Tuina

[oblo]

Hello Everybody,

I am trying to tranlate this sentence on tuina- acupuncture.

The sentence is by Guoyu, famous doctor of the Eastern Han Dinasty:

神在于心手之际.

1) The "miracle" happen when mind and hand work together.

2) The "spirit", "intention" is when mind and hand work together.

Actually the sentence is very simple in the structure, but I cannot find the correct meaning of 神.

Thanks,

Oblo

[LongwenChinese]

I lean towards the first one.

[Daan]

Do you have any context available?

[chrix]

actually this looks less like a "quick translation", but rather like an issue where a more detailed discussion of the original text is called for, and as such should probably be discussed in the Classical Chinese subforum

[imron]

I don't think the translation should use miracle or spirit as those words will lend a mystical air to something that is actually quite ordinary. I think focus or attention are better words, and that this phrase refers to the fact that the tuina practitioner should focus their attention not just on their hands and not just on their mind but at that point in between, e.g. they shouldn't just be blindly applying tuina techniques, but rather they need to be paying attention to what they are doing and to the situation of the person being treated, and when they feel something out of the ordinary (like tension, a knot in a muscle, or something else dependent on the person being treated) then they should adjust their tuina treatment accordingly. For this to happen, your mind and hands need to be working in coordination and you need to be paying attention and feeling your technique as well as the person being treated.

Anyway, that's just my interpretation, I could be way off. How to sum that up in a single sentence, I'll leave to someone else.

[trien27]

神在于心手之际 should be:"神存于心手之际"

神 = god(s) = anything unexplainable / miracle

在 = in, on, at [some place or location]

存 = to exist; short for 存于. See below

于 = in

存于 = "live in"

心手 = Could literally mean the heart & hands or figuratively as "Mind & body"

之际 = on occasion, in this case, in this matter, etc...

东汉著名医学家郭玉所说 “神存于心手之际，可得解而不可得言也。”. All Guo Yu, the renowned Eastern Han dynasty medical specialist, said was "神存于心手之际" never "神在于心手之际". 神存于心手之际 is incomplete: It is a part of 神存于心手之际，可得解而不可得言也, which means "后天意识与先天神明相通的一种境界。". If there's anyone who can translate "后天意识与先天神明相通的一种境界。" into English, then you'd get the meaning.

Source:

《后汉书•郭玉传》

字里藏医（转） - 探本寻源 - 山药社区 - 中里巴人官方论坛 - 求医不如求己|中医|经络|养生

Edited January 11, 2010 at 02:50 AM by trien27
additional information

[imron]

I don't think 神 means "gods/anything unexplainable/miracles" here. 神 has several meanings, including:

名词，指人的精神、精力或注意力 如：全神贯注

I think this is the meaning this phrase refers to.

[Daan]

imron, how do you feel about this translation?

神存于心手之际，可得解而不可得言也

Being focussed on your mind and your body can be understood, but it cannot be talked about.

[oblo]

I can add as further explanation, that this sentence, has been mentioned in an article that try to describe the importance of qigong as a prerequisite for tuina practice.

When I read it I was translating shen with "attention" as suggested by Imron, but my wife trasnlated it as miracle...

[imron]

@Daan, I think with the extra information added by Trien27 that the meaning of this sentence is slightly different from what I mentioned above. Above I was under the assumption that the writer was saying where to place your 神 when practicing. After seeing the original sentence with 存 instead of 在, I now think that it's defining what 神 is, i.e. it is something that exists at the point between your hand and mind. What does this mean? Well, you have your hand and you have your mind, but it's possible to also focus your mind in your hand and feel it from the inside. This feeling is your 神 - it's not your hand and it's not your mind, it's the interaction of both. At least that's my understanding. However I should state that I haven't really learnt much classical Chinese and I haven't learnt much Tuina, however I have done a lot of Taiji and the concepts are similar.

Anyway, if this is the meaning, then I would probably avoid translating 神 and instead just render it in pinyin with italics, e.g. Shen exists between the hand and the mind.

This makes it clear that it is the definition of a word that doesn't have a direct correlation in English and is something that needs to be explained.

This way you avoid any preconceptions/misunderstandings a reader will have if you use an English word. For example, with "miracle", I think this would be a bad translation simply because of the connotations of this word in English. When I hear miracle I think of walking on water, curing the sick or something else involving supernatural/divine intervention. If you use miracle, then the reader's understanding of 神 will be clouded by these perceptions and they will not be able to understand it clearly, and in fact even be mislead as to the meaning of the word.