Reading Qi of Life from Earth's Ocean Circulation

While the Earth rotates on its axis, it revolves around the sun; oceans and land are heated, air is set into friction, and wind arises. Under the influence of rotational force while also being affected by the sun and moon and other celestial bodies, the ocean generates tides; together with the influence of wind and differing ocean densities, ocean circulation forms. Yet every motion must grasp a root. As the saying goes, "Vermilion Bird springs forth the qi of vitality." Clearly, the hottest part of the whole Earth is the equatorial region—so naturally we begin there. From the equator as base, the Earth generates equatorial currents moving from east to west. On either side of the equator, under seasonal influence, reverse flows form, creating the equatorial counter-current from west to east (technically called a countercurrent). But because of the trade winds on either side of the equator, the surface currents on either side run opposite to the undercurrents: the upper ocean layer flows from east to west while the lower layer flows from west to east. So if we look only at the surface equatorial current, its motion is as follows. The west-to-east equatorial countercurrent, by traditional Chinese definition, is unaffected by wind; it is uniform and can be regarded as a solid (yang) line, while the opposite direction can be regarded as a broken (yin) line. Clearly we obtain a Kan trigram. Likewise, for the motion of the undercurrent beneath the equator: since the counter-currents on both sides of the equator flow in the same direction, we clearly obtain a Qian trigram. This is in fact one of the basic patterns. For example, in Xinhui County of Jiangmen, Guangdong, there is a Confucian temple—an ancient academy—sitting on Gui and facing Ding,兼 sits with Zi-Wu. At Xun-Si there is a tall tower for Wenchang; on the east at Yi-Mao a small literary pavilion is built as a "recommended talent" support; on the right shoulder at Hai-Qian a scripture pavilion was erected. The eastern Mao position is the Earlier-Heaven Li trigram, corresponding with the facing direction; the Earlier-Heaven Qian position in the south responds with the Later-Heaven Qian position. Thus Later-Heaven Qian communicates qi with Earlier-Heaven Qian, and Earlier-Heaven Qian communicates with Later-Heaven Li; Later-Heaven Li then echoes again at the Earlier-Heaven Li position. The sitting Qian position is six, the sitting mountain Kan is one, forming "one and six share the same lineage." The tower at Xun forms four and six combining to ten, constituting Qian entering Kan—this is why Xinhui County has produced so many outstanding talents. There is statistical evidence: since the Tang and Song, Xinhui has produced 236 civil and military presented scholars and 1,453 civil and military provincial examinees; even in modern times, since the founding of the PRC, fifteen academicians of the two academies have come from Xinhui. So the patterns between Heaven and Earth always correspond. Of course some will not understand where this logic lies; this humble Taoist does not particularly care. So let us now look at a world ocean-current map. Because the diagram above is oriented south-north, west-east—the reverse of our usual technical convention—we may invert it. Taking south above and north below: the Pacific spans the equator; north of the equator currents move counterclockwise, while south of the equator they form a clockwise pattern. So for the Northern Hemisphere, the warm current of the North Equatorial Current, driven by the trade winds, forms a clockwise gyre from east to west. This gyre lies to China's southeast, corresponding to the Xun trigram at the positions of Chen and Si—also the location of the Heavenly Gate and Earthly Door. This humble Taoist has always stressed that ancient Chinese culture is essentially one. Though academically there are schools and lineages, the fundamental aim is always seeking the Dao. One manifestation is the interpenetration of feng shui and alchemy. The Yuqing Jinsi Qinghua Miwen Jinbao Neilian Danjue states:

Auspicious clouds part fully, revealing primordial chaos; as if in midair I glimpse the ancestors. Wind settles, the Seven Stars remain within water; faint residual resonance drifts up into the void.

