Human Life is like Fire Cooking Water

Our Mother Earth has a very smart and wise body.

As mentioned in the commonality of the legends on the human origin between the eastern and western cultures many times earlier, can we assume that the human origin does have no essential difference between the East and the West? As, no matter what race, with what religion or beliefs, the East and the West all call the earth our Mother Earth instead of Father Earth. And our same Mother Earth is widely regarded as with a Kun character of ever giving and gentle nourishing everything on this planet.

Our Mother Earth has her own energy system, to maintain her own life, healthy and long-lasting.

In the middle of this Kun life earth, there is the high-temperature geocentric core energy originated from the Qian universe, the sun. Between the middle and the surface of our Mother Earth is the earth’s soil, including the mantle layer and crust layer. And on the surface are water, mountains, rivers, and gas. The internal is the core, the energy center of our Mother Earth. She exquisitely acquires new energy from the sun and stores the energy in the middle, warms and nurtures her body, the soil, the water, the gas, and the mountains. Water plays a great role in adjusting her body temperature and cooling her down. When there is extra heat from the core, such as volcanic eruption and magma eruption, water plays one of the most important roles in cooling it down. And her air on the surface is the best thermal insulation layer to protect her from losing heat into outer space.

Our Mother Earth has her own respiratory and circulatory systems. What we can directly observe are countless deep holes leading to the deep ground, groundwater, and surface water circulation system in her shallow surface. In her deep ground, there stored her internal gas and oils, which are playing important roles in her life.

While our Mother Earth revolves around the sun, she gets different amounts of energy from the sun at different times of one year, so her body developed a systematic process in maintaining the energy of different parts of her body in a harmonious and balanced state.

There is a way that humans can intuitively feel the different processes of energy absorption and radiation of Mother Earth, that is, by feeling the changes in the temperature of the well water. Our ancestors have long discovered this phenomenon: the water in the deep well is warm in winter, but cool in summer.

The ancestors had the scientific spirit to break the casserole to the end. They further discovered on the basis of their intuitive experience: the surface of Mother Earth is cold in winter, while the underground is warm, and it is the time the geothermal heat is emitted little by little inside out. In the hot summer, when the surface is hot, the underground is cool, and the geothermal energy is not scattered outward, but the core energy is restrained. It is the time Mother Earth collects energy inward.

Further considering the northern and southern hemispheres of Mother Earth, the northern hemisphere surface is hot outside and cool inside, while the southern hemisphere surface is cool outside and hot inside. As a result, the surface energy of the entire earth is a uniformly distributed balance of Yin and Yang. If we further think, we will realize Mother Earth’s internal thermal energy’s change pattern. When her northern side is absorbing and retaining energy, her southern half is emitting energy, and as her position around the sun changes, the northern side starts to emit and the southern side starts to retain and absorb. The same cycle repeats every year and never stops.

Seeing Mother Earth as a huge image hanging in the air, she is like a huge Kan. The Kan Hexagram comes from the Kun Hexagram of pure Yin, and in the middle of the extreme pure Yin is the pure Yang originated from the Qian Hexagram. This pure Yang energy warms the world and supports all life on our Mother Earth.

The Qian is heaven. The Qian is the sun.

When we introduce Jiji Hexagram, it briefs us that the human head is the human body’s south and the human abdominal area is the human body’s north. Or, the human head belongs to Li Hexagram while the human abdominal area belongs to Kan Hexagram.

Jiji

In Taoism’s theories, the human body’s south, the Li, includes head and heart that connect to human’s thoughts, minds, and souls. Human eyes, as the window of the human heart, belong to Li too. And they also think that the human body’s north, the Kan, includes the kidney, reproductive system, and endocrine system. Human ears, connecting to the belly through meridians, belong to Kan too.

So, how do the human body’s south fire and north water work on each other for the entire body’s health?

Nature is the greatest magician. But why does it put the human body’s fire on top of its water?

The direct and simplest answer is that there is Yang in Yin, and there is Yin in Yang.

