Appendix II: Excerpts of 医行天下 Journey to Cure
Journey to Tibet
My friends in Hong Kong and I started planning our trip to Tibet a year ago. One of them is a disciple of Tulku Jamyang Khyentse Sogyal Rinpoche (Hereinafter referred to as“the Tulku”). While in Hong Kong, I’d heard her talk about theTulku’s wisdom and compassion on several occasions, and have been longing to go to Tibet to pay him respect and learn from him.
Originally we had intended to go to Tibet directly after finishing my Yun-You in Sichuan province, but for one reason or another, we had to postpone the trip again and again; finally we started out on July 22, 2007, flying first to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, before heading to our destination Riwoqê county, Qamdo Prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region. This is a remote place bordering Qinghai province, so small that one has to look very closely on the map to find it.
Just before leaving for the airport, I grabbed a book from my bookshelf, and it happened to be《正见 (What Makes You Not a Buddhist ) authored by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, a gift from a friend in Shenzhen. That same evening when I spotted the same book by the Tulku’s bedside in Chengdu, I could not help but wonder if it was pure coincidence or fate.
The Tulku was in his twenties, with a gentle face and eyes radiating kindness. The meeting with him was starting to prove what I had heard about his wisdom and compassion. When I asked him for advice on my weakness, saying that I tended to be impatient and short-tempered, he smiled and said,“Tolerance of others is the ultimate tolerance of yourself ”. This was the first and the most impressive lesson I’ve ever learned from him.
Early next morning, our group of ten flew from Chengdu and landed at Qamdo Bamda Airport, before taking a bumpy car ride on the curvy unpaved road for the rest of the day. We managed to arrive at Riwoqê just before sunset. In front of the monastery where the Tulku’s father was worshiped, crowds of lamas and the locals were lining the street, playing holy drums and horns, to welcome the return of the Tulku. He had now put on his cassock, and mounted the stage where he would perform the grand holy ritual.
After the opening ceremony, chanting continued in the hall as the ritual went on. We retreated to the next room for a rest and meal. Meanwhile, the Tulku went to give his blessings to people queuing outside for him.
I had come to address the Tulku as “Master” by then, as several friends in our group were his disciples, including an established doctor of Western medicine whom we called “Hongjie
(Sister Hong)”. They all addressed the Tulku as “Master”, so I thought I should just follow suit. When Master came into our room
some time later, he was bringing with him a teenage boy about 15 years old. He said to Hongjie and me, “Look, Hongjie is a doctor
of Western medicine, and Hongchi knows Chinese medicine. May I ask you both to treat this boy’s eyes?” I looked at the boy, and was stunned by how bad the condition was — the eyes were red and swollen; the pupils had changed colour with pus. Hongjie inspected the eyes and said she could not do much without medicine or equipment at hand, and suggested that I try Chinese therapy while she assisted me.
I first asked the boy to look at a photo hanging on the wall to test his eyesight, but he said everything was so fuzzy that he could not see it at all, in fact nothing further than one meter away. Although I did watch how Lao Yang had treated eye diseases at Mt. Emei, I had never tried it myself, not to mention performing acupuncture on the eyes, so I called up Lao Yang, to be on the safe side. Lao Yang gave me some instructions on the phone. I also checked up a few more acupoints related to the liver in the medical book I had with me. According to the patient, his eye problem started after he had recovered from another critical disease; I thus decided that his liver must have been injured.
About 20 minutes later, I removed the acupuncture needles from the boy, and miracle descended — he could see figures in that photo, though not very clearly! This showed that his eyesight had improved.
Word spread fast and I suddenly found myself surrounded by people seeking medical help. First there was someone with an aching elbow, on whose leg I inserted one needle and the pain was gone right away. After that, two others came, who had pain in both arms and knees; I used needles on them and the pain immediately subsided. Some of the Hong Kong friends I traveled with came up to me for treatment as well, for they had known that I was capable of acupressure, but had no idea about my acupuncture skills until then. Later, many others asked for treatment, including local military and police officers, even Master himself. Most of these people suffered from pains in the head, neck, back, shoulders or knees. I would have made them do Lajin first, but the long and thick Tibetan clothes they were wearing were not quite convenient for that, and each person would need twenty minutes and we did not have that much time. Moreover, considering the amount of trust needed during the treatment, I thought it would be wise to wait till they knew me better and had more faith in me.
