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Joshua Reyer wrote:
I'm assuming you mean allusion , not alliteration .  Sorry for the pedantry, but Old English alliterative poetry is my hobby, so your statement kinda sent my mind to weird areas.  |
Yes, thank you for the correction. Allusion was what I intended (ki?).
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Joshua Reyer wrote:
I think "ki" is like "humor."
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The theory of humors wasn't totally off the mark; it was based after all on scientific observation (mixed in with a good deal of speculation, and not a little superstition).
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Yes, I agree entirely with this and you've put better words to it than I could.
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Joshua Reyer wrote:
Medieval doctors were able to cure their patients, sometimes, even though they had a flawed paradigm. We can explain how we did it with newer, better paradigms. I think that's the goal with regards to "ki" and "kokyuu". Rather than importing a vaguely defined foreign word bereft of its native idiom and calquing it into a new one (e.g., "extend ki"), I think it'd be better to leave the Japanese words in Japanese, the Chinese words in Chinese, and forge a new understanding based on what they were trying to say.
But I'm linguistically minded, so of course I would say that.  |
There are quite a number of Japanese words that were deliberately chosen and remain useful however, generally by more modern educators. Careful translation of some terms that are a little more concrete than ki and kokyu can give a lot of good hints as to the intent of certain teachings.
Regards,
Tarik