Although the human abdominal area is of the water energy, it is this water energy that fuels Yang Qi energy from the “deep sea” and it is also the cradle of the most active and vibrant new life. Pure Yang Qi arises from deep inside the human Kan abdominal area.

Although the human head and heart belong to Li fire energy, human brain nervous system is Yin and controls hormone secretion. The human hormone is one of the most essential Yin elements controlling human life. The human heart processes blood. Human fluid circulation system and the endocrine system both belong to Yin Qi energy. They are the Yin in the middle of Li.

Human birth, aging, sickness, and death are like the four seasons of the earth. They are all energy transformation processes. Life is all about energy’s movement. Life is all about the energy’s transformation between water and fire.

Newborns have the highest water content. Their skin is supple and their body is soft. The moisture in the body of the elder gradually loses, and their skin and bones are calcified. Once a person dies, the body is completely stiff and can no longer store water.

Beauty-loving women, when they apply the most precious skincare and moisturizing products to their faces in order to resist the signs of time is there any way to use the most precious beauty and skincare products inside their bodies? Is there such a treasure in the human body?

Aging begins with the aging of the brain, which is manifested in the inability to move the feet. Normally, an old man with quick thinking has quick hands and feet. Why does aging start with the brain? Because of lacking the fire energy, life’s Yang Qi.

Life is like cooking a kettle of water.

If the fire is too strong, it might quickly burn and dry the water. If there is no continuous water production, life will be burned out quickly.

If the fire is very weak, too weak to heat the water, life will be cold with blocked Qi and Blood, in the misery of sicknesses.

Only if the fire is right for the water, heat the water to boil, control the fire but make it constant firing; control the water and supplement it while the life is generating more life water. Life will be a balanced, warm and happy long life.

Taoism tells us a human’s body is born to have the capability to live for hundreds to thousands of years, but humans are always wasting and over consuming their life water and fire energy. Does Taoism give guidance on how to maintain the cooking of our life with our own water and fire energy?

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Qi and Blood are like Twin Brothers

Qi and Blood are like twin brothers. This intimate relationship makes them both irreplaceable to each other, mutually depend on, support, restrict, and complement each other. And this mutual relationship is just like the relationship between:

Bones and Muscles
Head and Feet
Man and Woman
Water and Fire
Current and Voltage
Electricity and Magnetism
Odd and Even
Core and Surface
Sun and Moon
Day and Night
Time and Space
…

Blood is easy for us to understand from the modern scientific point of view. It represents the body fluid circulation systems. It stands for the materialized life-supplies the human body gets from nature. How to understand Qi? It is the invisible energy on the human body. It resides in the invisible spaces inside the human body, which Traditional Chinese Medicine calls the meridians.

Let us use some vivid metaphors to further understand what is this Qi-and-Blood:

• If a river is like the Blood, the hydropower it carries is the Qi and the riverbed is the “space of its meridian”
• If a current is like the Blood, the electricity it carries is the Qi; and the electric circuit is the “space of its meridian”
• If a tree is like the Blood, the green energy is sent out is the Qi; and the branches and leaves are the “space of its meridian”
• If a piece of music is like the Blood, the happiness it brings is the Qi; and the voice and melody are the “space of its meridian”
• If a business is like the Blood, the positive social value it generates is the Qi; and the people, office, and the business process are the “space of its meridian”
• If the wind is like the Blood, the air energy it carries is the Qi; and the air space is the “space of its meridian”
• If a fire is like the Blood, the heat and light it sends out is the Qi; the flame and the moving air are the “space of its meridian”
• If the underground oil is like the Blood, the petroleum energy it holds is the Qi; the underground space is the “space of its meridian”
• If the wifi signal is like the Blood, the e-intelligence it enables is the Qi; the electromagnetic wave is the “space of its meridian”
• If a network online game is like the Blood, the entertainment and the advantage/disadvantage it brings is the Qi; the internet is the “space of its meridian”
• If a fraud business trap is like the Blood, the harms it sends out is the Qi; the society and environment it resides in is the “space of its meridian”
• If a war is the Blood, the damage or refreshment it brings is the Qi; business, economy, technology, or cities, countries, regions, even the whole world is the “space of its meridian”
• …

Every people and everything has its own Qi and Blood. The invisible Qi energy can be good, uprising, warm, positive Yang Qi, or bad, downward, cold, and negative Yin Qi. And this Qi energy resides in the materialized human body or in a materialized external world.