I first corrected spinal dislocations using Chinese Zhenggu
(bone-setting) techniques to relieve some of the pain, and then used acupuncture to treat the rest of the aching spots. The effect was obvious. According to the record I kept, I treated more than ten patients that evening and all of them got better instantaneously.
The next day more people came, with various pains and illnesses in many divisions of Western medicine: internal medicine, surgery, gynecology, pediatrics, and so on. I had to bring out all the skills I had learned, Zhenggu (bone-setting) learned from Dr. Zhu, acupuncture from Lao Yang, and acupressure from Lao Li. Luckily I had Hongjie to help, an experienced military doctor graduated from a prestigious medical university.
My reputation travelled so fast that more and more people showed up for treatment; in order to get to the front of the queue, some arrived before dawn, and some even came the night before and slept in the corridor of the monastery. On certain days, I had to treat over one hundred people; before long, we had to start giving out numbers so as to maintain some order.
I did not expect things to turn out this way. I had come here to learn Dao (the source and law of the cosmic order) from the Tulku; however, at some point Dao and medicine converged and my spiritual journey became a journey to cure.
Master smiled at me and said, “You probably have to extend your stay here, even three months might just be too short”.
…
It had been only one month since I first tried acupuncture; within half a month, I had treated over 1,000 patients with my needles at the monastery, and witnessed remarkable effects in over 90% of the cases. Most of them had back and knee pains, but there were also a few dozen deaf people — one day I treated more than ten of them. Except for the two who were congenitally deaf, the hearing of the rest all improved after my treatment.
The medical skills I have acquired are most suitable for people in a remote and under-developed place like Riwoqê, because I am not dependent on medicine or medical equipments. I remember it was once suggested to the Tulku that a certain famous doctor be invited to the monastery the following year. He immediately said that it would not work, as such a doctor would be helpless at a place where there was not even a pharmacy. Besides, Tibetans are not used to the way the Han cook and drink medicinal soup;
therefore, treatments that do not require medication are the most efficient and desirable.
Due to the cold climate in Tibet, a great number of Tibetans suffer from pains in their back and joints. This observation prompted me to integrate Lajin into my therapeutic routine subsequently. Prior to other treatments, I asked those waiting their turns to help each other with Lajin. As it turned out, it was an effective solution. Not only could people see and learn from each other, many felt their pain relieved after Lajin, if not thoroughly cured. Even symptoms such as headache, dizziness, stomach pain, costal pain and heartache could vanish after Lajin. If there were any pain left in the body, a large part of it would be relieved after bone-setting, and the rest could be treated with acupuncture.
My diaries basically became medical notes of my stay at the monastery. They contained a complete record
of each patient’s condition, the therapeutic procedures and the
effects. Readers interested in Chinese medicine may find certain valuable information in these notes; if not, they should be entertaining travel essays as well.
My Diary
July 31, 2007 - The Tulku learns acupuncture.
I have been working all day today. I am tired, but my heart is filled with joy. I went outside for a brief break this evening, and it happened to be the moment when the crystal full moon is atop the opposite mountains. The beautiful scene brought to my mind the uncertainty of life. If I stood there a little longer, the moon would be gone, and the whole scenery would be different.
The rays shone on the dark mountain range, ravishing and tranquil. A dog was barking from afar, adding to the peace of the night. Under the window of my room there was a wooden stake. A wolf was hitched to it. The animal nearly lost its life, but it was saved by the compassionate Tulku, who believed in the equality of all living things and asked the hunter not to kill it. It was then brought back to the monastery, and has been taken care of till this day.
Tonight at ten, the Tulku joined us as an acupuncturist. In the beginning he was helping to interpret for Yangzhen. After he saw me curing four patients in a row with only one insertion each and saw how happy the patients were, he got more and more excited and finally made up his mind to give it a try. His first patient was an old lady with knee pain. I showed him the acupoint on her arm and how to insert the needle, and then he did it. The pain was gone instantly. The result pleased him enormously, and gave him confidence to continue. After the first patient left, a father and his son came — the father had eye disease and the son seemed to be having appendicitis. Following my instructions, the Tulku performed acupuncture on them, and they recovered right away. Everyone was elated.
I had wondered why more and more patients were coming to the monastery, and the Tulku reassured me that it was exactly a proof that my treatments were effective. He also told me that he had talked to my patients to find out if their symptoms had recurred afterwards, and their answers were all “no”. However, he was concerned about me these days, as the number of patients is increasing every day, keeping me busy from early morning till midnight. He was glad that from now on he would be able to give me a hand when needed.
