Pathfinding

I'm not always sure whether this blog is more an open journal (as the subheading once proclaimed), a manifesto, a travelogue, a sort of ethnographic cookbook, or a resource for seekers of holistic health.  It's safe to say that, like Daniel Dravit in The Man Who Would Be King, Ill Wind has been "most things in [its] time."  Today I'll venture into the swampy terrain of self-disclosure and make a declaration, a sort of "contrack" between myself and myself, witnessed by you-out-there.  To wit:

I hereby declare to remove myself, after a third and surpassingly glorious and chaotic romp through the subcontinent to be chronicled in due course, to Portland, OR, city of bridges and natural health mavens and Ursula K. LeGuin, to immerse myself mind body and spirit in the philosophy, art, science, creed, and praxis of Classical Chinese Medicine.  That deep-rooted stuff.  That heterogeneous, contested, obscure, decidedly living body of traditions about the body.

It's official--I've sent in my deposit and I'm crazy excited to make a four-year run of it at National College of Natural Medicine.  This both is and is not a change of track for me.  Is, because I've spent so much time and energy on Southasia and its languages (Nepali, Newari, now Hindi) and medical traditions.  Isn't, because, like Ayurveda, Chinese medicine, in its classical, non Mao-censored glory, has the potential to integrate immanent spirituality and transcendent health.  And unlike for Ayurveda, there is both solid legal basis for practicing Chinese medicine in the States and a deep bank of resources (other practitioners and teachers) to tap into.  So as of January '11, I'm going to shift gears and dive into East Asia.  I'll be starting from scratch in some ways, and what I do already know may get in the way at times, but I have faith that I will not only become adept as an acupuncturist and herbalist in the Chinese tradition but also be able to integrate my Ayurvedic understandings and eventually become a stronger practitioner because of my eclectic background.

Not that it's all so cut and dry as this last statement may make it sound.  In fact, I suspect that this departure will end up being not so much a destination in itself but a substantial length of road to wherever it is I'm going.  Odd as it may sound heading into an intensive four-year program,  I see an intimacy with the Chinese traditional arts as a pre-requisite to something else--even if I don't know what that something is yet.  For I can't help but entertain notions of integration, in the most ambitious and inclusive sense, extending in this case to integration medico-spiritual understanding and techniques from different traditions into one eventual Path.  I'm highly aware of my tendency to think too much (why else would I do so much rambling?), but I think a lot these days about what that ultimate Path will be.  What vehicle I will wind up in for the better part of my journey in this life.  And I have inklings.  Unwise to articulate them too soon, perhaps, but I have inklings that this yog, this union, will occur in the historical meeting ground between India and China, in Tibetan soil.  I'm not sure about this, and even if I were, I don't think there's any shortcut there.  If I'm headed to the mythical Mt. Kailash, abode of Shiva, I must approach it as the pilgrims do, by making a kora.  Perumbulating.  Completing my part of the mandala, so that when I reach the destination I am prepared, i.e. equipped with the appropriate knowledge and experience.  For now, my path leads through China, if not actual China (and I am bone-scared of modern China), then a representative cultural distillation thereof.  Wish this foolish pilgrim luck.

Even as I write this, I'm conscious that it may be the most presumptive and pretentious thing I've spouted in quite some time.  In these few paragraphs are embedded some of deepest visions, faith, and (surely) pride.  But today I feel like letting all that hang out there flapping in the ether, if for no other reason that I'll have something to look back at in, say, ten years time, and be able to judge whether I was more full of pretension or prescience.