(Clearwisdom.net) As humans we digest rice, wheat, and other food daily to keep us alive. We cannot escape illness, which brings us pain and discomfort, but we try hard to avoid it. We frequently see pharmacies along the street, and the hospitals are crowded. How can we best cure or prevent an illness? The methods used are generally classified into one of three schools—Western medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, and qigong (cultivation practice).

Western medicine is the most popular. Based on human anatomy, Western medicine has developed a systematic theory and a clinical practice. Routine treatments include injections, drug ingestion, surgery, chemotherapy, and so on. It can be described as “applying treatment only to your head if you have a headache, or only to your feet if you have pain in your feet.” The treatment focuses only on a portion of the body, is based more on current science knowledge, and is quite mechanical. For example, a doctor simply gives antipyretic drugs and/or injections to fever patients, antibiotics to patients with inflammation, and does surgery on and/or recommends chemotherapy to cancer patients.

The glory days of traditional Chinese medicine have passed, but there is a resurgence of interest in it. It differs from Western medicine, which emphasizes treating whichever part of the body is afflicted, as traditional Chinese medicine regards the human body as a complete system. The theory of channels and collaterals, time and energy flow charts, yin yang, and the five element principles are organic, and they stress overall health. It advocates dialectical treatments, harmonization between human and heaven and earth, as well as your surroundings, and the influence of your mood and health. One of the classic statements is “Anger hurts the liver, depression hurts the spleen, and fear hurts the kidneys.” To cure or prevent a sickness one needs to not only use medicine as a remedy, but also improve one's mood, temperament, and living habits. From this standpoint, traditional Chinese medicine is more sophisticated than Western medicine.

I have a friend who is a college teacher. She once stopped menstruating and felt very ill. A doctor of Western medicine diagnosed a gynecological disease and prescribed many medications for her. She took the medications but they did not help. She later was introduced to an old traditional Chinese medicine doctor, who said there was not enough blood flow in her stomach and that that was the cause of her illness. She recovered after she took the first dose of Chinese medicine. It looked like a gynecological disease, but it turned out to be a stomach problem. There is profound intelligence in traditional Chinese medicine.

“Qigong” is a new term; it is really cultivation practice. When neither Western nor Chinese medicine work, people turn to qigong or cultivation practice. At the entry level, people think qigong is practicing movements and directing qi. At higher levels one sees that illnesses are the result of karma from past wrongdoing. In order to cure illnesses, people must practice cultivation, eliminate karma, repay karmic debts, turn their hearts to benevolence, return to their true selves, learn endurance and tolerance, and cure their illnesses at their roots. This is the only way to truly cure a disease, although some people do not understand or accept it.

A middle-aged woman in Taiwan suffered from breast cancer. Her symptoms included inflammation of the breast and leaking of a yellow fluid. She began practicing Falun Gong. During meditation, she once entered a deep state where she saw a silver fish full of hatred swim towards her. She had killed the fish in the past, and her illness was the result of its hatred. After she began to cultivate, the Buddha Fa dissolved the hatred the fish had for her. In our dimension, her breast stopped leaking the yellow fluid, it started to heal and scab over, and she recovered.

There is a web story about a man who studied traditional Chinese medicine in China. After he came to the United States, he went to medical school, became a doctor, and opened his own clinic. He later became a Falun Dafa practitioner. He charged his patients $200 for treating them with Western medicine, $100 for traditional Chinese medicine, and it was free if he taught them Falun Gong. People found this perplexing and asked why he charged so differently for his treatments. He replied, “As a doctor of Western medicine, I am totally responsible for your health, so I charge you the full price. As a traditional Chinese medicine doctor, I prescribe medicine for you as well as provide suggestions on how to improve your life habits. I am therefore responsible for half of your health, and you are responsible for the other half, so I only charge you half the price. If you practice Falun Gong, you will have a healthy mind and body by following the teachings. You are then completely responsible for your own health, so I therefore teach the exercises for free.”

This American doctor has revealed the secrets of healing, the three methods and how they work, and the three levels, with one being higher than the others.

If you want to be truly healthy, ponder what that doctor said.