Ron Teeguarden on Chinese Tonic Herbs: Cultivating The Three Treasures.

Bodhi Tree: What was your goal in opening the Dragon Herbs Emporium?

Ron Teeguarden: The purpose of the Dragon Herbs Emporium, to some degree, has been to help spread herbalism as a vehicle for people to grow. Tonic herbalism was part of Taoism, it wasn't part of medicine. That's one point I'd like to make clear-that there are really two very wide and differing directions, or paths, of herbalism in China. They came from the same source-the natural path. My teacher was a Taoist master who followed the life-promoting path, which I studied, and then there's the medicinal path.

The sages, the healthy, even the emperor himself, practiced Taoist herbalism for life-enhancing purposes. Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu took herbs. There are many references to these things in history. The concept is subtle to the average mind, but to our mind, the polar opposite of medicine trying to fix a problem is taking a tonic herb to promote the harmony, balance and regulation of our being so that the body is in perfect balance. When the body's balanced, then it grows as a spirit, as a human being, beyond the realm of just making sure that we get rid of such things as our pimples and gout and backache. Those are hindrances to our growth, which maybe have to be dealt with, but the so-called "superior herbalism," which dealt only with the tonics, was aimed at promoting this well-being.

Bodhi Tree: So, the life-promoting path seeks to harmonize the body, mind and spirit, while the practice of the medicinal path addresses illnesses of the body.

Ron Teeguarden: Right. Let me read you a quote from the original classic of Chinese medicine, from the Pen-Ts'ao, the first pharmacopoeia of China. It says, "So the upper class of drugs comprises 120 kinds. They are the rulers. They control the maintenance of life and correspond to heaven. They do not have markedly medicinal effectiveness." That's a really key line. They call them drugs in this translation, but they're not for medicine. Why would they be the upper class then? Well, "The taking of these drugs in larger amounts or over a long period of time is not harmful." In other words, you can take large amounts over a long time and they have no side effects.

Bodhi Tree: Much of what you're doing at the Dragon Herbs is in the upper class.

Ron Teeguarden: We deal 90% in the upper class. That's what we're working with. We're not doctors. I don't want to play that role. There are plenty of great doctors out there. My role is to practice the superior herbalism.

Okay, from the Pen-Ts'ao again, "The middle-class of drugs comprises 120 kinds. They are the ministers. They control the preservation of the human nature and correspond to man." These are the herbs called the "general herbs." The other ones are called the "superior herbs." These are general. These are in the middle-they're preventative. For example, you take them during the seasons-during the dry season, you might take things to keep moist. During the spring, you might take things to prevent upper respiratory flus. During the winter, you might take things that specifically warm the body. They're preventative. If a person does get something, then you take more of this, quickly, and nip it in the bud. But if you aren't healthy enough to have resiliency, then you would have to resort to the medicinal herbs, which are called the "lower-class herbs," or the "inferior herbs," and in China they were even called the "poisons," because they're drugs. These are truly medicinal things that have to be used for short periods of time to markedly shift the way the body's working, like for inflammations or infections or so forth.

The foundation of Chinese herbalism was based on the superior herbs and promoting one's health and well-being. That's even above preventative medicine. Preventative medicine was the secondary level and then curative medicine was the lower level. But in terms of the way humanity works-often it's turned upside down. Our society is entirely based medicinally on the inferior approach, which is waiting until somebody is sick, then trying to help them. Western medicine strongly discourages people trying to strengthen their constitution because of the lack of evidence that something like that could be done.

But we have a new medicine, in a certain sense, and it hasn't had time to mature in the sense of: what do we do not only to prevent disease, but also to actually promote such harmonious well-being in our body-with proof. In other words, over generations and generations and lifetimes and lifetimes. Since Western medicine is so new, it can only deal with short-term ideas. It's really just a matter of evolution at this point.

My mission, our mission here, is to enlighten America and the West to this concept of the superior herbalism and to the idea that, by doing things to promote our harmony and well-being, we can rely less and less on the middle and lower class approaches to healing.

