Reference; http://seino-1987.jp/html/
Modified and translated by CFJA
How long have humans been living on earth? How many people were there at first? As the human population increases and people start to get busier living their social life, our minds become too busy and overwhelmed.
The Chinese character or kanji in the word “忙しい (busy)” consists of the symbols “心 (heart/mind)” and “亡 (lose)” written as “to lose 亡 one’s mind/heart 心”.
Although it is very difficult for humans to live together in a society, there is one thing that is absolutely necessary – words 言葉 (Jp. kotoba). To properly understand each other, names (or symbols) are a must. It is thought that the ancient people named things one after another based on certain rules. In the beginning, they must have divided things into two groups: “things we can see” and “things we cannot see”. It is easy to imagine that they had no problem naming the “things we can see.” For example, mountain 山, river 川, tree 木, water 水, heaven天 and fire 火. On the contrary, how did they name the “things we cannot see?” For example, like 好き, dislike 嫌い, hot 熱い, cold 冷たい, happy 嬉しい, sad 悲しい, energy 元気, illness 病気, etc. It is presumed that they thought of a rule to draw a line at a certain point when naming them. We think that as humans live their daily lives, they began to gradually notice that there are ‘things that change (things that we can see)’ and ‘things that do not change (things that we cannot see).’ Eventually, ancient people must have begun applying this thought to their bodies as well.
From birth to death, our bodies are constantly changing – not even a minute or a second is the same. Nonetheless, our bodies will be here until we die – we, as human beings, will always exist. Blazing like magma on the inside, constantly changing. Similarly, the earth is always there, but the surface is always changing (seasons, for example). Eastern medicine questions why such things happen. This is why Eastern medicine always looks at the ‘whole’ body, despite the pain being only on a ‘part’ of the body.
What about diagnosis focusing on a part of the body? Or cells? Not to say that these are unimportant but it certainly is something to think about much later; at long last, there will be a time when thinking about cells are crucial. What is more important is that there seem to be a lot of things that cannot be understood without looking at the whole first. Why is that? We believe that this is because humans have a “mind/heart 心.” Surprisingly, humans can make their illness better or worse, from a mere mental shift. Therefore, it is important to think about the individual and look at all of the aspects that are surrounding that individual, before diagnosing the illness.
Don’t you think Eastern medicine is such a large-scale study that considers both the human ‘mind’ and ‘body’?