Although the Tulku never learned medicine, he actually came from a family that had practiced Tibetan medicine for generations, which was well known among the locals. Acquiring acupuncture skills might well be the good opportunity for him to re-establish his family tradition.
Most Tibetans came to treat various pains, but today there were more than usual people with hearing or eye problems. My efficiency and effectiveness in treating these diseases improved a lot. I made it a point to check a patient’s hearing or eyesight both before and after the treatment, and in every single case I saw satisfactory result. Today I also started to use Doujian (shoulder twitch) to relieve shoulder pain, and found it quite effective. I made the Tulku try the method together with me on an elderly man. After the therapy, all the pain vanished from the man’s neck and shoulders.
The particular cases that needed to be recorded today are as following:
1. A boy with abdominal pain, said to have appendicitis by his father I checked and found the aching spot near the navel two to three inches to its right, so it was not necessarily problem with the appendix. In Chinese medicine, the disease name is not important, as long as the correct meridian can be located and cleared, pain can be relieved, and sickness be cured. The Tulku happened to be interpreting for me just then, so we inspected the patient together. Then he inserted a needle into Yanglingquan acupoint, and it stopped the pain right away. This acupoint is along the Gall Bladder Meridian, therefore the problem could be cholecystitis or an injury.
2. A woman with headache, neck pain, backache and lower back pain I used bone-setting first, and after a few cracking sounds from her thoracic vertebra, much of the pain in her back and shoulders was gone. After that I set her cervical vertebra and got rid of the pain in her neck. At last I twitched her shoulders and all the pain disappeared. There was no need for acupuncture.
3. Approximately eight patients with pain, numbness and coldness in one side of the body, from shoulder to feet. First I made them lie down on their belly so that I could set the spine. As it turned out, each of them had several dislocations that needed adjustment; after the therapy, they got up and all felt very good. Next I sat them down and treated them with acupuncture, I chose acupoints along the opposite side of the body, from shoulder to hand, knee to foot, and some extra acupoints on their elbows as well, so many acupoints that I nearly used up all my needles. After I removed the needles, all symptoms they had before disappeared.
There were so many patients today that I was squeezed in the middle and could hardly perform my duties. I could not remember how many times I had to ask them to wait outside of the room. I also had to send the patients who already had needles inserted in them to rest in the other room and to come back later for removal of the needles and final inspection. The Tulku was very generous and had free lunch prepared for all those who had to wait.
The Tulku tried a needle on himself today, at the Sanyinjiao acupoint. I suggested that acupoint because it is essential to treating several disorders in him. I believe he will become more and more interested in Chinese medicine from now on. Through acupuncture he will have a comprehensive mastery of the Dao of medicine and could eventually combine it with Buddhist doctrine.
My two interpreters, Zhaxi Yangzhen and Chilin Yangzhong, have also begun practicing acupuncture under my instructions and achieved fairly good results. Both of them are well-educated, one being a high school student and the other an undergraduate student at a Tibetan medical university. They both are promising young talents who will be able to treat illnesses in the near future. What is especially encouraging is that they are learning medicine the same way as I did — through plenty of clinical practices from the very beginning.
In the evening, after all the patients were gone, the Tulku and I chatted for a long time, mainly about the Rime movement in Tibetan Buddhism, wherein practitioners practice on a harmonized common ground while maintaining the variety and authenticities of different lineages. The Tulku also emphasized his view that “tulku” should not be reduced to a profession; instead, it should be a spiritual realm that is to be reached through personal pursuit.
August 1, 2007 — Giving out queue numbers
Lots of patients were already queuing outside while we were still having breakfast. In view of yesterday’s crowdedness, the Tulku instructed Yangzhen to let five people in for treatment each time she opened the door. It worked for a short while, but soon people just flooded in and no more order could be kept. All chairs and cushions in the room were occupied. I was surrounded by the crowd and my working space got smaller and smaller. This is the reception room of the monastery, and normally it is where the Tulku receives his disciples who come from afar, talking, teaching, and dining with them. On a busy day like today, the only relatively peaceful moment was during lunchtime, when there were only five patients left in the room who had needles inserted in them.