When I was developing, my teacher used to say, "Never call yourself a healer." You don't even want to be a healer. I mean if you're sick and you've got malaria or you have a disease, you want a healer. That's no time to start thinking about superior herbalism. When inferior herbs save your life, you think that they're like the thing from God. I'm not saying they're not great herbs, but in a list of priorities, ultimately they're inferior. That's why the Chinese call them the lower class or the inferior herbs. So my teacher said, "Don't be a healer," because if you do, from a Taoist point of view, that's attaching an ego to it.

I know what it's like. When I did Jin Shin Do and you put your hands on people and they got better and they tell you they feel better-there was a flush of pride and success that came with healing. But that's what it was-pride and ego gratification-as opposed to what's in a lot of ways very humbling, to give something to somebody that has no medicinal effectiveness, as quoted from the saying.

People will take Reishi, the most prized substance in China and in the Orient, and at first they'll say, "What is it? It didn't do anything. What's supposed to happen?" But then, over time subtle things start to happen that then become great big overt subtleties, like the fact that they went the whole year and everybody in their office got the flu and they didn't catch it. Or they noticed that they handled stress so much better and things start coming their way. Things seemed to flow through them in an easy way and there was growth on a spiritual plane and on a psychological plane. They're able to let go of old attachments and frustrations or angers, and instead of having to go through therapy and go through years of dealing with grandma or mother or father-somehow they just say, "I can let it go." It just dissolves these things.

If you look at all the books in the Bodhi Tree on Chinese mysticism, they frequently mention the superior herbs, but there are only a few herbs they mention that these people were taking because those herbs are the ones that sort of greased the path-the Tao-toward this place. Whereas, when you get into the pharmacopoeias, there are 1,000 herbs in there. All those herbs weren't mentioned in those spiritual books. There's only a few: Ginseng, Reishi, Astragalus, Ho Shou Wu-there are only a few dozen and that's it. Actually there are sixty herbs that were called superior herbs that are still around. Beyond that, there's about 150 general herbs and then there's about 6,000 inferior herbs or medicinal ones.

Now, even in our society at this time, there's a place for everything, but most of the Chinese herbalism going on is still oriented to our mind set, which is medicinal. There's very little discussion of what to do for the generally healthy person to just promote their longevity and well-being. It's still not the big issue and yet, as long as people don't turn that thinking around, then it's going to just go more in that direction. We're trying to turn the world into another way of looking at things for becoming healthy and whole and spiritual.

Bodhi Tree: In the sense of these superior herbs, what you're saying is that there are long-term effects, but that people don't notice them until the subtleties come home to them. But how does a person then get involved with this without making a leap of faith? Certainly I think we all share, for a lot of good reasons, a skepticism of authority. So, if authority says that these superior herbs will do something, what's going to really make it appealing to anybody, to do this, to understand it, to even see the effects?

Ron Teeguarden: I don't think people are really skeptical of authority if it's something that they truly consider to be a true authority. Because it's not them. It's coming from some kind of messenger. The authorities-when you figure that they're egotistical and they're shortsighted and things change all the time and they're assuming some kind of authority that you really don't respect-then, of course, you really don't respect authority. I don't expect people to take things on blind faith. The tonic herbs are similar to meditation or yoga or Tai Chi Chuan. People have an instinct for it because they're very natural and it may make sense to them.

A person starts to do yoga, for example, and at first, all they do is get sore. They're really not experiencing anything other than maybe, after a month or two; they start getting a little limber. And because they're limber, they're feeling a little better, but they're not really feeling as though, "God, now I'm Satchidananda or I'm an enlightened being of some sort"-all they're starting to feel is some minor physical betterment. Even if, at first, they might have actually done it and gotten stiff and had some inflammation or something. Or they might throw their knee out or their back. People go through struggles as they're growing. But because it builds on a body of time, there's an understanding that some of the great masters of all time did yoga.

