Nurturing Life in Classical Chinese Medicine: Sun Simiao on Healing without Drugs, Transforming Bodies and Cultivating Life

What is the goal of Chinese medicine? One obvious answer is to heal suffering bodies, but what does that entail? How do we define 'healing' and 'bodies'? What is the role of the practitioner and the patient in this process? What is 'Chinese' and what is 'traditional' about 'traditional Chinese medicine' and does that matter? These are the questions that we as teachers, practitioners, students and patients need to ask again and again. Answers will vary greatly, depending on financial status, level of education, personal life history, patients' needs, institutional requirements, cultural background and daily mood. As a historian and translator of Chinese medicine texts, medical anthropologist, and farmer involved in sustainable agriculture, these are questions I have been asking myself continuously over the past few years. In the following pages, I offer one possible perspective by introducing you to the lofty ideals expressed by the seventh-century hermit Sun Simiao 孫思邈 in terms of 'nurturing life' (yang sheng 養生). I hope that the sentiments expressed below will inspire you to pursue a vision of Chinese medicine and of healing that at least acknowledges, and perhaps even aspires to, the depth, wisdom and healing potential reflected in the classical writings. Believing that it is best to let Sun Simiao speak for himself, I have selected a handful of examples from one of the most important classics in Chinese medicine, an enormous and comprehensive encyclopaedia titled Essential Prescriptions for Every Emergency worth a Thousand in Gold (Bei Ji Qian Jin Yao Fang 備急千金要方, abbreviated below as Essential Prescriptions), which was completed by Sun Simiao around 652 CE. After a historical introduction to Sun Simiao's life and his perspective on ethics and the professional training of the 'great physician', I have selected three examples with brief representative quotations from the topics of physical cultivation, sexual cultivation and dietetics, in order to illustrate what Sun Simiao meant when he spoke of the 'great physician' (da yi 大醫) and of 'nurturing life' (yang sheng 養生).