ZHUANG Zi, THE VOID, MINGMEN, TANZHONG

Universidad de Valencia. Master Acupuntura

2 Foro FEIAP. Valencia. Septiembre 2008 Electra Peluffo

ABSTRACT
In Chinese Medicine, the silent and constant flow of the energies indicates the health of the body-
mind. One of the variants of the energy flow arises from the relationship between the fundamental
notion of void (represented by more than one sinogram) and two anatomical spaces mingmen and
tanzhog, whose existence is suggested by Zhuang Zi in Qiwulum he second chapter of his work.
The present paper studies the terms of that relationship from the description of the siesta of Nan
Guo Zi Qi who moves energies in his harmonious breathing. Since the Chinese admit breath and
its dynamisms as a fundamental reality, the void will never lack so harmonically balanced energies
that are imperceptible once again the void.

1- ZHUANG ZIs QIWULUN

Nan Guo Zi Qi
We know that both in Classical Greek culture and in Ancient China, medicine was a part of philosophy
from which the practitioners obtained many of their theoretical foundations. Thus, the wise thinkers
when addressing the nature included the study of the human body both in health and disease
interweaving the different elements of the universe in their conceptions.
It is common that classical Chinese texts, whether philosophical, literary, historical or technical,
approach issues directly linked to the human body and its functions -medicine in any case- or that
after being interpreted, notions applicable to medical subjects can be obtained from them.
In order to do so and in this particular case, comes to my assistance Zhuang Zi, whose work reflects
the close relationship that thinkers of the time had with the conception of nature and therefore with
men. Numerous are the statements, sometimes symbolic some other times metaphorical and also
direct ones, result of observations on natural phenomena or geographical details linked to morpho-
physiological characteristic of men or its emotional-moral modalities, which allow their concepts to
be applied to Chinese medicine contents.
From the inner chapters, reputed as authentic, I would like to distinguish here Qiwulun, the second,
that allows me to study the concept of void (which was also conceived by Greeks who were,
approximately, contemporary of Zhuang Zi) void needed for the energetic dynamisms of the body
and, thus, explaining the functionality of the mingmen and tanzhong spaces.
Zhuangzi translations show his sensibility before the subtlety of sense in language and the beauty
of this language as well, and on behalf of our logic, surely not like his, his texts cannot be enclosed

ZHUANG Zi, EL VACO, MINGMEN, TANZHONG - Pag. 1

in a fixed frame, therefore translations of the title of this chapter from Zhuang Zi into our language
differ according to the translators. Thus, in this redaction we will use different versions as appropriate
for the understanding of the text, we find all translations useful since, without ignoring the different
senses of Qiwulun, we reflect on which of them, in every given moment, helps us in our work. To
the characteristics of the Chinese language the characteristics of the author, philosopher and poet
are added.
Qi has the sense of equal, from the same rank, to make equal, to reach an agreementWu means
object, everything perceived as real. Lun is dissertation, gathering texts to compare them, meditate
upon them and develop them. In this way, according to one version the chapter is called everything
returns to the same due to its proximity to Lao Zi II which affirms that everything goes back to the
sameness when it reaches the unity from where everything proceeds.

