Disease at Mental Level- : transience, and therapeutic letting-go

[Guest guest]

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:40:14, " sppdestiny " <Revolution wrote:

 

>>The sword stood for Male honor and martial spirit etc. The

Chrysanthemum for culture, the pen. It was also paired with death and,

homosexuality (the flower represents the male anus (japanese can be

weird and intense)). The beauty of the flower represents the height of

culture but also clinging to beauty as the flower is associated with

November, the descent.

 

Perhaps echoed in a quotation from the " Dhammapada " (some buddhist book

of sutras): " the flower is beautiful, but within the flower there is an

arrow pointing right at us. "

 

Or as in the Japanese term " a-wa-re " , as characterized by Alan Watts (in

some taped lecture): that quality of beauty, especially in art (Chinese

Tang and Song, Japanses Sumi), of a sort of nostalgia, beauty by virtue

of its very transience. Watts illustrates citing Shakespeare, the

epilogue to The Tempest, about those magnificent castles of the human

imagination, that, in the end, disappear into " thin, thin air " .

 

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 17:39:23, " sppdestiny " <Revolution wrote:

 

>> Sure there is a sense of loss but my experience is its insignificant

in relationship to the lightness and clarity gained. And the point is

that while emotions come and go, as do the seasons, our relationship to

our experience is volitional and that's what makes the difference

between health and pathology.

 

Agreed. A rhetorical focus on loss is often an antidote to the deeply

conditioned tendencies to accumulate, and hold-on. For instance, again

gleaned from Jeffery Yuen:

 

1) ambitiously trying to absorb and master ever more and more

literature, theory, treatment options and protocols, etc. in CM, vs the

point where one gets it, the viewpoint and attitude (yi – intentionality

/ signification) of actually doing the medicine. At that point, let go

of any particular school, regimen, as a priori standpoint, and just

perceive, in the patient, exactly what's there ( " unproliferated

reality " ). Then respond with whatever is appropriate on the basis of all

the study and knowledge.

 

2) once asked about Taoist " letting-go " (that he'd mentioned in some

medical context), Jeffery responded that it's a sense of not investing

" blood " in phenomena that come and go ( " qi " ). E.g. taking on what a

patient presents, experiencing it through oneself, responding to it

(activity, qi), without letting it into one's blood, where memory,

experience that has past and future (hun, shen) abides. (as in " our

relationship to our experience is volitional " ?)

 

Investing, " financing " (Jeffery likes these words, as also in " banking "

the kidneys " ) with blood, yin, or jing is like attaching, making it into

part of one's " self " , so to speak. Rather, letting it blow thru, like

wind thru a willow tree (image of liver flexibility); lungs / qi

inhaling and exhaling; moment to moment coming and going.

 

Corollary: one needs to be able to clearly discern one's own ability to

take-on AND then let-go in a " resonance " relationship with a patient in

any particular case. Else watch out: burn-out, or worse.

 

tricky, but core stuff,

chris m