The Five What?
The Healing Springs Journal has been kind enough to publish some of my ramblings on traditional Chinese medicine and though. Below is a piece that I wrote on a subject that has been almost universally mistranslated as the "Five Elements." A more accurate translation that is key to understanding the true spirit of this metaphorical source of traditional wisdom is the "Five Movements." To find out why, and to learn about how this ancient philosophy describes a path to balance within our lives, please check out the article below, and let me know what you think!
Embracing Balance and Discovering Vitality With The Five “Elements”
Part One: The Fundamentals
We often speak of balance in our lives and of how important it is. An important topic to consider when seeking balance is: what exactly is it that we’re balancing? A solid understanding of what we are balancing can give us a more concrete idea of what success will look like, and how to get there.
The Wu Xing, or as they are often translated “Five Elements,” have provided that important framework for understanding balance dating back over 2,000 years. They arise from observations of nature: changes of the seasons, the cycles of life, the balance of natural ecosystems, and the balance of the systems within our own body. By gaining a deeper and more practical understanding of these Wu Xing, perhaps we, too, can find insight that will help us achieve balance within ourselves.
In this first article we will examine the five as a group, and talk about the fundamental ideas embodied in this ancient and timeless philosophy. Why are there five? How do they interact? What do we mean by Xing or Element? In following issues of Healing Springs, we will delve into each of the five Xing individually.
What’s In a Name?
The name “Five Elements” is misleading to most people. As modern English speakers, we associate “elements” with substances. The elements of chemistry are the different kinds of atoms that make up all matter that we are familiar with—the basic building blocks. Gold, oxygen, and aluminum are elements.
The phrase Five Elements makes it seem as if it is a theory of five “elementary” substances of life—five basic building blocks from which all other things are made. Although that is true of the four elements of ancient Greek thought, it is entirely different from the ancient Chinese way of thinking. To reclaim the ancient philosophy in its true form, let us return directly to the original Chinese phrase, the Wu Xing.
Refining Translations
Wu refers to the number five. Xing, however, is not at all referring to “elements” as we usually think of them. The Chinese symbol for Xing is the image of a human being who is taking a step or stride, and the meaning is of movement rather than substance. The Wu Xing are more accurately interpreted as the “Five Movements.” Changing this one word from element to movement opens the door to seeing the philosophy behind the name in a profoundly more clear and enlightening way. The Wu Xing refer to the natural movement of life in a balanced and organized way that gives vitality and health.
By the Numbers
Why five movements? Why not three, or four, or two hundred? The number five is not an accident, and arrives very organically from the naturalistic cosmology that existed in ancient China. Understanding how we arrive at five is entirely necessary to understanding this ancient concept.
Here, I suggest the use of numbers as a way of understanding the “progression of becoming.” It is a way that life was understood in ancient China, in a step-by-step way from its most primal and basic form, to its most developed and sophisticated forms. It is a way of thinking that gave birth to the Five Movements.
1) At the beginning is the number one. One is the coming into existence, the primary becoming. In short: Something exists.
2) Once you have something that exists, for its existence to be recognizable or meaningful, there must be something that it is not. This is represented by the concept of yin and yang: the two positive and negative poles of existence such as light and darkness, outward and inward.
3) The third step is all of the interaction and exchange between yin and yang. The field and the force between the positive and negative poles of a magnet is a great example of this. The differences between yin and yang provide for the movement and animation of existence. This third level, the movement of life, is called “qi.”
4) Fourth, we have the movement and animation of life spreading out in the four directions of the compass, or in the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time. It is the conception of the movement of existence through space and time.
5) Now we finally get to our subject, the five! Five is the organization of life’s movement in four directions or dimensions surrounding a center. With the addition of a center around which to orient movement, there is the concept of cycles, including the seasons of the year. There is also the organization of life centered within a living being. This is why there are Five Movements, and where they fit in.
As a treat for your meditation, consider the above progression during your next practice. Then, approach the concept of what is “before” the one. This is what Joseph Campbell would call the Transcendent, the place towards which the deep teachings of the sages point.
Balance: Generation and Control
In an elegant system of thinking in which universal unity is a fundamental truth, these five movements are always in relation to each other. They exist as aspects of a single whole, and flow into each other as well as against each other, but are never in isolation. Now that we have established that there are Five Movements, we can shift to the specifics of how those five move.
The Five Movements interact with each other in two very important ways. In one way, one movement gives rise to another. This is called the generation cycle. It proceeds in this order: Fire generates Earth, Earth generates Metal, Metal generates Water, Water generates Wood and Wood generates Fire.
This is a continuous cycle of becoming and feeding one into the other. Balance in this aspect means that when fire movement is flowing as it does in nature, it gives rise to and strengthens earth type movement, which strengthens and gives rise to metal type movement, and so on. Imbalance can occur if the movement gets stifled in one particular phase of movement, blocked from flowing into its next phase, or simply gets weakened by too many demands.
Think of it this way: When a stream winding through a forest is flowing well, all is watered and healthy. If the stream becomes blocked, the area before the blockage can get backed up and flooded while the area after the block begins to dry up and become parched. Or, if one part of the stream is taxed too sorely (a thirsty herd of buffalo have found our stream), then the stream from there on will be too weak and dry. A smooth and plentiful flow from one place to the next is vital to the balance of the forest.
The second way is the control cycle. This is how the Five Movements interact to keep each other from excess. It proceeds in this order: Fire controls Metal, Metal controls Wood, Wood controls Earth, Earth controls Water, and Water controls Fire. Balance in this aspect means that if one movement becomes excessive, the movement that controls it will serve to limit the excess and guide the movement back to a natural state. If fire flares too hot, water can cool it; if wood grows unwieldy, metal can hedge it in. Imbalance can occur when one movement is excessive to the point of dominating the movement that should serve to control it; or if the movement that should control it is weakened to the point of being ineffective.
Think of it this way: If our stream were to be seen after a heavy rainfall, the strength of its movement could be so strong that it would overflow its banks and flood the forest. Alternatively, if the banks of the stream were weakened by erosion or deforestation, they could weaken to the point of not being able to contain our stream at even its normal levels, and once again there is flooding, or disorder.
The Next Step
Tantalized yet?! I hope so. The theory of the Wu Xing, or Five Movements is a powerful and life-affirming tool to examine and promote balance within an individual life, and between an individual life and all of nature. Now that we have some understanding of how these movements interact with each other, we can move on to a deeper understanding of the movements themselves, and what they look like in our everyday lives. Please check out my individual blogs coming up on each of the five movements individually. These were originally written and published in the Healing Springs Journal, but I am reproducing them here as a sort of resource for those who may be interested.