2: Human Metaphors
Five Element Theory, Human Beings, and Thoughts on Master Zhu's Teachings #2
Note: Any concepts in italics are references to concepts laid out in the essay "The Shape of Understanding”.
Do you ever ask yourself what it means to be a human being? When I think of the idea of the human being it starts with the name itself. In our Universe we name everything, it is one of the things that we do. Everything in the world of humans has been named, everything through the entirety of our existence, our entire understanding is based on separation, categorizing, and naming. You could call humans the beings that name things.
If I look past the name “human being” I’m not sure what it means or if it even applies to us. I’m a creature with an internal and external experience that also has an awareness of a different state of being yet to come called the future. I witness myself calculating, dreaming, and thinking about things that pass in or around my general periphery, as well as a being that falls into a daily state of hibernation called sleep. At another level I am a creative interdimensional being with the ability to take dreams from my internal world and manifest or communicate them to change the world around me. These are some of the ideas that encompass and fall under the umbrella of the name “human being”.
Once again this is an example of Wu-Ji, an attempt to understand something by looking at the root of the idea, concept, or awareness. The idea of Wu-Ji here is how we look at the essence of what makes us human beings, the Taoist idea is that we are a body with emotions, a mind, a spirit, and an energy base that moves us around, from these relationships all human experiences, ideas, lives, cultures, and civilizations arise from these basic principles.
If we start from this understanding and apply Taoist ideas like Heaven and Earth (a Yin/Yang pair) as metaphors, we can easily see the body represents the Earth and the awareness and energetic states that radiate from our internal worlds as Heaven. If we ask ourselves what our bodies are made of; at the root we’re made of the metals, minerals, and liquids of the Earth. The other aspect of ourselves, our mind and our spirit, are a metaphor for Heaven. These are the aspects of what makes us human beings from a binary perspective.
Our emotions, memories, and souls reside as mixtures and interactions between this root Yin/Yang Pair.
Entering the World in a State of Wu-ji…
We enter this world in a state of unknowing, a child that has no way to sustain itself, no way to provide for itself'. We as infants are completely dependent on those who surround us. How long are we near this the state of Wu-Ji of a human being in the world? We’re given parents and a family, we’re given an understanding or religion from those around us. We enter into a world that has an understanding of some kind of economic system, some kind of tribal or other governmental system. We’re given a culture or way to understand this world… all from the point of our birth as we enter screaming and crying into this world. Everything from our birth on separates us from this initial state of Wu-Ji.
As we observe the world we have entered, we are the beings of this world, what is the nature of the world we have entered? It’s a world with wide open skies, oceans, mountains, and plains. This is a world of elements and changing seasons, a world with cycles of night and day, hot and cold, valleys and streams. A world where the moon draws the waters upward as it traverses the night sky. We watch the seasonal changes transforming our world… lush Spring rains nourishing the barren, so life can rise from the earth towards the sun. Then into our vibrant summer days, basking in the heat, long days with lots of sun. Then into Autumn, a collection of bounties from the summer sun, falling leaves, and shortening days with a tinge of cooler temperatures. Then into winter with cold gray landscapes filled with barren trees, dried meadows, and snowy fields… life in a state of hibernation. Life residing below the surface waiting to be reborn in the warmth of the Spring sun and nourishing rains. These are the cycles of the world we are born into. This is the world as represented in the Pre-Heaven Arrangement of the Bagua (Figure 1). These seasonal changes are also the broad strokes that paint our lives as we grow and develop, as we change through our lives. We are born as infants, develop into young people full of energy and dreams, transform into adults that live their lives until we start to age, losing our vitality as our wisdom grows, finally venturing into the twilight of our lives towards the darkness of the unknown…
Figure 1
Five-Element Theory and the Human Being
This understanding of the human being is based on definitions that differ from what we understand in the Westen world, the ideas developed by the Taoists come from metaphors and their understanding of five-element theory. I find their definitions of what makes a human being to be more inclusive than ours in the modern world. (See Figure 2)
Figure 2
Figure 2 shows the promotional cycle of the five-element theory. This understanding comes from observations of the world that surrounded them. From the earth comes metal, from metal comes water (I think this idea comes from watching how the morning dew condenses on metal), from water comes wood, and from wood comes fire, which creates ashes that return to the earth.