The human body’s condition is strongly reflected in its fluid circulation systems. As, the human body is 70% of water, which is exactly the same as that of our Mother Earth, whose energy pattern of Qi and Blood determines human’s energy pattern.

A balanced Qi and Blood system indicates a balanced body and mind, a balanced life, as well as a balanced Yin and Yang in a human life.

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From Qi Monism to Yin and Yang

Ancient Chinese culture is the long-term precipitation and development of monistic system thought. Its fundamental theory is always about the change of the energy of Qi.

“Yi Jing” and “Tao Te Ching” both tell us: Everything is inseparable from Yin and Yang, and it must have both Yin Qi and Yang Qi. Changes in the four seasons, birth, old age, sickness, and death in life are the result of the growth and decline of Yin and Yang.

Qi is invisible and untouchable energy that runs through the whole universe. The world‘s change is all about the Qi energy flow between Yin and Yang. Chinese medicine is cosmic medicine; Qi is a kind of cosmic energy. This energy produces everything. Where there is life or no life, it exists.

“气聚则生, 气散则亡” tells when Qi gathers, life is produced, and when Qi is dispersed, life dies. The Buddha said: when the 5 elements of Qi: Wood, Fire, Earth, Gold, and Water come together under certain conditions, a life is born. Without Qi supporting humans, life is over.

Qi is not only reflected in the breath but in all things. Its energy is immensely large. Imagine how heavy the heaviest thing around us is, Qi can move it. Mountain is very heavy. Qi can definitely move it because the mountain is no heavier than the moon, the earth, and the sun. The ancients said: the atmosphere lifted the earth and the earth is nothing more than a table tennis ball floating in the sky. Universe Qi can hold up the earth, so can it the mountains. Not only can the earth, but the Qi can also move the solar system, the Milky Way galaxy, the whole universe. It is everywhere.

Wherever Qi goes, it controls everything. Without Qi, there is no agriculture, no medicine … no life.

How does this energy manifest a human life? Parents give birth, energy gives life. It is Qi that continuously supplies life. A person is constantly absorbing energy and growing. It is the same for humans, plants, and animals.

As the essence of ancient Chinese culture, the Yin and Yang theory covers all aspects of the universe. It explains: Why do we have four seasons? It is because of the conversion of Yin and Yang between the universe, the sun, and the earth. Why do people get sick? It is the imbalance between Yin and Yang in the human body.

Yin and Yang are two opposite sides of the same thing: up and down, left and right, north and south, white and black… Yin and Yang have a distinct character of the opposition. There is Yin in Yang and there is Yang in Yin. They are interdependent to each other, support each other, contain each other, transform into each other, and complement each other. Their relationship is best described in the image of Taiji. Refer to figure 2 below.

Observe them by eyes: Anything that is upward, sporty, warm, and positive belongs to Yang. Conversely, down, static, cold, and negative belong to Yin. The largest representative of Yin and Yang: Heaven and Earth. There are others like sun and moon, day and night, man and woman, male and female…

Taiji

Modern philosophy tells us that things are relative, not absolute. Although the sky, the heaven, is Yang, divided by how the sky presents to humans through a day, it is Yang during daytime and Yin at nighttime. Although it is Yang during the daytime, it can be further divided into Yang in the morning and Yin in the afternoon.

Yin and Yang can be divided indefinitely. Eventually, it reaches the atomic level. An atom is very small. Inside it, the nucleus is Yin due to its static, and the electrons surrounding the core are Yang due to the movements. Can atoms be divided again into smaller Yang and Yin? YES. Nobody knows if there is a world inside a cell of our human body, just like our universe is like a cell of a huge person, or, a huge creature.

