The story is really about Quang's growing up and coming of age in Vietnam. He was born in 1950 and in his teen-aged years and early twenties experienced the ravishings of his country Vietnam in the French and American Wars in South Vietnam. Finally, in his early 30s he fled Vietnam on a boat with failing outboard motor to make it to Thailand, where he was confined in the Chambouri Refugee Camp in Pannatnikhom City, mainland Thailand, for two years before passing a refugee interview for going to the New Hampshire in the United States. In New Hampshire, Quang Van Nguyen eventually met Marjorie Pivar, who was fascinted by his stories of having studied Han Viet, a language replaced by more classical Vietnamese of Chinese 300 years before, by stories of the fabled Seven Sacred Mountains and the enchanting Forbidden Mountain where Quang lived with an ancient for three years in a cave studying meditation, and most importantly by seeing firsthand his incredible knowledge as a traditional herbalist and learning how he acquired his knowledge. The book takes the reader through an incredible journey of a bygone age in a country where magic and ghosts are as real as the physical healing. Together they write to share this dying esoteric knowledge.
CULTURE SNATCHES
KITCHEN GODS: The Vietnamese wood stove is a free-standing wide-brimmed ceramic bowl that contains the fire, and over the flames are pots made of baked mud and rice hulls shaped with always three prongs underneath. Vietnamese culture is so steeped in spirits and magic and house gods, and these three-pronged cooking pots reflect on this spirituality for the three prongs stand for the three kitchen gods that dwell at the hearth, where they keep on eye on the householders. And every year during Tet, the Vietnamese lunar new year, they house gods ride on an orange carp up to heaven to report the householders deeds - both good and bad - to the Jade Emperor, and then return with commensurate good luck for the coming year. And here is the cultural story supporting the belief:
Long ago an unhappy couple lived together. The husband beat the wife so much that she fled the house, and eventually met another man and remarried. One evening when her new husband was out hunting, her old husband found her. At first she didn't recognize him since he was dressed as a beggar and was very humble, and when she did, she took pity on him, remembering their good times together. She decided to feed him and wash his clothes. Suddenly her husband came home and the former husband, naked, had to be hid under the woodpile. The husband greeted his wife and thanked her for building such a great fire pit for the animal he killed, and promptly lit the fire and threw the animal on it to roast it. The wife was so proud and yet ashamed that her former husband would die with crying out so as not to betray her that she threw herself on the fire to die with him. The second husband, distraught with losing his precious wife, jumped in to die with her. And so the Jade Emperor was so touched by the deep love they each showed selflessly that he granted them eternal life in the hearth of every home, to protect people from getting burned by fire.
DRAGONS AND FIREBALLS: Dragons are now the model of self-mastery, inner wisdom, and spiritual protection, but it wasn't always so. Long ago two dragons lived in water, fought and made a great nuisance of themselves by frisking up the river water and making it choppy and dangerous for people. They raced around so much and caused so much water havoc that people complained to the Jade Emperor, who couldn't get the dragons to settle down, so eventually came up with the idea of luring them out of the water by giving them a magic fireball that couldn't be gotten wet. The dragons were so entranced by the fireball that they came out of the water and played continuously with their treasure, which had a calming effect on them, and over time the dragons started to meditate and become wise.
ON MEDITATION: Quang had many teachers, but the teacher he most admired and connected with was the Fourth Uncle, a monk who had been meditating deep in a cave for many years. Quang's grandfather had meditated with him, his father had meditated with him for 19 non-consecutive years, and Quang was to meditate with him for three years. Fourth Uncle told Quang how to meditate: "You must not pray or chant when you meditate. Praying and chanting is grasping for something you want. From now on, you must keep quiet inside. Close the doors in every direction and do not let any thoughts come in. Focus your attention on your third eye. Draw the yin and yang energies into your body. Imagine the warm energies of the sun streaming in through the crown of your head. Imagine the cool energies from the underground spring bubbling up through your perineum. These opposite forces will blend together in your body and balance your energy."
SNATCHES OF EXOTERIC HEALING
THE SIX PULSES: Quang's father told him "By reading the pulse, we can understand how well the internal organs are functioning. Like the heart, the stomach, the liver, the kidneys, and so on, we can feel if the organs are weak or congested or inflamed, or if they are working just fine. We can also feel how well the blood is circulating in the body." "Once we have an idea about what is going on inside the body, we can make medicine to help the body function better. There are herbs that cleanse, herbs that soothe, herbs that warm, and herbs that cool. There are herbs that nourish the body and make more blood. You can prepare formulas that include all these properties. The trick is to understand what each patient needs. Two people can have the same symptoms, but most likely they will need a different kind of medicine."
