This is my digital presentation of Grandmaster Pang Ming’s first book on Zhineng Qigong, Exploring the Profundity of Qigong, published in 1988. All sixteen chapters of the book are included and each chapter is presented as a separate post for easier navigation of the 270-page book. For reference, a Table of Contents is also given as a separate post. For a short discussion of the methodology used, see the postscript “Concluding Unscientific Methodology.” So far as I know, this book has not hitherto been translated into English.
The Chinese Whitehead
About a year ago I came across mention of a book by Qigong grandmaster Pang Ming called 气功探邃 Qìgōng Tàn Suì, Exploring the Profundities of Qigong. I thought I was familiar with all his books, so it was a surprise, more than welcome, to find a new title. It was also intriguing to learn that this was Pang Ming’s first book (1988) and, thus, the first formal exposition of his revolutionary and far-reaching ideas about Qigong.
I tried to acquire a copy of the book from China but, so far, no luck. However, I was lucky enough to find a PDF of the book online. Since finding the PDF I’ve been working to present a digital copy of the book in editable Chinese. The PDF document has images of the pages, not editable text, and a number of the pages are flawed with Chinese characters that are either too light to be recognized and identified, or smudged, or missing altogether. In spite of this, I now have a rough draft of the complete book, with translation, that I have posted on my website. This is a sentence-by-sentence translation, with each sentence of the Chinese text followed by its English translation, thus enabling the reader to see at a glance each sentence and its translation in close juxtaposition.
Pang Ming may be likened to Alfred North Whitehead in that he formulated his ideas, and his new system, Zhineng Qigong, drawing on a broad spectrum of knowledge, including modern science, Western medicine and Traditional Chinese medicine, knowledge from ancient sources such as Confucianism, Daoism, Taiji, Chan Buddhism, and a Qigong that goes back to before recorded history and is now being elaborated and refined as a new scientific or “intelligent” Qigong.
Also, some of his ideas and terms resonate with terms and ideas of Whitehead. This is especially evident in his theoretical book The Scientific Basis of Zhineng Qigong—Hunyuan Holistic Theory (智能气功科学基础—混元整体理论). As one example, (there are many) he has a concept that comes very close indeed to Whitehead’s actual entity.
Resonating with Whitehead’s AE, Pang Ming (庞明) conceived what he calls a Hunyuan Whole Entity (混元整体 [Hùnyuán Zhěngtǐ]) that is pulsational, becoming, or creating afresh, in every new moment, a new actuality that incorporates the past but not as only a reiteration of what has been given, but also introducing an element of novelty through a process known as hùnhuà (混化). Thus he can speak of buds of future change that are contained in the present becomings of existences. Thus for Pang Ming, as for Whitehead and James, nature flows, yes, but quantumly, in discrete buds of experience that are the building blocks of the universe. Sometimes the correlations are so close as to seem uncanny. He also conceives of the whole entity, or entirety, and what is given, as holographic, meaning that the whole of the universe goes into the making of a new Hunyuan Whole Entity. Likewise, Whitehead says the whole universe conspires to make an actual entity. Some other Whiteheadian terms (but not all) that find correlations in Pang Ming’s work are creativity, causal efficacy, primordial nature, initial aim, transmutation, Epochal becoming, and Whitehead’s retelling of the Sixth Day in terms of language.
The margins of my copies of his books are annotated with notes pointing to the many correspondences between the two men. One would not be far off the mark to call Pang Ming the Chinese Whitehead. So far as I know, Pang Ming was unacquainted with the writings of Whitehead and I find no allusion to Whitehead in any of his work. And vice versa for Whitehead.
In any case, I will have more to say about this later.
There is plenty of good stuff to be found in this fine book.
—HyC