around - to claim that the Yuanshen creates the Yuan qi.
that's why Desmond's views are all messed up. haha.

HILARIOUS.

 Desmond:
  Quote
 
Tai Yang generating Heaven


 
So in Neidan - the "fire" is the Shen - so shen under jing creates Yuan Qi.
but for the TCM model - from the Ming Dynasty - this is turned around!

The fire minister is the yuan qi or yuan fire and the shen is the formless spirit as the Tai.

So that's where Desmond is getting his world view. that Hexagram.

It's not the original alchemy training. It turns around Shen and Qi.

He writes (Leslie De Vries ph.d. thesis pdf) - Zhao Xianke probably got it from a couple other doctors around the same time.
1600s

Yeah Zhao actually considers the Mingmen to be the Yellow Court of neidan.

So then Desmond's claim that Yuan Qi originates from the soul - this is straight from Zhao Xianke who argued that Yuan Qi and Yuan Jing originate from Yuan Shen.

This, again, is NOT what actual Neidan qigong masters teach - as I quote above - Yuan Qi is the original energy of the universe and can then be directly "imbibed" or "injested" and stored in the lower tan t'ien.
 
And so Zhao Xianke - just like Desmond - basically says the Yuan Qi rules the body but it can be described "with whatever you want" - as Desmond claimed - Zhao Xianke called it
"empty words."

 

Primordial qi and the transmission of well-being.

The concept of the Gate of Life was much elaborated on in the late Ming Dynasty and attributed the vital importance, indicated by its name.... This understanding of Primordial qi is contrasted with that found in texts on self-cultivation.

Boom - corroborated 

 Elisabeth Hsu

The Transmission of Chinese Medicine



This is one of the first studies of traditional medical education in an Asian country. Conducting extensive fieldwork in Kunming, the capital of Yunnan Province in the People's Republic of China, Elisabeth Hsu became the disciple of, a Qigong master a scholarly private practitioner, who almost wordlessly conveys esoteric knowledge and techniques; attended seminars given by a senior Chinese doctor, an acupuncturist and masseur, who plunges his followers into the study of arcane medical classics, and studied with students at the Yunnan College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, where the standardised knowledge of official Chinese medicine is inculcated. Dr Hsu compares the theories and practices of these different Chinese medical traditions and shows how the same technical terms may take on different meanings in different contexts. This is a fascinating, insider's account of traditional medical practices, which brings out the way in which the context of instruction shapes knowledge.














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