The first pulse is taken with the index finger (of the left hand) by following the thumb bone down to the wrist, and stopping at the creases at the base of the hand. The pulse is for the heart and the valves of the heart, and also for checking the membrane surrounding the heart. This pulse can also be taken at the inside base of the index finger where the finger hinges with the palm. The second pulse and third pulses are taken with the third and fourth finger just below the heart pulse, but with a little space between. The second pulse is for the liver, gall bladder, and diaphragm. The third pulse is for the kidney, colon, uterus, and prostate. Once a doctor finds these pulses, he will need to learn to define the pulses within the pulses too.
The pulses on the right hand in the same position signify different organs. The first pulse on the right hand is for the lungs and diaphragm; the second is for the spleen and stomach; and the third is for the kidney, small intestines, uterus, and prostate. And if when taking a woman's pulse and it has a fluttery quality, the woman is pregnant, even though she might not even know it yet.
SAMPLE DIAGNOSIS: When Quang was about 15, his father told him to diagnosis a woman. Quang had learned that when a healthy person had a new cold, all pulses strike high, which means that the immune system is strong and is fighting the cold, helping the healthy person to recover from a cold in two or three days if given the proper medicine to clear the cold out.
Quang palpitated the 34-yr-old woman's wrist and wrote his analysis for his father. Left hand - heart pulse hitting high, liver/diaphragm pulse low, kidney/colon/uterus pulse deep and weak. Right hand - spleen/stomach pulse weak, kidney/small intestine/abdomen pulse weak, no fluttery pulse (so not pregnant).
From the analysis Quang knew that the woman would not recover from her cold very fast because her body was not functioning well. He knew without asking that she had a gassy stomach, sluggish bowels, painful menstruation, lower back pain, and she suffered from fatigue. He also knew it would be difficult for her lungs to decongest until her digestion improved because gas in the gut causes heat to radiate upward and creates a drying effect on the lung tissue, making mucous thick and sticky.
Quang's prescription: herbs to improve digestion, to loosen the bowels, to warm and moisten the lungs, open the sinuses, and improve the circulation in the lower abdomen. Quang had learned that digestion and circulation are the two most important factors for facilitating recovery. If a person has a healthy appetite and can absorb the nutrients well through the small intestines, and the circulation and the nervous system are functioning properly to transport those nutrients to the muscles and organs and to eliminate bodily waste, then the person stands a good chance of recovery.
VARICOSE VEINS: Quang also learned to treat and cure varicose veins, of which women were much more likely to suffer from, especially women who had small veins showing in the backs of their knees before childbirth and didn't get them treated before giving birth. The veins usually show up on the backs of knees and make the whole knee joint hurt, but they can be returned to normal if the congealed blood inside them (thick and sludgy) is cleaned out once a week for nine weeks. The first time Quang treated a woman with varicose veins by sticking a three-sided needle in, brown blood shot out three feet. He had to cut the vein in two places and squeeze out the blood clot in between. The next time she came back the vein was smaller, but the blood still came out brown. By the ninth time, the blood came out nice and red, and the vein was normal again.
URINE AS MEDICINE: A man came into Quang's clinic one day and had acute swelling in his lungs, so painful in fact that he could hardly breathe. Quang went into the neighborhood and asked a kid to pee in a cup. He put tiger balm on the rim of the cup and gave it to the man to drink. In just a few minutes he was able to breathe better. The rationale Quang learned behind using urine is that urine is anti-inflammatory. Sometimes when the body suffers from trauma, the nerves and the circulation lock, and in this case urine soothes the nerves and restores circulation to the organs and tissues. Children's urine is the purest, although he said it is good to drink your own sometimes when very sick. When drinking it, the immune system fights the sickness, and using first urine in the morning is best, especially if taken before speaking because speaking diminishes the body energy and therefore the strength of the "medicine". Take it from the middle of the flow and drink but a quarter of a cup.
In another case, a six-month pregnant woman had fallen and hurt her ribs, and the swelling around her rib cage was triggering uterine contractions. Blood was trickling out of her vagina, and she was afraid she would lose her baby. Once again Quang hurried into the neighborhood to ask a child for urine, and again he added tiger balm to the rim and told her to drink. Within minutes the contractions had subsided and she felt better.
MUGWORT MOXIBUSTION: Leaches could get on a person and if they stayed on a person more than an hour, they could cause a nasty infection. To pull a foot-long, three-inch fat leech off is dangerous as it takes flesh with it, so using an ash and honey mixture (salt I've heard works also) is needed to get the leech to release its hold. Then to disinfect the wound, stick a wad of dried mugwort dipped in alcohol in the wound, light it on fire and stick a glass cup over the flame to create a suction for drawing the toxins out of the wound. About a tablespoon a fluid should come out. Without doing so, a person could easily get an infectious disease.
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