And some of the great masters of all time meditate. As a matter of fact, they all do in one way or another. And, frankly, throughout the world, all masters have also used substances from the Earth that were part of their spiritual and psychic growth, although the approach may have varied widely. I'm sure that in India, China, or Mongolia, certain herbs were used for certain things, and unquestionably the American Indians have used herbs. In the rain forest right now, the Indians there use all kinds of special things that are in their environment.

Now, we all know that instinctually. So when you hear that the great sages took something, you know there might be something to it. Especially if the body of evidence is that they're extraordinarily safe, and there's several hundred million people also using these right now, routinely, in the Orient, that's a little bit of a basis for at least getting started. The herbs make sense. Now, I haven't given you enough information really for it to make sense other than on some broad levels, but once people start looking at what these things are, they say, "This makes sense to me, but I've never gotten this information from any other source and maybe they've got some insights," and that's part of what we're working with.

Bodhi Tree: How do the superior herbs function in a larger context?

Ron Teeguarden: Well, the Chinese have an incredible system that's amazingly simple. Taoism was founded on the system of building three energies in our bodies-that's the Yoga of Taoism, the building of our being-and the three treasures were called Ching, Chi and Shen. To us, it's even more important than the herbs that people understand these things, although the reason that we take the herbs is to build those energies.

Bodhi Tree: Part of seeing the benefits of the herbs, then, is understanding that they're part of a spiritual tradition.

Ron Teeguarden: Right. But, once you understand what these energies are, once you actually grasp them in your mind, then you take the herbs for awhile and you say to yourself, "Yes, it's actually doing that." That's the thing; it's actually building an energy.

Bodhi Tree: It self-validates.

Ron Teeguarden: Yes, it does self-validate once you actually know what to look for. The fact is if you didn't know it and you took the herbs, then maybe it would take a lifetime to grasp, but then you'd be the great sage because you wrote it down the first time. Somebody figured this out, obviously, some time ago, and it stuck with a lot of people. Consider that probably tens of billions of people have done this herbalism exactly like this. It's not like this is a new-fangled therapy. This isn't experimental at this point. It's not a matter of does it work-it's really a matter of how it works and how to communicate it in our language.

Bodhi Tree: Okay, can you explain the three treasures?

Ron Teeguarden: The first is Ching. Ching is primal to the Chinese theory of our life force and this is the great secret of China. Often when you hear the word "Chi," people are really referring to Ching. Chi means energy or vitality, but Ching is our deepest energy and really the Chinese made a distinction, much like we say "white," but the Eskimo has a bunch of different words for "white." Well, Ching is a type of Chi that really is distinct.

Ching is an energy that we're born with that determines our genetic potential. It's probably coded in our genetic energy, to determine how long we're going to live and how powerful and how adaptive our life will be. That adaptability is a critical issue, because it requires energy to be adaptive and to be able to do many things for a very long time. We're given basically a sort of battery pack that's genetically built, and you've got eighty-two years at so much drain per year to live, so many ticks of the heart. Well, we're set like that and different people are born with more Ching and less Ching. And the ones with more Ching, maybe they're those people that you know that their grandma lived to be 103 and grandpa lived to be 97, and you look at this guy who's fifty and he looks like he's thirty and you just say, "You've just got great stock." Other people were frail from the beginning. This is Ching.

Ching is associated with the nucleus of each cell of our body, but also with our hormone functions, the pituitary, the adrenals, the gonads, and so forth, in terms of adapting and providing power throughout our lifetime. But if that energy is drained, then we start to age, and we age more rapidly if there's more drain on it. So, certain things were famous as the do's and don'ts of Chinese life science: always be moderate sexually, don't overwork your brain-that's why they've meditated, to quiet the mind.

All these things were oriented toward not draining Ching, which is translated as essence. If you protect essence, then you'll live a long life and you won't degenerate as you go. Then, by the time you get to be older, you've had a chance to develop great wisdom, but you won't be weakened, so you can actually become the master, like Lao Tzu or other masters. So, Ching was the first treasure. A treasure worth more than money, worth more than anything we do in life. This is our treasure. This is our life force.