I was still impatient sometimes. There was an old man who needed fixing on his neck and shoulders today. He remained stiff throughout the treatment and resisted the strength from my hands, and he got more and more tensed when the interpreters and on-lookers desperately tried to help him understand how to relax. He had indeed made the greatest effort, and even thought he got it right, but what he did was just the opposite, which amused the crowd and provoked waves of laughter. I did everything possible to let him relax, but it seemed only to make him even more anxious; meanwhile, there were still so many others waiting to be treated, so I decided to give it up and send him home. However, when I watched him leave and remembered that he had queued for so long for this opportunity, much regret swelled up in me. I probably should have tried harder.
After lunch, as there was still no sign of order with the crowd that poured into the room, I decided to adopt the queue number system. I asked Qimei to write down numbers and hand them out, so that we could control the number of patients in the room, and those with the late numbers could even go home and come back after dinner.
We finished work early this evening by ten o’clock, because we gave out only one hundred numbers in the afternoon. Just then, the chief lama from Tsoka Monastery arrived unexpectedly, with a worried look on his face. He talked briefly to the Tulku, who then explained to me that the lama had come to ask for my urgent help to save someone already unconscious. My teacher Lao Yang had often said to me that Chinese medicine could be more efficient than Western medicine in saving life at a critical stage, and I had watched how he had rescued an unconscious patient struck by a stroke, using acupressure skills. However, I had not experienced such an emergency myself. Not knowing whether it was a stroke or other illnesses, all I could do was gather up my medical books and depart in no time. At that moment, it occurred to me that I was like one of those unlicensed “barefoot doctors” during the Cultural Revolution. Nevertheless, in such a remote place where medical resource is scarce, one has to rely on any available help.
We rushed to the patient’s home in the lama’s old rusty van. When we entered the house, I noticed that there were many familiar faces in there. It turned out that at least three members of this family had been to the monastery for my treatment, and were all happy with the result; that could probably explain why they had asked the lama to go and bring me here.
The patient was a young woman in her 20s, and it obviously wasn’t a stroke. When I arrived, her relatives were helping to give her oxygen through a tube. Yangzhen, my interpreter, asked the family what had happened, but nobody knew much more than the fact that the woman had sudden pain in the chest and fainted. I had thought of a few useful acupoints on my way, so I tried them immediately. At first I pinched the Renzhong acupoint, after that I asked someone to continue pinching it while I pressed Neiguan acupoint. Since the cause of the onset was unclear, I could only diagnose according to my own observation. I figured that it might be angina pectoris (a kind of heart stroke), and quickly looked it up in my book. Besides Neiguan acupoint, the book mentioned another acupoint named Lingdao, which also works for angina pectoris, so I inserted needles in both acupoints before referring to my book again. There was another method, which was to needle an acupoint in the chest. I removed the patient’s clothes to look for that acupoint, and to my surprise, there were lots of burnt marks on her chest, and seals that resembled Taoist incantation symbols. A lama standing behind me explained that he was a Tibetan doctor, and those were evidences of his treatment. Apparently the angina had occurred seven times within the last ten days, and this time was the most severe. Had I not been there, he would have had to use the same method to stimulate the acupoint with a burning object such as a cigarette. I had seen many of the same burnt marks on the Tibetans I had treated, so perhaps they were all treated by the same doctor.
The woman groaned painfully during the treatment, but woke up soon after I performed acupuncture on those acupoints. Watching her gradually regain consciousness and begin to talk, her relatives were full of appreciation to me. I stayed a little longer until the patient was fully conscious and speaking normally, and then left in that old van.
On the way back I was immersed in thoughts, about how “barefoot doctors” in the old days had taught themselves to cure by referring to medical books, just like what I did tonight, and about how lots of people had looked down upon them and called it illegal medical practice. I wondered if it would be right to watch someone die only because the doctor did not have the proper license. What did work tonight shall work on other occasions as well, and legal status should be given to these doctors so that they could save more lives. As far as I know, in a remote place like this, many people are left to die because they do not have access to any medicare. Even in the cities, seeking medicare can be quite a headache. Resuming and legalizing the “barefoot doctors” and teacher-apprentice traditions could be a pragmatic solution to supplement the current medicare system. When folk doctors are included as part of the medicare team, it will indeed be a great blessing to the whole nation.
From my point of view, the system of “barefoot doctors” and the dispatch of medical teams to African countries were among the few constructive acts during the Cultural Revolution.
Mao’s propaganda slogans might seem ridiculous today, but one of them could be valuable for modern China,“We should prioritize medicare in the countryside!
