People tend to dismiss something they do not quite understand or comprehend sometimes out of sheer ignorance as superstition.The jargon used in Chinese metaphysics is hard to understand if one does not understand the Chinese language, in particular how some of the words are formed.I wonder if Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg who spoke and did a question-and-answer session in Putonghua with students at Tsinghua University in Beijing in late October really does understand Chinese?
It is easy to understand the concept of yin and yang, but to grasp the "five elements," used in feng shui and traditional Chinese medicine, is rather harder.I will try to illustrate what the five elements are and the rationale behind them.Ancient Chinese normally identify them as north (water), east (wood), south (fire), west (metal) and central (Earth), and it is an understanding that persists to this day.Ancient wisdom would also associate the five elements with the seasons of the year and so on.Let's start by understanding the word dongxi, or things.The word is made up of dong, or east, and xi, or west.
East may be associated with wood and west with metal, but for those who know Chinese, most things connote wood and metal, since they are made of these two elements.The north is traditionally associated with water as it is colder, and the south with fire and heat, which starts to make sense when one considers the north is cooler.From a geographical standpoint, the sun rises in the east and the moon in the west. East represents wood while the sun is fire, so wood creates fire. West represents metal, while the moon is water, so metal breeds water.We also see in mainland China that gigantic rivers originate in the west and flow to the east. Therefore, west (metal) breeds water that flows to the east, which breeds wood.We have sun and its fire creating Earth, and from Earth we can dig out valuable minerals such as metals.
Thus a cycle of creation or generation of life can be perceived.We have water>wood>fire> earth>metal>water and so on.
Chinese metaphysics like its medicine, cosmology, feng shui, life reading and the I Ching use the five elements as the basis for core essential beliefs.So next time, before you decide to associate Chinese metaphysics with mere superstition, think again and try to understand the 5,000-year-old wisdom of our ancestors.
Kerby Kuek has published 15 books on feng shui, inner alchemy, Taoism and metaphysics.
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