TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) Professor Liu Lihong recounted his first meeting with the Chan Master Nan
Huai Jin
Time slipped by without our noticing, and nearly two hours had passed (in our
discussion on Chinese Medicine)—it was almost time for dinner. Elder Nan (Nan
Huai Jin) seemed to notice and smiled as he extended both hands to me. “Check
my pulse for me.”
At that moment, I couldn’t help feeling a bit nervous, but seeing the warm
smile on Elder Nan’s face, I gathered my courage.
Elder Nan’s pulse belonged to what is called the Six Yang Pulse. It not only
ran through the three positions—cun, guan, and chi—but also traveled through
the palm and reached both sides of the middle finger. As Elder Li (a famous TCM
doctor, Dr Li Ke) once put it, this was the first time he had ever encountered
such an extraordinary pulse in several decades.
Normally, a pulse of this kind appears only when a fetus is about to be born.
Among folk practitioners skilled in pulse diagnosis, such a pulse can be used
to determine the time of delivery. Seeing our puzzled expressions, Elder Nan
joked, “This fetus of mine has been ready to be born for decades now, and it
still hasn’t come out!”
This was probably what is called the “nurturing of the sacred embryo” in the
language of inner alchemy (at this stage, the vital energies have fully
gathered at the navel dan-tien region as in the process of pregnancy). At last,
we had truly encountered a genuine practitioner.
Note: At the time of pulse taking, Master Nan was more than 85 years of age, he
often taught that meditation will change both the body and mind.