Journey to Tibet
My friends in Hong Kong and I started planning our trip to Tibet a year ago. One of them is a disciple of Tulku Jamyang Khyentse Sogyal Rinpoche (Hereinafter referred to as“the Tulku”). While in Hong Kong, I’d heard her talk about theTulku’s wisdom and compassion on several occasions, and have been longing to go to Tibet to pay him respect and learn from him.
Originally we had intended to go to Tibet directly after finishing my Yun-You in Sichuan province, but for one reason or another, we had to postpone the trip again and again; finally we started out on July 22, 2007, flying first to Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province, before heading to our destination Riwoqê county, Qamdo Prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region. This is a remote place bordering Qinghai province, so small that one has to look very closely on the map to find it.
Just before leaving for the airport, I grabbed a book from my bookshelf, and it happened to be《正见 (What Makes You Not a Buddhist ) authored by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, a gift from a friend in Shenzhen. That same evening when I spotted the same book by the Tulku’s bedside in Chengdu, I could not help but wonder if it was pure coincidence or fate.
The Tulku was in his twenties, with a gentle face and eyes radiating kindness. The meeting with him was starting to prove what I had heard about his wisdom and compassion. When I asked him for advice on my weakness, saying that I tended to be impatient and short-tempered, he smiled and said,“Tolerance of others is the ultimate tolerance of yourself ”. This was the first and the most impressive lesson I’ve ever learned from him.
Early next morning, our group of ten flew from Chengdu and landed at Qamdo Bamda Airport, before taking a bumpy car ride on the curvy unpaved road for the rest of the day. We managed to arrive at Riwoqê just before sunset. In front of the monastery where the Tulku’s father was worshiped, crowds of lamas and the locals were lining the street, playing holy drums and horns, to welcome the return of the Tulku. He had now put on his cassock, and mounted the stage where he would perform the grand holy ritual.
After the opening ceremony, chanting continued in the hall as the ritual went on. We retreated to the next room for a rest and meal. Meanwhile, the Tulku went to give his blessings to people queuing outside for him.
I had come to address the Tulku as “Master” by then, as several friends in our group were his disciples, including an established doctor of Western medicine whom we called “Hongjie
(Sister Hong)”. They all addressed the Tulku as “Master”, so I thought I should just follow suit. When Master came into our room
some time later, he was bringing with him a teenage boy about 15 years old. He said to Hongjie and me, “Look, Hongjie is a doctor
of Western medicine, and Hongchi knows Chinese medicine. May I ask you both to treat this boy’s eyes?” I looked at the boy, and was stunned by how bad the condition was — the eyes were red and swollen; the pupils had changed colour with pus. Hongjie inspected the eyes and said she could not do much without medicine or equipment at hand, and suggested that I try Chinese therapy while she assisted me.
I first asked the boy to look at a photo hanging on the wall to test his eyesight, but he said everything was so fuzzy that he could not see it at all, in fact nothing further than one meter away. Although I did watch how Lao Yang had treated eye diseases at Mt. Emei, I had never tried it myself, not to mention performing acupuncture on the eyes, so I called up Lao Yang, to be on the safe side. Lao Yang gave me some instructions on the phone. I also checked up a few more acupoints related to the liver in the medical book I had with me. According to the patient, his eye problem started after he had recovered from another critical disease; I thus decided that his liver must have been injured.
About 20 minutes later, I removed the acupuncture needles from the boy, and miracle descended — he could see figures in that photo, though not very clearly! This showed that his eyesight had improved.
Word spread fast and I suddenly found myself surrounded by people seeking medical help. First there was someone with an aching elbow, on whose leg I inserted one needle and the pain was gone right away. After that, two others came, who had pain in both arms and knees; I used needles on them and the pain immediately subsided. Some of the Hong Kong friends I traveled with came up to me for treatment as well, for they had known that I was capable of acupressure, but had no idea about my acupuncture skills until then. Later, many others asked for treatment, including local military and police officers, even Master himself. Most of these people suffered from pains in the head, neck, back, shoulders or knees. I would have made them do Lajin first, but the long and thick Tibetan clothes they were wearing were not quite convenient for that, and each person would need twenty minutes and we did not have that much time. Moreover, considering the amount of trust needed during the treatment, I thought it would be wise to wait till they knew me better and had more faith in me.