From the promotional cycle the metaphors of this cycle give us a map to help us understand the makeup of human beings. When we look at humans from this perspective, we have from the body comes Qi, from Qi comes strength, from strength comes spirit, from spirit comes mind, which returns to the body. Here are the definitions from my understanding of this system and what we’re made of as a view of a complete human beings:
Earth (Body) - The body is the receptacle of all our life forces, our energy base, our mind, and our sprit, it is the center of the promotional cycle in Figure 2, see Figure 3 for how it comes from the shape of the I-Ching.
Our bodies contain all our organs as well as the liquids and vessels of our bodies. This is the materials we’re made from that come from the Earth, our bodies are literally made of the metals, minerals, and liquids of the Earth.
Metal (Qi or energy) - From the Earth comes Qi or energy. This is a nebulous concept from the western perspective. In the modern world we talk about energy as being a state, as in I have low energy described as when someone has low blood sugar for example. One of the aspects that’s grouped under this concept of Qi comes from modern biochemistry and our metabolism. It is the energy that’s created as part of the cellular respiration cycle, specifically the conversion from ATP to ADP. In cellular respiration there are reactions inside the cell, specifically within the mitochondria, that assembles a compound called ATP (adenosine tri-phosphate) from glucose. ATP has 3 covalent phosphate bonds where one of the three is unstable. This unstable covalent bond holds the third phosphates to the phosphate chain, when this third phosphate breaks off it creates a more stable compound called ADP (adenosine di-phosphate). It’s the breaking of this covalent molecular bond that releases energy for our system to use. This release of energy is part of the modern understanding of Qi that the ancient Taoists were talking about, this is the definition of Qi that makes the most sense to me.
Another type of Qi is called vital energy. Vital energy is a reservoir of energy that you are born with. If you watch toddlers running around; their muscles haven’t developed yet but they run around and are able to pick things up, this is from having an abundance of vital energy that moves and supports them. This reservoir of vital energy is finite and when this energy is depleted this is the moment when you die. This vital energy is instrumental in procreation and instrumental to your body’s ability to heal itself. In other cultures this energy is called the wind or the breath of life. This energy flowing through you can be seen as the swirls of your fingertips in some cultures.
There are other theories and types of energy that fall under the definition of Qi. One theory is that there is a universal energy that surrounds us that we may or not have access to, I think of this as a type of energy field in a state of Wu-Ji in our world. Another theory is on the quantum level, that Qi is the strong force that holds the subatomic particles (quarks) together. I’m sure there are others I’m not aware of.
Water (Strength) - In essence this is the moving of the Qi or energy inside of us. In this system the Qi flows in our blood, it also flows through our bodies and along the fascia as well as our bones. In Chinese medicine Qi gathers in what are called the dan-tian (elixir fields) and flow through our bodies and organs in what are called meridians. The dan-tian are similar to the chakras in other systems. We can feel this energy movement after sex or strenuous exercise flowing just below the surface through our bodies and tissues.
Wood (Spirit) - From water comes wood, or from strength comes spirit. Spirit is also an ambiguous concept in the West and throughout the modern world, there are many differing definitions and understandings. In this system the spirit is our five senses working together: our vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch. It’s the part of us that receives all the information about the world. It’s like a camera with the aperture wide open receiving all the aspects of the natural world we can experience.
Fire (Mind) - After the spirit receives information from the Universe it flows to the mind. The mind is the separating piece, It’s the organizing factor of who we are. It is connected to our memories and where our problem solving and sensemaking happens. I think of it as images reflecting from the spirit or as reflections as we become a mirror of nature.
Figure 3
Spirit and Mind Yin/Yang Pair
The spirit and mind pair is one of the most interesting experiences we encounter in our lives. It’s how our senses and mind interact in the world, as we create and change how we interact with the universe, the centerpiece is this relationship. If you think of your favorite physical activity, like running, riding a bike, or skiing for example… That feeling of your senses experiencing the world while your mind is drifting and relatively still. I think of this as us experiencing our spirit. If while you’re out doing one of these types of activities and for example you remember you left the stove on, you end up in a state of panic and rush home to turn the stove off, this I think of as us experiencing the mind. The more we’re in that state of the drifting mind, the more we’re in a state of the spirit. This state of relative stillness of our minds is also called a meditative state. From a metaphoric viewpoint I think of this experience of our spirit as the mist gathering in the forest trees, and our mind is the sun burning the mist away…
Voice of the Body
From the promotional cycle we can see the make-up of the human being. What about the emotional aspect of who we are? I think of this as the voice of the body. We’re familiar with the voice of the mind chirping at us as we lay awake on sleepless nights or as the ideas flood into our consciousness as we contemplate something. If we look at the original Yin/Yang pair: The voice of our minds would be heaven and the voice of our bodies comes from the Earth, our emotions and memories are a melding together of Heaven and Earth into a Yin/Yang pair.