Many of the greatest tonics in China are Ching, or essence tonics, and the Ching tonics are divided into two types: the Yin and the Yang. The Yin are the herbs, or the substances, or energies within our body that conserve, control, store and accumulate, and the Yang is the burning or utilization of that stored energy.

Life is a process of Yin and Yang-Yin accumulating and Yang burning. If we don't replenish that Ching, then we use up our life force. But if we learn the secret-which is the way the Taoists all take these essence tonics, what you use, you replenish-then you can at least live to your full life expectancy, and maybe even more, affect your own genetic potential. The Chinese believe that you can actually alter your project down the road.

Bodhi Tree: What's the second treasure?

Ron Teeguarden: The second treasure is Chi. That's actually the most famous thing. The Chi, to the Chinese, builds our outer vitality. It's basically believed that, if we can replenish this energy, then we don't have to go into our reserves, and that's a way of protecting our essence.

Chi tonics are very, very popular because they strengthen our lungs and our digestion so that we make Chi all the time. That's what goes into our meridian system and nurtures the twelve organ systems and so forth. And if we have excess of Chi, that goes into these other reserve modes and becomes Ching itself, also. So a Chi tonic like Ginseng, if you take enough of it in the right way, will also make Ching, it will also build essence. But, it has to go through a pathway to do that, rather than the direct essence tonics, which are the longevity herbs. Chi tonics are for vitality and outward energy, and for work and for putting on muscle and flesh and so forth.

Bodhi Tree: The third treasure is Shen.

Ron Teeguarden: Yes, and Shen, once again, is a treasure because it's something we're supposed to develop, the spiritual aspect of our being. Shen is equated to the divine spark that's within all of us. This is often translated as "God" or "spirit" or "Tao" within man. The Chinese would say this is our realization of Tao as it manifests in man. And it manifests our universal love, our compassion, our acceptance, our generosity, and our benevolence to other people. It also manifests our tolerance for evils done against us, and our overview of things. And this is something that most people struggle with and, as a matter of fact, many people just don't ever get to.

And yet, there are herbs, called Shen tonics that help us to develop this. Now they're not psychoactive, but for some reason, when we take them over time, they help us in our own way to develop-especially and most obviously-if we're meditating and doing yoga practices, controlling, regulating and mastering our energy and our being, and contemplating nature and eating well. Those various things all have to come into play.

Now Reishi was the most supreme Shen tonic, and Wild Ginseng is the other. That's why those herbs are famous. Once again, not because they did anything on the immediate level, although we can see that they do many things, but because of their spiritual growth-enhancing qualities, and that's how they were used.

Shen is the ultimate purpose of these things. Our Ching and our Chi are so that we can become great spirits in this world and that's what the superior herbalism is about. Not about coming in here, or coming in anyplace, and diagnosing that you have liver heat, therefore you have a headache. Although that's certainly relevant to the human condition, it's not our thing at this time. So, that's the three treasures.

Bodhi Tree: What about the relationship of herbs to diet and exercise? Don't we have to use the herbs along with other practices, as you say, to get the maximum effect?

Ron Teeguarden: Right. In real practice, a person has to develop their life. The Chinese saw life working either in vicious cycles or benevolent cycles. Vicious cycles were where you did one thing wrong so something else went wrong. So, to compensate, you do something else wrong and then you get symptoms. Then you can correct that and before you know it, you have a list of problems in your life that are really unravelable, unless you get into the inferior herbs and remedial exercises and you have to go for corrective measures on all paths for awhile.

The job of the superior herbalist is to turn vicious cycles into benevolent cycles where something good happens-something benevolent happens, the Chinese say, so, therefore, something else benevolent happens. Like maybe if you have just a little more energy, then you can go out and exercise. Then, because you exercise, you're starting to feel vibrant, so then you start taking a meditation course because you don't fall asleep. And then because you're meditating, you become relaxed, and because you become relaxed, you start understanding things you didn't understand before, and you start to get centered and you don't get the cravings for sugar. And it goes like that. And all of a sudden, you're growing, you're actually understanding. You're getting healthier and you start eliminating negative things. We can be a starting point or an ending point to spiritual growth.