Take a human as an example: a man is Yang, a woman is Yin; on a person, the front is Yang, the back is Yin; the upper is Yang, the lower is Yin. On one hand, the thumb is Yang, and the other four fingers are Yin. The palm of the hand is Yang and the back of the hand is Yin. From a mathematical point of view, odd numbers are Yang, even numbers are Yin.

From traditional Chinese Medicine’s point of view, in the human body, Yang meridians are active, warm, and fast; Yin meridians tend to be still, cold, and slow. So, the meridian that runs on the inner side is called the Yin channel, and that on the outer side is called the Yang channel. With this principle in mind, let us raise the arm: the inner side of the arm is Yin with extraneous fat accumulated and the outer side is Yang of mostly muscles.

The function that runs the human body is Yang, and the food and drink are Yin. Food and drink can produce the essence of energy that maintains the function of the Yang of the body through biochemical actions and nourish the body Yin through gasification.

Very importantly, for a person, the spirit is Yang, the body is Yin. Why? The human spirit embodied through the human heart and brain exudes human vitality upward and outward. The introverted, precise, and stable human body is the carrier and material foundation of the human spirit.

Yin and Yang in the human body are relatively balanced. This means: human spirit and body are balanced; human functions and basic food and water energies are balanced.

When Yin and Yang are biased in the human body, excess of Yang energy or excess of Yin energy causes hyperactive or weak Qi and Blood, and causes meridians to go abnormal. Then, people are sick.

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Moxibustion Qi is Like a Mother’s Love

In the old society thousands of years ago, there was no modern communication, no sufficient material supply, neither any good nor enough life supplies during the war years. The mere problem of water resources for survival in the wild for armies was a matter of the survival of not only the army but also the country.

But, in those ancient times, Taoists understood the breathing and circulatory system of Mother Earth, and they had very clever ways to determine the source of groundwater in those wild areas.

In ancient China, when marching and fighting, thousands of troops traveled long distances and carried large amounts of wormwood. Especially when they were in the northwest plateau and desert, they would first dig a huge deep hole, burn wormwood at the bottom of the hole, and observe the distant surroundings. After a while, they could see smoke coming out of other places. Then they dug deep at that smoking place, they knew they would definitely get water.

Why is it wormwood? How did the ancestors discover this? It is related to the knowledge of Chinese herbal medicine.

In ancient times, some great sorcerers had magical powers. Shen Nong tasted over a hundred grasses and picked out wormwood for some special body disease and pain treatment.

Taoism and Chinese pharmacology describe wormwood as ventilating. After the mugwort ignited, it sends out the warmth and penetrating. This warmth does not hurt, it is like a mother’s love.

This is the reason why moxibustion uses wormwood wool. Ancestors also discovered that the heat generated by the burning air of wormwood has the ability to travel through “spaces” both in the body of Mother Earth and in the body of humans. In the human body, it can carry heat energy to the “space” blocked by Yin Qi, and slowly dissolve the blockage. As a result, the Qi is ventilated, and the blood circulation is smoothened.

In Mother Earth’s body, they know the Qi and water circulation are inseparable like twin brothers, where the Qi reaches, where the water circulation arrives. Like mother, like children, because the human body has exactly the same energy Qi and Blood system as our Mother Earth.

Now, modern science is able to experiment that after the mugwort is ignited, its Qi can resonate harmonically with the human’s Qi, and its wavelength is the closest to the human body so that the human body can easily accept it, allowing the moxibustion Qi to penetrate deeper.

Why do we always call Qi and Blood together? It is because they are inseparable from each other. Where should this bring us to if we try to understand our Mother Earth’s Qi and Blood, our Mother Earth’s air breath, and water circulation? How this is related to climate change and environmental issues?

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Static Is A Big Move

Einstein’s theory of “Relativity” has a point: the speed of light is the limit speed of the three-dimensional world. The Scale Reduction and Clock Slowness effects show that as long as anything reaches the speed of light, it slows down the time to a speed of 0. It can be assumed that things moving at the speed of light are relatively static for all surrounding objects that also move at the speed of light.