In this system the emotions are connected with our organs, the organs are combined into Yin/Yang pairs (see Figure 4). The Yin (solid mass) organ manifests the emotions and the Yang (hollow) organ move the emotions. If we refer again to Figure 2 all our organs reside within our bodies, as we assign values from the 5-element theory we start with metal:
The metal organs are the lung (Yin organ) and large intestine (Yang organ), these organs are associated with sorrow.
The water organs are the kidney (Yin organ) and the bladder (Yang organ), these organs are associated with fear.
The wood organs are the liver (Yin organ) and gall bladder (Yang organ), these organs are associated with anger.
The fire organs are the heart (Yin organ) and small intestine (Yang organ), these organs are associated with joy.
The earth organs are the spleen (Yin organ) and stomach (Yang organ), these organs are associated with worry.
In our day-to-day life we can see these Yin/Yang pairs play themselves out for example:
When your worried: you get butterflies in your stomach. This would be your spleen manifesting worry and your stomach moving it out. If it is long term or deep worry you could end up with stomach ulcers.
The fear emotion is related to your kidneys and bladder, the kidneys manifest the fear and the bladder moves the fear out. When the fear is great enough people pee their pants. The adrenal glands are located on our kidneys as well, when our lives are in danger adrenalin will enter our system to help us preserve ourselves.
This is a simplified explanation of the understanding of this emotional system, there is plenty of information out there if you’re interested.
Figure 4
Yin/Yang Pairs and Our Experiences
As we look at our day to day experience from these ideas: We wander through the world and our spirit/senses experience the world, this is called the Yang of the spirit an open lens letting in all the external stimulations we encounter. These impressions are recorded in our memories without any filters (the mind), this capturing of experience is called the Yin of the spirit/senses. From these captured impressions from the Yin of our spirit we enter into the Yin of the mind which separates and categorizes these experiences, compares them to our previous memories. As we process and make decisions from the Yin of our minds, the actions we execute and act upon is called the Yang of the mind.
Yang of the spirit → Yin of the spirit → Yin of the mind → Yang of the mind
From the Yin of the mind to the Yang of the mind there are a lot of internal mechanisms we process our experiences through. Specifically our memories and emotions.
Memory and Emotion
From the Yin of the mind to the Yang of the mind we access a database of our experiences, our memories. From the “Heaven and Earth” metaphor our memories are a merging of Heaven and Earth. I think all our memories have an emotional component to them which make them “memorable”. I think of memories as packets of observations consisting of an experience from our senses paired with an emotional response. As we gain more and more memories and emotional responses, the triggers that manifest our realities from these interactions become vaster and more abundant. As this happens our interactions are less and less derived from our direct experiences and more from our memories and the triggers from how we responded to previous encounters.
I think these memories reside in our tissues; they reside in our muscles, tendons and bones. These memories and their emotional content are hormonal responses from our glandular system that change the shape of our muscles, tendons, and bones. An example of the is when we encounter a stressful situation. we have an emotional response that floods our systems with hormones that affects our tissues, this response tenses up our bodies contracts our muscles. As the experience changes and our response dissipates our bodies still retains residues of these hormonal responses. As we have more and more of these experiences the hormonal aspect of these memories remain within our tissues as muscle tension, this tension locks the emotionality of our memories in our bodies. As these muscles change shape and become shorter from the residual hormonal buildup, they change the shape of our tendons. As our tendons change shape from the muscle tension, our tendons pull on our bones which changes the structure of our skeletal system. This is how our emotions and memories change the shape of our bodies and how they reside within our bodies.
As we move through our lives we gather and retain memories and experiences. This is an understanding from the Taoist perspective of how we create and maintain our memories and emotions and how we experience the World. Next up how the natural arrangement of the I-Ching can understand and explain the direction of our life trajectories, diseases, and disfunctions.