2. VOID
When describing the nap of his character Nan Guo Zi Qi, Zhuang Zi suggests the existence of
mingmen and tanzhong through the Taoist notion that the formless can acquired form through the
movements of breaths in those functional areas without organicity which process a high charge of
energy.
Nan Guo Zi Qi was napping in an almost ecstatic state; his disciple Yen Cheng Zi Yu, watching the
scene, was restless because he did not recognize the one who had been napping the day before,
surely it was his Master but not in his habitual state, familiar to Yen. Zi Qi with his back (yang) against
a footstool attached to the ground (yin) and his abdomen-chest (yin) receiving light and heat from
the sun (yang) breathed placidly, exhaling a mild blow that proved he was alive.
There is a space between these two organic referents (back/chest-abdomen) through which subtle
breaths and energies can flow. To exhale a mild breath is expressed by the ideogram xu which,
when prived of his right side (kou mouth) is read xu as well but with the meaning of void. This
sinogram is one of those ones used in medical texts to express void in the sense of a space of
circulation: we can see on the upper side of the character an uncultivated surface, naked, that favours
the passage of the wind, the circulation of breaths between heaven and earth; the lower part shows
small sprouts coming from the ground surface which are really tiny because the lack of obstacles
is important.
The silent and undisturbed regular breaths represented by Zi Qi breathing which when circulating
make use of the void of the organism so as conceive life, creating it through its movement and
keeping it alive as well. Another ideogram to express void is chong that has, on the left hand side,
the semantic element of water that talks about the passage of the fluid par excellence, constituent
basis of life. And on the right hand side, appears zhong, square target which indicates that the fluid
is captured rightly and with strength, an arrow that reaches the target. And lastly the void kong
phonetically very sonorous, as if resounding in an empty hollow, void, the one from the blue vault
where the universal breaths move and which Tao Te King equals to a never exhausted bellow.
Nowadays, among us, void is synonym to nearly nothing; very little says the notion of void to a
western spirit and when it does, it is in a negative sense.
To the Chinese if something is empty is because what was there before is not there any longer or
because the place is filled with something imperceptible, or that being emptied out awaits being
treaded or filled up again. Naturally, it is very difficult in our language to find another suggestive term
capable of substituting the word void, especially when talking about more abstract significances.
The void means inane (empty, unoccupied) as Lucretius named the emptiness namque est in rebus
inane (because inside the things exists the void): So, there is an impalpable space, imperceptible,
unoccupied, not rendered, and virgin. But, in reality, is the container empty?
Let us remember that Democritus imagined the void to be that which allows the movement between
atoms, and their rest as well.
In order to create a harmonious, balanced current the yinyang breaths should flow without a single
squeak in the empty space for that matter determined. This completed flowing is health, that is to
say, it is not an absence but a serene, regular trade of energies in the organism. He who is healthy
perceives no symptoms, but when disharmony-disease appears, becomes aware of the imbalance.
A very simple explanation of the presence and role of the void is given by the flight of a kite which
by stopping the wind with its sail creates, on the opposite side, a void that drives the kite upwards.
A number of functional roles in our daily life presuppose the void, concept which makes me understand
blood circulation: each systole drives a contents in a container which once emptied, awaits (diastole);
the pleural space (virtual) uses the void, created by its negative pressure to cooperate in both blood
and lymph return; appetite occurs when by evacuating the rectum, stomach has room for more, and
so many other activities of our physiology.

ZHUANG Zi, EL VACO, MINGMEN, TANZHONG - Pag. 2

China gives special resonance to the generational void, fertile ground for grandfather-grandson
relationship. The void between father and son is scarce, particularly during the youth of both of them,
they are very close; the void existing between grandfather and grandchild is much bigger. Whatever
is said between grandfather and grandson resonates differently, creative void that allows dynamisms.
The Greek thinkers participate of this concept. Let us remember Heraclitus who spoke about opposites
that become the other due to their mutual convertibility: awake/asleep for instance and young/old.
The latter does not seem to be reconvertible even though Heraclitus mentions it because he shares
the idea that the grandson is the continuation of the family lineage and therefore, the first grandson
was named after his grandfather.
We clearly see that vacuity is, in no way, absence or something that does not exist but quite the
opposite, even though sometimes we cannot perceive the content. Let us remember, as an example,
that the ball in very popular games does not contain anything, it is empty despite having the
effectiveness of the vacuity: it is never completely depleted.
Let us see the fruitful Greek conception of the idea of atoms and void which postulated quite advanced
theories for the time, approximately coeval with the writings of Zhuang Zi. The West took over twenty
centuries, from V century B.C. until XVII A.D., to accept the atomic theories of Leucippus and his
disciple Democritus. Both philosophers try to explain reality based on a different way of conceiving
Being and Not Being-. What is is corporeal, and this affirms the identity between being and corporeity
and Democritus considers perfectly possible the plurality of the being with identical characteristics
to the one, that is to say the atomists conceived the existence of one sole original matter dispersed
in infinite particles separated (by the void) particles-atoms which group together or separate randomly
through mechanic forces, not in mixture but in a contiguity relation. Because what separates the tiny
units of this being so distributed in atoms is the void which coexists with matter. The void is not,
because it is not corporeal, but at the same time it does not fail to exist.
The void is a not-being related to the being that atoms are and, since void there is, it enjoys the same
rights as the plenty. Movement was a normal fact and what made the movement possible was the
void and through that, it was already explained why the objects move as well as why they do not
move. It is a constant process which originates multitude of different worlds because atoms are
infinite in number and therefore there is not any reason for them to form a single world.
Democritus had come to conclude that, conventionally we say colour, sweetness, clarity but actually,
there are just atoms and void. By Democritus time, the idea of the man as a microcosmos has been
accepted not in the Chinese sense of man as the reflection of the environment but as anthropocentrism
when cosmology and its variations (wind, light, heat, night, rain, seasons) are taken so as to explain
their influences on health.
In Fragment 9, Democritus states that we really do not know anything true but only the changes
produced according to the disposition of the body and what is introduced into it or offers resistance
to it. Thought that is shareable with any other eastern equivalent.
In China the void, a notion most cultivated by Taoists, lies in the center, in the most intimate core,
in the place where vital forces raise and are harmonically processed, that is to say the center as the
origin, therefore the void, the empty space which is nothing other than energy. The idea of empty
space is shared, in its abstraction, between Greeks and Chinese even when for Chinese it is wider
and more dynamic than the Greek mechanicist approach, useful for their purposes.
We know that Chinese thinking works upon complementarities, so in order to speak about void, its
yinyang opposite plenitude, has to be considered. Pairs of antonyms do not establish a dualistic
disjunctive way of thinking but a ternary one because the breath circulates bonding together both
terms. The creative relation is the third member. That is why we write yinyang and not yin/yang,
the slash (western) suggests an excluding opposition.
Talking about this and without leaving Qiwulun, Yancheng the disciple asks the Master who is
already awake, how he could turn his body into a dry trunk (yin) and his mind into dead ashes (yang)
and the answer says that it is possible in the loss of the individual Self in benefit of the universal Self.
Ziqi, due to ecstasy, manages to penetrate the void that is nothing else other than a metaphor of
Dao.