Bodhi Tree: They come to it from every possible direction, but it seems like many people, at some point, are forced to examine the idea of developing their spiritual life.

Ron Teeguarden: There's a breakthrough at some point in a lot of people's lives where they realize that, but there's a lot of people who don't comprehend that. But, it's easy, once you get a spark, to all of a sudden move right on to that path, because it's so natural. It's real. And people know that, instinctively, no matter what they've been taught opposite from that. But a lot of people are never exposed to anything. They're fearful of it because they've been told to be fearful of these kinds of things, and they don't even give it a real direct look.

Bodhi Tree: Native Americans and other native peoples have traditionally used herbs. How do the other herbal traditions relate to the Chinese herbal system?

Ron Teeguarden: Well, Chinese herbalism is not just China. It's a system, much like Western herbalism isn't just American Indian herbalism or European, it's all the things pulled together. The Chinese also brought together herbs from many of the civilizations that they contacted over thousands of years, and they've organized it into a unified system based on these unbelievably great and profound principles of Tao, Yin and Yang, the Five Elements and so forth. All of the herbs that they discovered from these remote regions of the world-from Indonesia and way out in Siberia, from the fringe of Europe and all the way out to the Pacific Rim-they brought all those herbs together and created this great herbalism. But, it was principled, based on the three treasures.

Western herbalism has never been united in that way. There is no great unifying principle and that's what, to me, makes Chinese herbalism so great. I can't find the unifying principle in Western herbalism yet. The emphasis still remains more primitive. Which means that it still deals in terms of remedial work. What do you think of as the great Western herbs? Echinacea and Goldenseal are very famous. The things that actually fix problems maintain their great reputation. But, they're not dealing in a superior herb class. They're great herbs, they're truly great things, but they're in the inferior class of herbs. I don't want to take Goldenseal. I would like to go my whole life and never have to take the equivalent of Goldenseal again because that means I won't catch a cold again. That's a better place from my point of view. Also, if I keep catching colds, my stuffy head's going to keep me from being able to meditate properly and really develop, and if I have 1,000 days of colds and sinus problems in my life, that's 1,000 days less of progress on the path in a short life. Not to mention all the other stresses that I should be able to overcome.

Still, remedial things are very important and we all should actually know how to take care of things, so any herbalism is beautiful and useful. I use remedial herbalism all the time with my family, but I would recommend that people at least look at Chinese herbalism for a lot of the principles within which they can fit many things that we know in life. If you approach it from a point of view of Yin and Yang, it sort of just all falls together.

Bodhi Tree: Why is that?

Ron Teeguarden: Because this herbalism isn't just herbs, it's spiritual growth. Therefore, all the books on spiritual growth are relevant, but, from my point of view, I think that Taoism is not a religion-it's a way of seeing things. If you read Sufism, Yogananda, Steiner or if you read Gurdjieff, they're all Yin and Yang. They're always talking about the unity of things and the polarity of opposites.

The greatness of Taoism is its simplicity. It's a very simple system of the mind where, for the rest of your life, you can see cycles and rhythms and polarities that great minds have always seen. Then you can give a million examples and you can apply it to what's in your world-be it astrophysics or gardening or medicine or raising children. There's a beauty to reading Taoism and then reading all these other things and having a simple pattern-it's a great starting point for spiritual growth.

No matter who I read that's spiritual-the truly great masters, for sure, and even the average masters-they're all just speaking Taoism from the point of view of a Sufi or from the point of view of the Native American Indian. The basic writings are so profound from any spiritual path, there's no question about that. Particularly, I'd like to just say that the writings of Hazrat Inayat Khan are exactly the same as Taoism. He used different stories that came from the Middle East, but he's perpetually talking about Yin and Yang. He's also perpetually talking about Shen. I've never read anybody more eloquent than Khan on describing Shen, but I'm sure there are others that can express it like that too.

Bodhi Tree: Macrobiotics is also based on Taoist principles, and you yourself come from a great deal of experience with Macrobiotics. Would you say there's a proper diet that people should be pursuing that is complementary to the use of the herbs?

