All Disease Comes From the Heart
by the 16th century Korean physician Hur Jun (Chinese: Xu Jun) from his Dongyi baojian (Precious Reflections by an Eastern Physician) Translated by Heiner Fruehauf
The sage healers of ancient times were able to heal the heart of humanity,and thus prevent disease from arising. Today’s doctors only know how totreat disease when it has already manifested in physical form, and don’t know anymore how to work with the heart. This situation can be compared to the process of pruning tree branches while neglecting the tap root, or to working downstream without awareness of the properties of the wellspring. Is this not an ignorant way to go about the business
of medicine? If you wish to bring about real healing, you must first and foremost treat a person’s heart. You must bring the heart on the right path, so that it can be filled and sustained by a universal sense of truth. You must get it to a place where it can safely abandon all doubting and worrying and obsessing in senselessly looping patterns, where it can let go of any anxiety provoking imbalances, and where it is willing to surrender all “me, me, me” and all “this is his/her fault!”
Try and awaken the heart to acknowledge and regret all the wrong that one has done, to lay down all selfish attachments, and to transform one’s small and self-centered world for the glorious universe wherein we are all one, and wherein there is nothing to do but praise its existence. This is the master method of the enlightened physician–healing through the heart. Or, in different words from the ancient record: the enlightened doctor intervenes before physical disease manifests, while the average physician springs into action only after disease has become apparent. To treat before this stage, this is the terrain of healing the core—the heart; to treat afterwards, this is the realm of dietary therapy, herbal therapy, acupuncture, and moxibustion. Although there are these two types of therapeutic paths, there is really only one core law of healing: All disease comes from the heart
