Episode 5

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Published on:

16th Aug 2023

The Yellow Emperor's Broken Heart

What does it mean when the Yellow Emperor mourns and why might that matter to you? Does he “lord it over” his subjects and discuss medicine and needles because the exploitation of a healthy population yields more taxes? Or does he love and care for the people like a parent for their children and is heartbroken about their suffering? How do we read and translate a text like the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic that was compiled two thousand years ago but references figures from what was even then a mythological past of many centuries earlier? What tools do three experienced translators turn to when we get stuck and our “spidy sense” tells us that we are just not getting it? That our finger is no longer pointing at the moon but quite possibly at the sun? And how do we cultivate this spidy sense that alerts us that we may be misunderstanding a phrase or passage? A teaser: It involves a book called “Beware of Chicken”!

The process and pitfalls through which we find meaning in the classical texts is what we are discussing in today’s episode of A Pebble in the Cosmic Pond, titled “The Yellow Emperor’s Broken Heart.” I am your host, Dr. Sabine Wilms, and I am joined once again by Leo Lok, self-proclaimed Purveyor of Multiple Perspectives, and Dr. Brenda Hood, our resident Daoist sage, among the Seven Fools of the Bamboo Grove that make up the core of our Pebble in the Cosmic Pond team.

If we have inspired you and you want to learn more, you can join my Imperial Tutor mentorship to listen to the more clinically oriented and EVEN NERDIER Imperial Tutorial bonus episode, released on the full moon on 8/30, and also receive some related translations. Or you can explore learning classical Chinese at "translatingChinesemedicine.com" by signing up for my free "Introduction to Classical Chinese" course, my membership, or join the new cohort of my two-year-long Triple Crown intensive training program, which starts on September 14 with the Foundations course.

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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.