Stillness is relative.

When a bus runs on the street, we feel it is too fast to catch. But if we are on the bus, we cannot feel it’s moving at a steady speed if we do not look outside.

When a flower blooms quietly, the time of a universe of flowers is used up.

We live on the earth, although our Mother Earth rotates at a speed of four hundred and sixty-six meters per second at its equator, we cannot feel it, neither talk about the orbital speed of the earth around the sun of approximately 107,000 kilometers per hour.

All important processes of life happen slowly in a quiet status. Humans come into this world, bringing their own spirit to combine with the fertilized egg, and then returning back to the universe, it is all in the same quiet. All the processes of human growth happen slowly and silently. No one can go from one year old to twenty years old quickly and soundly…

In the long river of time, in the vast universe, individuals are humbled as dust in this time and space. What one can decide is how to use his time.

Everything in the universe is moving. Static is a quiet movement, a prolonged state of life function, a rare thing that carries infinite power.

• Fruit, grain, flowers, plants grow statically;
• Deep sleep heals the human body;
• Rests relieve the human mind;

Where does Earth’s energy come from? It comes from long term static accumulation of sunlight and the slow chemical/physical effects inside the earth.

Lao Tzu said: Root is the source of life; root represents stillness. When a human calms down like a young baby, the brain is clear, and he can feel more happiness.

There are comparisons between people: 

A person with a weak liver has a big temper, is irritable, and hard to be quiet; A person with a soft gentle personality is calm with healthy liver function.

Bloody sticky people are suspicious, lack judgment, carry an uneasy mood; but a steady and calm person is decisive with smooth blood circulation…….

For people who are getting puzzled in handling complex and difficult matters, most of the time it is due to loud noise inside and being self-annoyed. But in a static state, the mind, and body are completely calm with a reflection on the inner self, and people may suddenly become cheerful.

In absolute health can people be quiet and calm; being quiet and calm, can people gain health.

Mr. Nan Huaijin said: “No matter what kind of disaster you encounter, you just need to be calm. And quietly observe it change.”

This “observe” means “观” in Chinese. It neither contains an eye “目”, nor a heart “心”, nor a mouth “口”. It means: close our eyes and mouth, do not judge by heart, but reflect and communicate to the inner consciousness, and regain the awareness.

Mr. Nan Huaijin also said: “When a person can be quiet, it is a great movement, and it is the body and energy of a person sitting there quietly for a sports meeting.”

No matter when, our best secret weapon is being calm: not leaking energy through negative emotions, but reserving it for all good outcomings.

The root cause of many diseases is the lack of “slowness” which caused the lack of energy. For example, neurasthenia, anxiety, bipolar disorder, and some others are common mental illnesses caught by people in a state of mental and psychological life that is too fast and excessively anxious.

Why do Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity… attach so much importance to “reflection” and “confession”? They are calling for looking and listening inward.

In a fast-developing hustle and bustle society, everyone has their own private journey to be completed independently by themselves step by step. Solitude is a life course that everyone must go through. About this “solitude”, there is a short story:

A boat traveling across the river and suddenly hit by a boat, a grumpy man on the ark immediately shouted to the hitting boat, a call wasn’t listened to, then another not listened to, when about to bristle, he found that the hit ship was empty. The scolding stopped, he burst into laughers!

With others, we are always in a social state; only in solitude, we are close to the natural state.

To be alone is to walk towards ourselves. When we are not forced to talk to others, we have time to talk to ourselves.

Society can reflect one’s external value, but solitude can shape one’s internal value. It is the most essential and most expensive freedom.

Enjoying solitude is a gesture. It is the attitude of walking through the complex world, not in a hurry, but quietly enjoy the season of bright flowers or wait for the purity of the snow. It is humble and gentle, standing aloof from worldly affairs, but has pride and sharpened edges and corners.

As soon as the mind turns its direction, the spirit turns, and the direction of the life train turns. When a person’s body is seriously ill, its life train has been in the wrong direction for a long time.

BUT, the mind can be turned to a new direction at any time, starting from the heart and head.