One question I am often asked is what Traditional Chinese Medicine is and how it works.

It is often tricky to answer without doing so through the lens of Western Medicine.

These Medicines cannot be compared, understood or proven via the other. These are from different cultures, language, history and context. Thus remain many words, theories, approaches and understandings which easily get ‘lost in translation.’ Since the languages are so different, that alone creates a vast separation in terms of perspective, relating, expressing and approaching what it is to be in this world as a human with a body.

I recently found a poem which parabels a palpable difference between Eastern and Western approaches:

____________

The Blind Man and the Elephant (Tale from the Mahapra Janaparamitra Sutra):

Once there was a King who ordered his Minister to bring in an elephant and let some blind men touch the animal one by one.

After every one of them had their turn, the king asked them what they thought the elephant was.

The one who touched its tusk said it was like a carrot.

The next had touched its ear and said it was a dustpan.

The third its foot and said it was a pillar.

The fourth its back and said it was a bed.

And finally, the fifth its belly and said it was a tub, and the last its tail and said it was a rope.

__________

This parabels the process in Western Medicine to diagnose by specialist, by zooming in. If someone sees multiple specialists, with multiple diagnosis; all will have a different perspective, a different diagnosis and all will be correct in that sense.

In comparison, TCM would see with eyes the elephant within it’s habitat. The pulse taking, the tongue, the many questions and detailed health history support us in understanding the elephant as a whole organism, not separate pieces or even dissociated from history, environment and social relations. While discepancy may exist between Practitioners about the true root from which the complaint arises: the gist here is that TCM views 360 degrees of the elephant, not pieces. From the Huangdi Neijing (2600 BCE): “上醫治未病 Superior doctors prevent the disease, mediocre doctors treat the disease before evident, inferior doctors treat the full-blown disease.”

This is not an article of right or wrong, this story reminds us that each Medical tradition has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Art: Blind Men Appraising an Elephant – Ohara Donshu