Episode 9

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Published on:

13th Dec 2023

Questioning Our Filters

Medicine, like any other skill or knowledge system, needs to be rooted in both subjectivity and objectivity. By valuing either one over the other, we deprive ourselves of an essential part thereof. Can traditional Chinese medicine and philosophy help us find a more balanced way of making sense of the world than the cold, rational, evidence-based cause-and-effect thinking of biomedicine and modern science? As Greg Bantick, our special guest on today’s episode of A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond puts it with his wonderful clarity: The act of failing to examine our filters is not benign, but dangerous, and results in problems like racism, cultural appropriation, and orientalism.

When we encounter perspectives of the world that make us squirm because they challenge our own beliefs and experiences, we have three choices in how we respond:

  1. We can deny their value and write them off as “barbaric” or “superstitious”;
  2. we can orientalize or exoticize them as “other” and then creatively interpret them in such a way that they ultimately confirm our own beliefs; or
  3. we can accept the discomfort and embrace this challenge of getting our own world rocked as a chance to learn something new, and then we grow in that process.

The choice is ours!

For today’s episode, titled ““Questioning our Filters,” our special guest is Greg Bantick, a leading practitioner and international teacher of Chinese medicine with almost half a century of experience, who also happens to be a deeply committed practitioner of Buddhism with a beautiful kind heart and a deep well of wisdom.

I should warn you though: We end a bit abruptly and sadly, with us sharing a sense of grief at the huge loss of so many centuries of information and experience that can be found in the treasure house of traditional Chinese medicine. As our conversation explores, the misunderstandings and ignorance that affect the transmission of Chinese medicine into the West are due to two key factors: The lack of an open mind, and the linguistic barrier that prevents the vast majority of Chinese medicine practitioners in the West from even knowing what is out there.

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About the Podcast

A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond
Old and New Stories from China's Healing Traditions
Tune in every other week for inspiring, joyful, and informative conversations on transforming ourselves, our communities, and the world, in the spirit of ancient Chinese medicine, spirituality, and philosophy. Separating fact from fiction, we aim to bring you medicine from China's distant past, translated here to meet YOUR needs today, in clinic and beyond.
I am your host, Dr. Sabine Wilms, medical historian, recovering university professor, and author and translator of more than a dozen books on the Chinese healing arts, from gynecology and pediatrics to medical ethics and materia medica, published by Happy Goat Productions. In addition to writing, I teach and mentor at https://www.imperialtutor.com/, about the roots of Chinese medicine and its larger cultural background. In addition, I will bring in insights from my checkered past as a biodynamic goat farmer and musician, all under the banner of my favorite phrase, “cosmic resonance,” a.k.a. the Chinese ideal of harmony between the three realms of Heaven, Earth, and Humanity. I really love to inspire people and spread around some good vibrations, which is what I aim to do in this podcast, with the assistance of some of my favorite clinical and academic colleagues, friends, and guides, like Leo Lok (our self-proclaimed "Purveyor of Multiple Perspective") and Dr. Brenda Hood, master physician and specialist in all things Daoism.

New episodes will generally drop twice a month, with a free one on the new moon and a bonus one for Imperial Tutor members on the full moon. Check out https://www.imperialtutor.com/membership for more information on my mentorship. Episodes will be roughly an hour long and will follow the format of what you may already be familiar with as the Imperial Tutor’s Tea Time Talks: loosely structured conversations that provide education, inspiration, and connection. If you want to be notified of new episodes, why don’t you subscribe to my newsletter at https://www.happygoatproductions.com/connect?
Here are our three main goals:
1. Bridge-building: We gather to explore the liminal sweet spot, in between Heaven and Earth, the distant past and the present moment, East and West, the clinic and the academy, the healer and the scholar, the discernible and the unfathomable, oral lineage and written text, and, ultimately, between Yin and Yang.
2. Collaboration: The treasure house of traditional Chinese medicine is bigger than any single person's expertise, no matter how vast. We actively pursue and embrace a diversity of opinions so that we can collectively deepen our understanding.
3. Authentic Transmission: Translation, from the past to the present, from Chinese to English, from texts to clinical application, etc., invariably involves an alteration and adaptation of the original message. How do we stay as true as possible to the insights expressed in the ancient Chinese texts while still making sense to our listeners? We invite you to consider the creative challenges of this task with us.

Potential future topics include: Meditation Sickness and Qigong Psychosis; The Difference Between Responsibility and Fault; Daoist and Confucian Perspectives on Humanity's Role Between Heaven and Earth; The Creation, Development, and Transmission of Medical Knowledge and the Dangers and Benefits of Lineage; Buddhist Perspectives on Reality and Expedient Means; The Wuwei Way; The Weasel and the Yak, and The Frog in the Well; Simple Questions: How to Read the Classics; The Cosmos in Six Lines: The Yijing as a Tool of Healing; Translation, Transmission, Transcendence, Transcreation; Pointing to the Moon: How to Name the Unnameable; Should Return and A Hundred Meetings: What's in a Name; The Fish’s Delight: The Limits of Sense Perception; Clear Talk: Creating Light in Dark Times; Reverberations of the Valley Spirit; Lotus in the Mud: Buddhism and Medicine...
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About your host

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Sabine Wilms

I am the producer, manager, director, and (whether I like it or not) person in charge of this podcast. I take full responsibility for this project and vision but do not necessarily agree with anything anybody else says on my podcast, whether it is framed as an opinion or a fact. You can find out more about my books at happygoatproductions.com, my mentoring at imperialtutor.com, my classical Chinese offerings at translatingchinesemedicine.com, and my gynecology courses at traditionalChinesegynecology.com.