Japan Acupuncture, Phoenix, AZ （日本鍼灸、アリゾナ）

 

Japanese Acupuncture (480) 246-0624

600 N. 4^th Street, Unit 147, Phoenix, AZ 85004

Japanese Acupuncture Newsletter, Phoenix, Arizona

Volume 3, No. 1, July, 2012

Oriental Medicine & On Human Conditions

Chapter Four

Lung:  Sadness*1, Courage, and Dissolution

I heard a fly buzz when I died;

The stillness round my form

Was like the stillness in the air

Between the heaves of storm.

The eyes beside had wrung them dry,

And breaths were gathering sure

For that last onset, when the king

Be witnessed in his power.

I willed my keepsakes, signed away

What portion of me I

Could make assignable, and then –

There interposed a fly,

With blue, uncertain, stumbling buzz,

Between the light and me,

And then the windows failed, and then

 I could not see to see.

                                                                    Emily Dickinson

This is one of my favorite poems by Emily Dickinson.  It is a zen moment of an experience.  She is contemplating suicide (she is not talking about an experience of a physical death here, but more of a deep meditative stillness), but at the moment of exceptional concentration, a fly buzzed over, and she could not “see to see.” (why did she call the buzz “blue”?)  It was not her time to die, but she was, in a way, resurrected to write this poem.  Samurai longed for death, for his fundamental purpose in life as a worrier was to die; the righteous death that achieved his purpose with honor.  Since he was to face death ultimately, his disciplined life style was to experience death, so that he was no longer afraid in a battle and the battle itself had already been conquered.  Even if he was killed he knew having lived through a transformational life, it was an honorable death.  This concept is important because this chapter and the next one (the Kidney Element) will ask us how we deal with the Death and the Resurrection and how we should live ourselves.

So, how should we live ourselves?  It is in the balance.  Samurai was not a personal actor but as the force of life doing its course, and in it, to find his honorable death.  (How many politicians today can truly say:  I am not of I but of the People?)  There is a greater force, some call it destiny, is with us.  We as individuals rightfully should act as individual but with the sense of greater awareness, of being something more than the self.  The balance is between having an individual self with a certain personality and having a spiritual self acting on what the universe is offering (going up the charkas) through our body.  As in a good marriage, the mutuality of the opposites and the recognition and respect of each other as an individual yet inseparable keeps the unity, and the balance is in the tension*2.  The duality is perceived, but it does not preclude the realization of the unity.  Greater sense or awareness of marriage is the egoless mutuality, a harmonious relationship.  As soon as we let the ego in, we tend to destroy the other with our own righteousness.  A dance of the opposites (of a married couple) is a dance of the self with the Life.

Sadness, which is the main emotion attached to the Lung Element of this chapter, throws away the validation of the Life, dwells on the self and unbalances the equilibrium.  If you are a singer all your life and it is the only thing you know, and the old age deprives of the capability and its joy, you get frustrated and sad.  It is a crisis to some.  If you loose a loved one, you feel the same way.  Indeed, sorrow and love go very well hand in hand in our daily lives. Keeping an individual self and a greater self is a fine balancing act.  Only way to bring the equilibrium back into balance is to recognize that it is not in an act or a consequence, but firmly understanding that it is the Life that is the most important.

When we are sad, the first sensation we feel is the compression of our breathing pattern.  We crouch as if the lungs are compressed.  We protract the shoulders; the neck is brought slightly forward and downward as if we refuse to see the peripheral; the jaw might be dropped a bit, and the mouth is slightly open.  Before we have tears in our eyes, the digestive system is affected.  We wish to be in a quiet and darker room.  It is a withdrawing pattern: a separation of the world around us to the more inner realm of psyche.  We dissociate from the Life and its meanings.  Overwhelming emotions take over, and we are no longer dancing in balance.

Like Dickinson experienced, and as in a dragon slayer*3 mythology, only when we experience the other side (or the other self), do we understand and transform ourselves to higher level of consciousness.  This chapter is about how to die and having courage to face death.

*1:  Spinoza called sadness, the strive to promote what we imagine is joy and to avert is sadness; whatever empowers us (active affect) leads to joy and whatever diminish it leads us to sadness; or greater perfection and lesser perfection.

*2:  Joseph Campbell:  Pathways to Bliss

*3  Siegfried kills Fafnir the dragon and tastes  his blood (one with Fafnir) and hears the birds sing, saves  his life from Regin’s intention.

© 2012 Dr. Y. Frank Aoi (NM State)/Japanese Acupuncture, LLC