We study and learn from Chinese culture, and Chinese medicine can never get around a core concept, that is, "yin and yang".
Modern people criticize Chinese medicine, the first criticism is the yin and yang, the five elements, the fundamental core concepts of Chinese medicine, we have already talked about it in the previous lecture, even Liang Qichao, Zhang Taiyan, Liang Shuming, who are recognized by later generations of traditional Chinese masters are also criticizing the concepts of yin and yang and five elements. In fact, the fundamental reason is that in the long river of our culture, in the long history, the concepts of yin and yang and the five elements have been generalized, they can be used in almost all places, almost all problems can be used, and in the specific use process, many people are actually unclear, far-fetched, and rigid to use these concepts, so that these concepts have lost the seriousness and precision they should have. It is precisely because of the generalization and abuse of these concepts that those who want to criticize and deny these concepts can find a large number of arguments to support their views at any time. While many masters in modern times are severely criticizing the concepts of the "Five Elements of Yin and Yang" that have led to the failure of Science in China, and attributing the reasons for China's poverty, weakness, backwardness, and beating to these concepts, few people have really thought about what the essence of these concepts should be. When we talked about the "Yi Chuan", I repeatedly stressed to you a problem, the various "elephants" in the "I Ching", such as Qian as the father, Kun as the mother, and so on, these specific images are to help us understand the essence of Qiankun Yin and Yang, these elephants can be seen as a metaphor, the metaphor itself will relax the strict prescriptiveness of the concept, the advantage is that everyone can better understand the essence of these concepts to express.
When talking about "Yi Chuan", I told you at the beginning of a definition of yin and yang, yang refers to the party that plays a leading role in a contradictory body, relative to "yin", we can be divided into three states, one is that yang has absolute dominance over yin, the second is that yang has prescriptiveness over yin, and the third is that yang has only influence on yin. After this, it is very likely that there will be a yin-yang reversal, that is, a yin-yang translocation. We still use the father-son relationship as an analogy, we should be more likely to understand, a newborn child, his parents have absolute dominance over him, at this time the parents are yang, the child is yin; when the child continues to grow up, can be free to move on their own, the parents of the child's dominance is decreasing, at this time the parents are prescriptive to the child, that is, like the parents require the child to eat, when to sleep, but at this time, the child has a certain autonomy and initiative; when the child gradually grows into an adult, For example, after graduating from college and entering the society, at this time, parents have only influence on their children, and no longer have prescriptiveness, and it is impossible to achieve dominance, and this time is about to reverse the relationship between them, that is, yin and yang translocation, when parents gradually grow old and weak, children continue to grow, at this time the children have belonged to the yang, for parents who have begun to grow old, they have begun to have influence, when they are further aging, beginning to be inconvenient, loss of function, At this time, the child has a prescriptive attitude to the parents, and when the parents are critically ill and need rescue, the children have absolute dominance over the parents. To make a joke that doesn't fit in, the decision to unplug your oxygen tube is in your child's hands.
We also said at that time that yang refers to life, thought, and spirit, while yin refers to matter, ability, and energy; in the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic, we have to make an adjustment to this definition and the content it refers to.
Here, yang refers to energy, while yin refers to matter that carries energy.
Some students may immediately ask me back, saying that you are not contradictory? I just said that energy and matter belong to yin, so why has it changed here? Am I wrong before? No, this is also the reason why I spent a lot of time talking about the difference between Lianshan, Guizang and Zhouyi. Because Zhou Yi is more about the unique development law of human society, the most important influencing factor is the human factor, that is, the influence of human subjective cognition and subjective initiative; and the "Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic" corresponds more to "Lianshan Yi" and "Guizang Yi", expressing more astronomy and geography, that is, the interaction of heaven and earth on people and all things living between heaven and earth.
In recent years, because of the recommendation of Mr. Li Ke, who is good at using traditional Chinese medicine to treat acute critical diseases and difficult diseases, the famous doctor Peng Ziyi of the Republic of China era and his "Ancient Chinese Medicine of Round Movement" have gradually become popular, and Peng Ziyi's explanation of yin and yang is: a place where living things are located, and the light and heat of the sun on the ground is yang. The light and heat of this place have passed, and between it and the future of light and heat, it is yin.
In the end, the sun is a huge ball of energy, all the energy on the earth comes from the sun, we can call all the energy emitted by the sun yang, and all the matter in this universe that can receive energy is called yin. Yin energy stores yang, allowing energy to exist stably.