I first corrected spinal dislocations using Chinese Zhenggu
(bone-setting) techniques to relieve some of the pain, and then used acupuncture to treat the rest of the aching spots. The effect was obvious. According to the record I kept, I treated more than ten patients that evening and all of them got better instantaneously.
The next day more people came, with various pains and illnesses in many divisions of Western medicine: internal medicine, surgery, gynecology, pediatrics, and so on. I had to bring out all the skills I had learned, Zhenggu (bone-setting) learned from Dr. Zhu, acupuncture from Lao Yang, and acupressure from Lao Li. Luckily I had Hongjie to help, an experienced military doctor graduated from a prestigious medical university.
My reputation travelled so fast that more and more people showed up for treatment; in order to get to the front of the queue, some arrived before dawn, and some even came the night before and slept in the corridor of the monastery. On certain days, I had to treat over one hundred people; before long, we had to start giving out numbers so as to maintain some order.
I did not expect things to turn out this way. I had come here to learn Dao (the source and law of the cosmic order) from the Tulku; however, at some point Dao and medicine converged and my spiritual journey became a journey to cure.
Master smiled at me and said, “You probably have to extend your stay here, even three months might just be too short”.
…
It had been only one month since I first tried acupuncture; within half a month, I had treated over 1,000 patients with my needles at the monastery, and witnessed remarkable effects in over 90% of the cases. Most of them had back and knee pains, but there were also a few dozen deaf people — one day I treated more than ten of them. Except for the two who were congenitally deaf, the hearing of the rest all improved after my treatment.
The medical skills I have acquired are most suitable for people in a remote and under-developed place like Riwoqê, because I am not dependent on medicine or medical equipments. I remember it was once suggested to the Tulku that a certain famous doctor be invited to the monastery the following year. He immediately said that it would not work, as such a doctor would be helpless at a place where there was not even a pharmacy. Besides, Tibetans are not used to the way the Han cook and drink medicinal soup;
therefore, treatments that do not require medication are the most efficient and desirable.
Due to the cold climate in Tibet, a great number of Tibetans suffer from pains in their back and joints. This observation prompted me to integrate Lajin into my therapeutic routine subsequently. Prior to other treatments, I asked those waiting their turns to help each other with Lajin. As it turned out, it was an effective solution. Not only could people see and learn from each other, many felt their pain relieved after Lajin, if not thoroughly cured. Even symptoms such as headache, dizziness, stomach pain, costal pain and heartache could vanish after Lajin. If there were any pain left in the body, a large part of it would be relieved after bone-setting, and the rest could be treated with acupuncture.
My diaries basically became medical notes of my stay at the monastery. They contained a complete record
of each patient’s condition, the therapeutic procedures and the
effects. Readers interested in Chinese medicine may find certain valuable information in these notes; if not, they should be entertaining travel essays as well.
My Diary
July 31, 2007 - The Tulku learns acupuncture.
I have been working all day today. I am tired, but my heart is filled with joy. I went outside for a brief break this evening, and it happened to be the moment when the crystal full moon is atop the opposite mountains. The beautiful scene brought to my mind the uncertainty of life. If I stood there a little longer, the moon would be gone, and the whole scenery would be different.
The rays shone on the dark mountain range, ravishing and tranquil. A dog was barking from afar, adding to the peace of the night. Under the window of my room there was a wooden stake. A wolf was hitched to it. The animal nearly lost its life, but it was saved by the compassionate Tulku, who believed in the equality of all living things and asked the hunter not to kill it. It was then brought back to the monastery, and has been taken care of till this day.
Tonight at ten, the Tulku joined us as an acupuncturist. In the beginning he was helping to interpret for Yangzhen. After he saw me curing four patients in a row with only one insertion each and saw how happy the patients were, he got more and more excited and finally made up his mind to give it a try. His first patient was an old lady with knee pain. I showed him the acupoint on her arm and how to insert the needle, and then he did it. The pain was gone instantly. The result pleased him enormously, and gave him confidence to continue. After the first patient left, a father and his son came — the father had eye disease and the son seemed to be having appendicitis. Following my instructions, the Tulku performed acupuncture on them, and they recovered right away. Everyone was elated.
I had wondered why more and more patients were coming to the monastery, and the Tulku reassured me that it was exactly a proof that my treatments were effective. He also told me that he had talked to my patients to find out if their symptoms had recurred afterwards, and their answers were all “no”. However, he was concerned about me these days, as the number of patients is increasing every day, keeping me busy from early morning till midnight. He was glad that from now on he would be able to give me a hand when needed.
