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Huang Di Nei Jing Ling Shu: The Ancient Classic on Needle Therapy


Journal of Chinese Medicine • Number 111 • June 2016


conceived, proved to be conspicuously more effective than the conventional healing arts of the time were, whether they were based on empirics, magic or belief in demons. Still, the authors of the texts introducing the new approach did not shy away from immediately putting up the highest possible barriers between the old and new thinking. The explicit demarcation from demon belief is one sign that the protagonists had more in mind than just creating a new healing art. The new medicine, based exclusively on thinking aligned with natural law, drew its legitimacy from a completely new outlook on the world, one that also carried a political message. From a historiographical standpoint, the emergence of this medicine in China raises numerous questions. The texts in the Su wen and Ling shu convey the impression that Huang Di, who remains unknowledgeable except in one dialog with Lei Gong, is instructed by men unidentified in the more ancient sources available to us, yet who drew upon a tradition that had already existed long before. They refer to literature that Huang Di should have known, as a passage in the Su wen makes clear. They cite statistics that reflect a time span of experience with many patients. Also, as the Ling shu repeatedly documents, they identify the differences between “unrefined” (i.e. incompetent) practitioners on the one hand and capable users of medicine on the other. These are hardly the hallmarks of a completely novel approach. Reading the dialogs, one realizes that this medicine had


already been a long established method of healing – and that only the honorable Yellow Thearch had hardly heard a thing about it and was therefore quite clumsy in his attempts to apply this medicine. And that was although in later centuries (probably only by the early Tang period), this Huang Di found at the beginning of the Su wen was viewed as a man of extraordinary intelligence and broad learning. Resolving this contradiction is a matter that research has yet to undertake. In any case, we do not know of any Chinese sources that could legitimize the dialogs’ claim that this medicine had long been in use. The individual who submits to the laws of nature can deduce how long and good his life will probably be. However, this conviction raised the question of whom humans should thank for giving them life. This issue is answered very clearly in chapter 56 of the Su wen and elsewhere:


人以天地之氣生以四時之法成


ren yi tian di zhi qi sheng, yi si shi zhi fa cheng: “Man receives his life from the qi of heaven and earth. He reaches maturity through the laws of the four seasons.”


This leaves no space for metaphysical beings to whom humanity might owe its existence. The Chinese version of an Enlightenment that already became visible there in ancient times led to a completely secularized view of the world – and thereby a medicine as well – which, however,


3.3 shen 神 The most important among the terms to be redefined was, however, 神 shen, generally translated as “spirit” or “deity.” It was, along with “heaven,” an abstract, supernatural power and authority that decided human fates. The demons, ancestors, other spirits, the deities – all these numinous powers were subsumed under the term shen. It was, in league with “heaven,” the expression of the human being’s existential heteronomy. The prayers


very few people accepted. The secularization of “heaven” is recapitulated almost in passing in chapter 5 of the Ling shu. Following a detailed exposition of how health and illness depend on the constitution of each individual and have nothing to do with the intervention of deities or spirits, there follows a brief summation:


此天之生命 ci tian zhi sheng ming, “This is the manner in which heaven grants existence.”


Here, “heaven” is bared of any metaphysical identity; it is nature itself.


3.2 ming 命 Along with fa, a redefinition of the term ming 命 was also needed. Ming originally meant “assignment” and “mandate.” Human life, according to the hitherto accepted idea, was a mandate of heaven. Heaven gave it and could revoke it at any moment, and humans had practically no influence in the matter. That would change under the new, secular world view. The Su wen and, less explicitly, the Ling shu state repeatedly that human beings are part of a system of natural laws through which things emerge, grow, and die within a more or less clearly predictable timeframe. Natural laws can be violated just as social laws can. Both acts result in punishment. The terminology of the Ling shu leaves no room for doubt. Chapter for chapter, it stresses the importance of a behavior called shun 順, literally meaning “adapted.” It is the opposite of a behavior called ni 逆, literally “violation.” The entire human organism, its therapy and therefore human behavior as well, are marked by the opposition of shun and ni, of adapting and violating. Shun, i.e. “following” the appropriate current, promises life, while ni, or “opposition,” means ruin. In chapter 33 of the Ling shu the principle is reduced to a simple little mnemonic verse:


“Those who manage to adapt, survive. Those who indulge in violation go under.”


The parallels between the two levels – of socially desirable respect for moral guidelines and penal codes, and personally advantageous adherence to the laws of nature – are obvious.


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