3. MINGMEN and TANZHONG

ZHUANG Zi, EL VACO, MINGMEN, TANZHONG - Pag. 3

Here we talk about two spaces inside the thoracic abdominal cavity that process breaths: mingmen
the gate of life or the gate of fate, between both kidneys at the second lumbar vertebrae level,
residence of the original energy yuanqi capable to generate a new being; and tanzhong center of
the chest that takes a position which is equivalent to the former but in the upper part of the esplacnic
cavity between the two lungs.
In the constant search of the yinyang harmony, needed for function, mingmen work (there is no
organ) is ascribed only to the right kidney yang, hormonal, and not to the left kidney yin, urinary.
In mingmen resides yuan the source, the origin of every human being and that is the reason why
it is a region where energies, quite mobile, get transformed, evolve: door of life, that is to say that
life and its activities depend on mingmen and on the dynamic of qi (energies), both in the kidney
area. Dumai 4 is the acupuncture point mingmen.
Qu Lifangs illustration below, explains the vibratory field between kidneys, where the energetic axe
linking mingmen with tanzhong is clearly shown.

Journal of Chinese Medicine.N 40/sept.1992

The constant interrelationship between theory and practice is manifested, for instance in the Tai Ji
Quan positions, in the exercise of holding the ball of energy which covers the area round the navel
up to the thorax on the sternum zone.
Access to tanzhong in the middle of chest is gained through the acupuncture point renmai 17,
important place of energy interchange and resonance of the heart between 2nd. 3rd and 4th intercostal
spaces as well, area covered by three points of acupuncture: RM 17, 18 and 19 which, from the
center of the sternum relate with the major arterial, venous and lymphatic vessels. Through tanzhong
passes zongqi, the ancestral energy that mediates between the genetic lineage we come from and
the singular being each one of us is; this energy is also known as thoracic energy because it is stored
in the center of the thorax, center that is no other than tanzhong. Here we are facing the zones
where yuanqi and zongqi are processed, initial biological energies, fundamental ones.
Tanzhong also known as shanzhong, center or sea of upper energy, also conveys the meaning of
container with fat-tan - fat that smells. Shan means ram smell. Usually, tan the fat, whether in
cholesterol form or in lymph form, as well as the membranous tissues (peritoneum, aponeurosis,
pleurae) tend to have a strong and particular odour. The mediastinum is an important crossroad of
organic elements, membranes and lymphatics.
In Suwen 8 it is explained that The liver system is the Office of the General, planning is its product.
The gall bladder is the office of the Fair Correctors (judges) who issue decisions. Shanzhong is the
Minister counselor who rules the office and the transmission of the messages of happiness sent to
the monarch.
These two spaces without organicity but indispensable- are symmetric, tanzhong between the two
lungs and mingmen between both kidneys, only functional, with a large mobile energetic charge,
one in the thorax and the other in the abdomen; just like the parallelism between the two places
which stand out when contemplating the description of Zi Qi nap told by Zhuang Zi in his Qiwulun,
for which The leveling which makes things equivalent is at this point of our work, the proper
translation.
Mingmen is the conception of an abstract function ruled by the element fire and without a corresponding
organ. It is a presence justified by its action, without a precise organicity and without equivalence