Although the Tulku never learned medicine, he actually came from a family that had practiced Tibetan medicine for generations, which was well known among the locals. Acquiring acupuncture skills might well be the good opportunity for him to re-establish his family tradition.
Most Tibetans came to treat various pains, but today there were more than usual people with hearing or eye problems. My efficiency and effectiveness in treating these diseases improved a lot. I made it a point to check a patient’s hearing or eyesight both before and after the treatment, and in every single case I saw satisfactory result. Today I also started to use Doujian (shoulder twitch) to relieve shoulder pain, and found it quite effective. I made the Tulku try the method together with me on an elderly man. After the therapy, all the pain vanished from the man’s neck and shoulders.
The particular cases that needed to be recorded today are as following:
1. A boy with abdominal pain, said to have appendicitis by his father I checked and found the aching spot near the navel two to three inches to its right, so it was not necessarily problem with the appendix. In Chinese medicine, the disease name is not important, as long as the correct meridian can be located and cleared, pain can be relieved, and sickness be cured. The Tulku happened to be interpreting for me just then, so we inspected the patient together. Then he inserted a needle into Yanglingquan acupoint, and it stopped the pain right away. This acupoint is along the Gall Bladder Meridian, therefore the problem could be cholecystitis or an injury.
2. A woman with headache, neck pain, backache and lower back pain I used bone-setting first, and after a few cracking sounds from her thoracic vertebra, much of the pain in her back and shoulders was gone. After that I set her cervical vertebra and got rid of the pain in her neck. At last I twitched her shoulders and all the pain disappeared. There was no need for acupuncture.
3. Approximately eight patients with pain, numbness and coldness in one side of the body, from shoulder to feet. First I made them lie down on their belly so that I could set the spine. As it turned out, each of them had several dislocations that needed adjustment; after the therapy, they got up and all felt very good. Next I sat them down and treated them with acupuncture, I chose acupoints along the opposite side of the body, from shoulder to hand, knee to foot, and some extra acupoints on their elbows as well, so many acupoints that I nearly used up all my needles. After I removed the needles, all symptoms they had before disappeared.
There were so many patients today that I was squeezed in the middle and could hardly perform my duties. I could not remember how many times I had to ask them to wait outside of the room. I also had to send the patients who already had needles inserted in them to rest in the other room and to come back later for removal of the needles and final inspection. The Tulku was very generous and had free lunch prepared for all those who had to wait.
The Tulku tried a needle on himself today, at the Sanyinjiao acupoint. I suggested that acupoint because it is essential to treating several disorders in him. I believe he will become more and more interested in Chinese medicine from now on. Through acupuncture he will have a comprehensive mastery of the Dao of medicine and could eventually combine it with Buddhist doctrine.
My two interpreters, Zhaxi Yangzhen and Chilin Yangzhong, have also begun practicing acupuncture under my instructions and achieved fairly good results. Both of them are well-educated, one being a high school student and the other an undergraduate student at a Tibetan medical university. They both are promising young talents who will be able to treat illnesses in the near future. What is especially encouraging is that they are learning medicine the same way as I did — through plenty of clinical practices from the very beginning.
In the evening, after all the patients were gone, the Tulku and I chatted for a long time, mainly about the Rime movement in Tibetan Buddhism, wherein practitioners practice on a harmonized common ground while maintaining the variety and authenticities of different lineages. The Tulku also emphasized his view that “tulku” should not be reduced to a profession; instead, it should be a spiritual realm that is to be reached through personal pursuit.
August 1, 2007 — Giving out queue numbers
Lots of patients were already queuing outside while we were still having breakfast. In view of yesterday’s crowdedness, the Tulku instructed Yangzhen to let five people in for treatment each time she opened the door. It worked for a short while, but soon people just flooded in and no more order could be kept. All chairs and cushions in the room were occupied. I was surrounded by the crowd and my working space got smaller and smaller. This is the reception room of the monastery, and normally it is where the Tulku receives his disciples who come from afar, talking, teaching, and dining with them. On a busy day like today, the only relatively peaceful moment was during lunchtime, when there were only five patients left in the room who had needles inserted in them.