Ron Teeguarden: There's a superior diet, there's a general diet and there's an inferior diet. Same thing-you can approach it in the same way. The superior diet would be based on the healthiest tonic foods. Basically, you want to eat the most strengthening, harmonizing foods that you can get fresh that are available.

My feeling is that a tonic diet would be one with plenty of root vegetables, lots of dark green things and a variety of hearty grains. And beans are really important for strengthening essence, so I think those are important parts of the diet. Black beans, adzuki beans, if they're used, are often considered to be the strongest essence tonics in Chinese herbalism. But, different people are different and their constitutions are different. Some people find that vegetarian diets are better than meat-eating diets and other people feel differently. Some people eat fish and it suits their constitution and makes them strong and other people can't or won't because of their spiritual belief. Depending on the level of the person's growth, different foods will mean different things, too. Moderate eating and chewing well is probably more important than actually a lot of what you take in. I really believe in that.

Bodhi Tree: It's very simple.

Ron Teeguarden: It's hard to get people to chew well, but, boy, it's more important than taking a lot of vitamins sometimes. If you chew well, you get a lot more out of your food and it detoxifies more easily. People who chew well live long; I think that's a very important fact. The last one up from the table will probably be the last one to die.

But then on the other hand, many people are ill and they have to be given specific diets and they have to cut out a lot of important foods, what might be healthy foods because they're allergic to them. I believe that nobody should be restricted for his or her entire life. They should be corrected and then gradually put on a diet that becomes not an inferior diet but the superior diet of strengthening things. That's just like herbalism, that's just a couple of years of transitioning from fixing it to promoting well-being. There are a lot of good diets. I came out of the macrobiotic tradition, but my diet has been adapted to my lifestyle and I'm not a proselytizer on any particular diet, but it should be strengthening and harmonizing.

Bodhi Tree: It seems like more and more people are moving towards a diet based on whole grains, beans, and vegetables. Even our Federal government's own recommendations keep sliding over to that side.

Ron Teeguarden: And that's where it will go. We're such an immature society really in terms of nutritional knowledge. I mean, we're coming out of a place where we thought that eggs and steak and some milk and a potato was a good diet. I have to admit that my diet is pretty much like a Chinese diet, even if it's American food. I mix it all up and take a lot of different things. I've made some studies as to which herbs are Ching, Chi and Shen herb foods. The herbs and the foods are not distinct. I have volume after volume of books that have been written on foods having these qualities. I view my food as herbalism. Some people say that herbs are the fifth food group in China-which is true-but you can almost say that food is our herbs that get cultivated.

Bodhi Tree: Right. As the first line of defense.

Ron Teeguarden: That's right, that's what they're supposed to be for. And as a builder of fortitude and sustaining our being. At all these three levels.

Bodhi Tree: How did you first learn Taoist principles?

Ron Teeguarden: I found my main teacher, Sung Jin Park, who was a Taoist master. That changed my life because he taught me all these principles about the superior herbalism and superior practices and I became totally oriented toward the Taoist approach to promoting well-being through harmonizing the body and building the three treasures. He just really set my foundations in the right place. I've been able to acquire lots of other information pieces, but they all fit into this basic framework, which is what Taoism is so great at-it's just such a great foundation for everything else. I honestly believe that if somebody studies the fundamental principles of Taoism, it gives you the basic foundation for everything else for the rest of your life.

Even if I never mention the word "Tao," or "Yin and Yang," I can talk to people all day long in terms of cycles. You can talk to your lawyer or your economics professor or anybody about cycles and say, "Yes, that's right, ups and downs."

I feel that if in my lifetime America has heard about the concept of balance, and they actually think about that-balance this, balance that-and understand that there are poles within which things can fit and that a large number of people are actually putting that to practical application, whether it's in diet or in exercise or herbalism, I will have achieved something really important. That's what I'm trying to do. That's my destiny, I hope. And this is where I feel like it's my path. And the Dragon Herbs Emporium is the vehicle to help me accomplish it.