ZHUANG Zi, EL VACO, MINGMEN, TANZHONG - Pag. 4

in the anatomical or physiological concepts of Western medicine. Here, in this place resides yuan,
principle, source, energetic origin of the human being in the conception from which a new being
arises from chaos. Yuan means original, firstly, raw, like a water spring sprouting in the mountains.
Ming means order, destiny, and the order that configures the life of man, the one who designs the
destiny of each and all energies. Men u20204 is gate, door. In reality, mingmen is the archaic
remembrance of the anterior heaven in the posterior one and this memory is topographically equivalent
to the navel that is the place from where the fetus absorbs the breath which nourishes his body.
Chongmai to reach, to attain, crossroad- is a meridian born in the small pelvis together with other
two meridians dumai and renmai jointly described with an image of vegetal nature: a trunk and three
branches which together, administer weiqi , the defensive energy protecting abdomen, thorax, back.
Furthermore, chongmai as vertical axis is adjoined to daimai that transversally fastens to it, leaving
both attached to the spinal column. Thus we have four extraordinary meridians running through the
trunk and the head. Let us remember that this area of the small pelvis which reunites the four extra
meridians is the one that is mentioned in the Zhuangzi as a space of free flow of energies represented
in the nap of Nan Guo Zi Qi.
Tanzhong, center of the chest (in the center of the chest) is symmetric to mingmen gate of life (in
the center of the abdomen). This is clearly related to the Taoist concept of void that is what allows
energetic flows and interchanges and so, when heaven and earth transfer their most delicate essences
for a new being to arise, there is a new biological reality in the established development. For
Embryology science that provides the scheme for the functioning of life- the conception is the
beginning where biologically, the body is accompanied by the simultaneous development of a psychic
movement; no Chinese will ever come up with the idea of separating the soul from the body, or the
man from the universe or the adult being from his-her intrauterine life. Naturally, without complications,
the body is the self, the own self.
Let us remember the description in China of chaos-cosmos through the existence of two heavens
which show the models of the universe. Mingmen belongs to the anterior heaven (previous) the one
before origin-conception, where statically lie all the cosmic matters or essential innate energies
(heaven, earth, water, fire) later used in the conception. Out of this, arises the notion that the
relationship between kidney and mingmen is that of water with fire, opposites but complementary
elements, mutually needing and interinfluencing each other and are the origin of yinyang (water
and fire) Strength and vital capacity depend on the two kidneys, the place where wisdom, willpower
and reproductive function seat.
Mingmen is a region, a place between both kidneys where the principle of conservation and
preservation of jing vital essence and of qi inborn energy, are found.
The combination of both of them composes a firm embryological organizer where heart (fire) and
kidneys (water) constitute an axis around which revolves the genesis of the individual; in this genesis
participate mingmen and yuanqi the original subtle energy both mental, due to being linked to heart
and hereditary as well through the kidneys. Traditionally, kidneys constitute the meeting point of
authentic yin yang, or what is the same of water and fire (archetypical) previous to conception.
Mingmen is not an organ but a field of strength for life, the place where resides the hereditary charge
that will ensure the development of the individual from conception to death; it is the seat of the original
breaths (yuanqi) where primeval yin yang conjugate and the one that materializes itself for treatment
in dumai 4.
From Qiwulun we rescue the description of the universal movement of the energies that explains
the dynamisms in the two spaces of the body we are talking about here. Even though is that second
chapter in the Zhuang Zi the one which inspires this work, in the third one called Yangshengzhu
Nurturing the Vital Principle, the notion of void is anatomically mentioned: Ding the cook, slaughters
an ox utilizing the interstices (the void) that exist between the components of the animal. If there
were not interstice between parts, whichever they may be, there would not be movement.
The world of the Chinese thinking, whether it be technical, literary, philosophical, provides useful
concepts to different branches of knowledge, among them Medicine; the process is very fertile
because it preserves, nowadays, the possibility of the existence of valid interpretation of ancient texts
so as to apply them to modern reflection. This can be helpful in understanding important concepts
involved in our work.

ZHUANG Zi, EL VACO, MINGMEN, TANZHONG - Pag. 5

BLIOGRAFA

Bernab, A.2001. De Tales a Demcrito, Fragmentos Presocrticos. Alianza Editorial. Madrid

Ceinos, P. 1998. Manual de Escritura de los Caracteres Chinos Miraguano Ediciones Madrid
Cheng, A. 2002. Historia del Pensamiento Chino. Ediciones Bellaterra. Barcelona
Larre, C. Fltes et Champignons. Institut Ricci.Paris
Lucrecio 1961. De la Naturaleza. Versin de Eduardo Valent. Ediciones Alma Mater Barcelona.
Maspero, Henri. 2000. El Taoismo y las Religiones Chinas Trotta Madrid
Sanpedro, Jos Luis. 2006 La Sonrisa Etrusca. debols!llo. Barcelona
Schatz,J 1994. Aperus de Mdecine Chinoise Traditionnelle Descle de Brouwer Paris
Suwen. 2005 versin de Garca,J. JG Ediciones. Madrid.
Tao Te King. 1998. Versin Anne-Hlne Suarez. Ediciones Siruela. Madrid
Tung May P.M. 1994. Symbolic Meanings of the Body in Chinese Culture and Somatization. Culture,
Medicine and Psychiatry 18.
Zhuang Zi, 1998. Los captulos Interiores. Versin de Gonzlez Espaa P. y Pastor-Ferrer J.C.
Trotta. Madrid

ZHUANG Zi, EL VACO, MINGMEN, TANZHONG - Pag. 6