CLASSICAL PRE-REQUISITES FOR THE STUDY OF MEDICINE If one is willing to put in the work, the practice of the Art of Medicine is very simple. Legend has it that Chapter Eight of the Su Wen (The Secret Treatise of the Spiritual Orchid) was hidden away in the ‘Spiritual Orchid’ which was the library of the Yellow Emperor and passed on only to the initiated. Not because it was difficult, but because it was too simple to be grasped by most people, whose minds insisted on making it more complicated. The simplicity can be summed up by Su Wen Chapter 39. The Yellow Emperor (Huang Di) is talking to the Heavenly Teacher (Qi Bo): “Those who are good at speaking of Heaven must
have experienced it in man. Heaven represents the unseen power of Nature: the movement of the four seasons which are present in all forms of life including human beings. The sages of antiquity knew in the depth of their beings how life on Earth was ordered: our task is to bridge the river between the past and the present to see with their eyes, through our own. ‘Man’ stands for the multiplicity of the 10,000 beings and their interrelationships. I must first have a good relationship with myself, centred in the heart which takes charge of all beings, before I am able to create good relationships with others. If we as humans understand that we must live in harmony with HeavenEarth and come to know and accept ourselves, then we become master practitioners of our own lives and are thus able to hold another’s hand as he/she walks his/her destiny. “You
first must have a deep understanding of your own life This willingness to engage with the process of deep reflection, the arrogance to step up to the mirror and the humility to observe what is truly there is what we ask of all students who come to Ongiara College. In return, all faculty and staff of the college agree to hold your hands through the long hours of forgetting the difficult and realizing the simple. “In
the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired.
… FOR THE STUDY OF MEDICINE “Whoever wants to be a doctor . . . must
understand yin and yang and be able to discern life’s
fortunes (read people’s faces and see their fates). They
must also understand the cracks in the tortoiseshells of Zhou
Yi (Yi Jing) . . . without such knowledge they will be like
a blind person in the dark; they will fall down easily. You
must also engage in other reading. Why? If you do not
read the Five Classics, you will not understand justice, humanity
and virtue. If you do not read the Three Histories, you
will not know the past and the present. If you do not
read the exponents of the various schools of thought, you will
not understand what is happening in front of your very eyes! If
you do not read the Nei Jing you will not know the virtue of
mercy, sorrow, happiness, giving. If you do not
read Zhuang Zi and Lao Zi, you will not know how to conduct
your daily life. As for the theory of the Five Phases,
geography, astronomy . . . you also need to study these. If
you can study and understand such knowledge, there is no hindrance
on the road of medicine. You can become perfect.” Ongiara College
of Acupuncture and Moxibustion |