I was still impatient sometimes. There was an old man who needed fixing on his neck and shoulders today. He remained stiff throughout the treatment and resisted the strength from my hands, and he got more and more tensed when the interpreters and on-lookers desperately tried to help him understand how to relax. He had indeed made the greatest effort, and even thought he got it right, but what he did was just the opposite, which amused the crowd and provoked waves of laughter. I did everything possible to let him relax, but it seemed only to make him even more anxious; meanwhile, there were still so many others waiting to be treated, so I decided to give it up and send him home. However, when I watched him leave and remembered that he had queued for so long for this opportunity, much regret swelled up in me. I probably should have tried harder.
After lunch, as there was still no sign of order with the crowd that poured into the room, I decided to adopt the queue number system. I asked Qimei to write down numbers and hand them out, so that we could control the number of patients in the room, and those with the late numbers could even go home and come back after dinner.
We finished work early this evening by ten o’clock, because we gave out only one hundred numbers in the afternoon. Just then, the chief lama from Tsoka Monastery arrived unexpectedly, with a worried look on his face. He talked briefly to the Tulku, who then explained to me that the lama had come to ask for my urgent help to save someone already unconscious. My teacher Lao Yang had often said to me that Chinese medicine could be more efficient than Western medicine in saving life at a critical stage, and I had watched how he had rescued an unconscious patient struck by a stroke, using acupressure skills. However, I had not experienced such an emergency myself. Not knowing whether it was a stroke or other illnesses, all I could do was gather up my medical books and depart in no time. At that moment, it occurred to me that I was like one of those unlicensed “barefoot doctors” during the Cultural Revolution. Nevertheless, in such a remote place where medical resource is scarce, one has to rely on any available help.
We rushed to the patient’s home in the lama’s old rusty van. When we entered the house, I noticed that there were many familiar faces in there. It turned out that at least three members of this family had been to the monastery for my treatment, and were all happy with the result; that could probably explain why they had asked the lama to go and bring me here.
The patient was a young woman in her 20s, and it obviously wasn’t a stroke. When I arrived, her relatives were helping to give her oxygen through a tube. Yangzhen, my interpreter, asked the family what had happened, but nobody knew much more than the fact that the woman had sudden pain in the chest and fainted. I had thought of a few useful acupoints on my way, so I tried them immediately. At first I pinched the Renzhong acupoint, after that I asked someone to continue pinching it while I pressed Neiguan acupoint. Since the cause of the onset was unclear, I could only diagnose according to my own observation. I figured that it might be angina pectoris (a kind of heart stroke), and quickly looked it up in my book. Besides Neiguan acupoint, the book mentioned another acupoint named Lingdao, which also works for angina pectoris, so I inserted needles in both acupoints before referring to my book again. There was another method, which was to needle an acupoint in the chest. I removed the patient’s clothes to look for that acupoint, and to my surprise, there were lots of burnt marks on her chest, and seals that resembled Taoist incantation symbols. A lama standing behind me explained that he was a Tibetan doctor, and those were evidences of his treatment. Apparently the angina had occurred seven times within the last ten days, and this time was the most severe. Had I not been there, he would have had to use the same method to stimulate the acupoint with a burning object such as a cigarette. I had seen many of the same burnt marks on the Tibetans I had treated, so perhaps they were all treated by the same doctor.
The woman groaned painfully during the treatment, but woke up soon after I performed acupuncture on those acupoints. Watching her gradually regain consciousness and begin to talk, her relatives were full of appreciation to me. I stayed a little longer until the patient was fully conscious and speaking normally, and then left in that old van.
On the way back I was immersed in thoughts, about how “barefoot doctors” in the old days had taught themselves to cure by referring to medical books, just like what I did tonight, and about how lots of people had looked down upon them and called it illegal medical practice. I wondered if it would be right to watch someone die only because the doctor did not have the proper license. What did work tonight shall work on other occasions as well, and legal status should be given to these doctors so that they could save more lives. As far as I know, in a remote place like this, many people are left to die because they do not have access to any medicare. Even in the cities, seeking medicare can be quite a headache. Resuming and legalizing the “barefoot doctors” and teacher-apprentice traditions could be a pragmatic solution to supplement the current medicare system. When folk doctors are included as part of the medicare team, it will indeed be a great blessing to the whole nation.
From my point of view, the system of “barefoot doctors” and the dispatch of medical teams to African countries were among the few constructive acts during the Cultural Revolution.
Mao’s propaganda slogans might seem ridiculous today, but one of them could be valuable for modern China,“We should prioritize medicare in the countryside!
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