Huangdi Neijing

The text

The Huangdi Neijing has two books, Suwen and Lingshu, eighty-one chapters each. Suwen speaks of heaven, the person, yin and yang, the images of the zang, and treating what has not yet become illness. Lingshu speaks of the needle, the channels, nutritive and defensive qi, form and spirit. The two books are the inner and outer of one classic. Base text: Wang Bing's 762 recension with the Northern Song Xin Jiaozheng of Lin Yi and Gao Baoheng — Chongguang buzhu Huangdi neijing suwen; Lingshu after Shi Song 史崧 (1155), the Yuan Gulin shutang / Ming Zhao-fu Jujingtang 12-juan line (Sibu Congkan). The Chinese is public domain. The English is this site's own translation. Chapters 72 and 73 are later supplements (yipian), not the text Wang Bing saw. The seven great treatises Wang Bing restored as juan 7 (from the Great Record of Heaven's Origin through the Great Discourse on the Utmost True Essentials) are later than the first sixty-five chapters. They stay in the received 81. They are not hidden. These chapters are not for writing prescriptions. First see how qi comes and goes, how yin and yang open and close; then speak of living with yourself.

The line

When yin is level and yang is held close, the spirit is in order.

The note

The Neijing is not a casebook. It first asks how heaven and the person actually run, then how to live with that. To read it is to return to the layer before the body was split into specialties. This is not a clinic. It is seeing clearly.