Sunday,September 12, 2010
Meditationon Mastery: J R Worsley and Wang Fengyi
As part of things coming full circle (see my blog of June 1st), Iam now in touch with Heiner Fruehauf, who has very kindly sent me acopy of his interesting article, All Disease comes from the Heart – The Pivotal Role of the Emotionsin Classical Chinese Medicine.In our email correspondence, Heiner mentions Wang Fengyi, master ofthe lineage he studied under in China. Wang Fengyi practised inManchuria during the 1930s, when the region was occupied by theJapanese, who, Heiner says, “imported some of this system toJapan”. Heiner describes JR Worsley as “a Western Wang Fengyi”, andwonders whether there could be a connection between what he calls“these two masters”. After all, JR received some of his trainingfrom Japanese masters.
Apart from offering a fascinating insight into the possibletransmission of the five element system, his comment also set methinking about what exactly we mean by the word master, and inparticular upon what kind of person I myself bestow this accolade.(Mistress seems never to have been used in this context, as far asI can see, though somebody out there may correct me on this!) I amvery clear in my own mind that JR is the only master of acupunctureI have so far encountered, and that I cannot at the moment attachthis designation to any other acupuncturist. No doubt there areother living masters of acupuncture whom I have not met, oracupuncturists I have met who other people would call masters, buteach of us must have our own concept of what mastery means. I musttherefore draw on my own experience of just one acupuncture masterto help me try and fathom what I personally see as the nature ofmastery.
I do not regard mastery as being obtained through the acquisitionof a particular skill or set of skills or the result of any kind ofparticular dexterity, nor as arising simply from a level ofintelligence applied to a particular discipline. It is certainlynot what is attained by gaining a prescribed qualification. Itimplies something far deeper and more complex than that. Buriedwithin it is always the sense of something which connects thisperson to the deeper mysteries of life, and thus to the spiritual,and to what may well lie beyond the reach of those who arenon-masters or not-yet-masters. When I think of the word, I have apicture before me of a disciple bowing humbly before his/hermaster. It is therefore associated with a level of reverenceaccorded by one person to another, implicit in the term “reveredmaster”. And reverence can never be bestowed lightly; it always hasto be earned.
I do not think you can work your way to mastery. You can worktowards proficiency, so that you become increasingly competent atwhat you do, but mastery is not an acquired skill. It is, in myview, something in the nature of a gift, a God-given gift, I wouldlike to add, from whatever God or power or force created theawesome powers which can reside within one human being, a giftwhich is only vouchsafed a very rare few. And such people touchthose they encounter in very special ways, opening doors thatwithout them would remain forever shut.
I was fortunate to be one of the many whom the mastery of JR in thefield of acupuncture touched with its inspiring touch. And therewas no better illustration of this for me than the time when Iheard him going through a list of all the points from his PointReference Guide, one of the five element bibles without which, evennow, I could not practise. He talked the class through each pointon each official, thus the whole mythical 365, and addressed eachpoint as though offering a greeting to them in hushed tones oflove. Hearing this I felt I was being allowed a glimpse of a worldin which he wandered at will, but which I could only venture intowith his help. I understood then that points spoke to him andcommunicated with him in ways I could myself only dimly perceive,and which bore little relation to the lists of point functions inthe many books now vying with each other to offer often dubiousinsights into point selection.
I certainly do not think that I can aspire, or will ever want toaspire, to the title of master, nor am I sad about this, having agood appreciation of my own limitations as acupuncturist. A good,competent, hardworking acupuncturist I may be, but the magic ofmastery will always elude me. It makes it all the more preciousthat I have encountered mastery once in my life.
For details of videos and lectures given by Heiner Fruehauf,particularly in relation to Wang Fengyi, see his websitewww.ClassicalChineseMedicine
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