How interesting to be Chinese, then, where traditionally/culturally nothing is off-limits (not referring to Chinese people who profess religions with dietary restrictions), and where food is medicine and vice versa. In fact, TCM guidelines about diet (heaty vs cooling foods, etc.) can be seen as a kind of protocol.
I wish I knew that before writing this piece! Very interesting. Also food = medicine almost immediately places diet in a secular frame. Curious what modern day debates over optimal nutrition look like today in China since they went though an era of protocolization so early on. Also if there’s any connection between TCM and Confucianism and in what direction that flows
The oldest TCM texts we have pre-date Confucian and Taoist texts, although they were formally compiled around the same Warring States era. TCM should be seen as a kind of meta system that gives Confucian and Taoist thought a framework for physical cultivation that is in harmony with nature, oneself and others (for Taoism) and maintaining health and vigour so as to enable cultivation of other aspects of self – mental, emotional, intellectual, spiritual.
How interesting to be Chinese, then, where traditionally/culturally nothing is off-limits (not referring to Chinese people who profess religions with dietary restrictions), and where food is medicine and vice versa. In fact, TCM guidelines about diet (heaty vs cooling foods, etc.) can be seen as a kind of protocol.
I wish I knew that before writing this piece! Very interesting. Also food = medicine almost immediately places diet in a secular frame. Curious what modern day debates over optimal nutrition look like today in China since they went though an era of protocolization so early on. Also if there’s any connection between TCM and Confucianism and in what direction that flows
The oldest TCM texts we have pre-date Confucian and Taoist texts, although they were formally compiled around the same Warring States era. TCM should be seen as a kind of meta system that gives Confucian and Taoist thought a framework for physical cultivation that is in harmony with nature, oneself and others (for Taoism) and maintaining health and vigour so as to enable cultivation of other aspects of self – mental, emotional, intellectual, spiritual.