These are verses from inner alchemy, but if one can awaken to their meaning, the core of feng shui is largely grasped as well. Of course, grasping the core is really only the first step across the threshold of the art of geomancy. It is like everyone understanding Newton's laws—which under the macroscopic world can be treated as approximate, iron rules. Yet some can use them to create skyscrapers, some can only scrawl on paper, and still others never know how to apply them at all. So merely having learned the time-tested basic theorems and formulas without knowing how to apply them is also useless. Every ocean gyre on Earth is important—it is like a natural air-conditioning system that transports heat. Among the low-latitude gyres within 20°N, movement of seawater transports vast quantities of heat, accounting for 74% of the global total; and between 30°N and 35°N, heat carried northward from the equator can also reach 34% of the global figure. For China, if the Pacific gyre develops problems, China's climate will undergo enormous change—one typical example being El Niño. Whenever the southeastern summer monsoon weakens, the summer rainfall belt shifts southward, and southern regions suffer flood disasters. Going further north brings us to China's east, where another transition occurs: counterclockwise currents form from east to west. This exchange point is called the North Pacific Current, lying between roughly 35° and 42° north latitude. Ancient China's center was the city of Xi'an (Chang'an), at about 33.42°–34.45° north—so this is roughly due east of China, that is, at the Mao position. This position is highly special: further north the climate turns cold, and beyond Japan lies the cold Oyashio Current moving from north to south, where a branch of the equatorial warm current meets it. In Daoist learning, once yin and yang merge, qi of life (shengqi) appears. Relative to China, this position is to the northeast—exactly at the Life Gate sector—and also home to the world's largest fishing ground. In practical terms, wherever cold and warm currents meet on Earth is where marine life flourishes most. Here the confluence of yin and yang produces abundant plankton and dense schools of fish, forming the world's number-one fishing ground—Japan's Hokkaido fishery. Because the waters of the Hokkaido fishery have never been polluted, plankton are extremely abundant, so vast schools of fish gather here. Its annual catch ranks first among the world's fishing grounds, rich in salmon, walleye pollock, Pacific herring, Far Eastern sardine, and saury. Likewise, every place on Earth where the yin-yang confluence of ocean currents occurs is where marine life concentrates most; several near-shore sites have become world-class fisheries. But tragically, the Newfoundland fishery—one of the world's great four—has been destroyed by human-caused ecological damage. The Newfoundland fishery benefited from the Labrador Current flowing south from the Arctic Ocean, meeting near 40° north and south latitude the northward warm current from the Gulf of Mexico. From the 1950s and 60s, large-scale mechanical fishing began: a single vessel could catch two hundred tons of fish in an hour, and many fishermen grew rich on it. Under such intensive harvesting, cod populations collapsed in the 1990s to just two percent of their level twenty years earlier—an historic low. In 1992 the Canadian government was forced to impose a fishing ban on the Newfoundland fishery and enforce catch quotas in an attempt to restore the marine ecology. Yet over a long decade, the once-thriving cod did not recover. In 2003 a mysterious event occurred: as many as one hundred thirty-five tons of cod died suddenly at sea, floating dead across the surface. Even more strange, surviving cod began undergoing genetic mutations; growth and reproduction patterns changed; body size shrank and quality declined. Canada had to close the fishery. One of the world's great four fishing grounds vanished from the earth. The closed Newfoundland fishery lies in southeastern Canada, at the Du sector. If we want something more distinctive, consider the Peruvian fishery. Its principle differs from the other three great fisheries: it is not formed directly by the meeting of warm and cold currents, but by a more interesting mechanism. Because the trade winds from the southeast blow from the South American continent toward the Pacific, they drive the warm surface seawater from west to east; the cold deep water (the Peru Current) upwells in its place—again forming another mode of yin-yang confluence. In other words, if the other yin-yang meetings occur on the same horizontal plane, the Peru Current and the warm seawater meet vertically. One can imagine that diving in these waters, the surface remains warm, but descending brings you into a bone-chilling cold current. Influenced by the Peru Current, the Galápagos Islands at the cold–warm confluence teem with marine life, vitality surging beyond what words can fully describe. The BBC's three-part 2007 documentary Galápagos Islands captures it amply. In recent years, frequent global extreme weather may well be related to the ecological destruction of the Newfoundland fishery. Although El Niño is currently often pointed to as a direct influence of the Peru Current, in fact the various ocean currents are closely interrelated. This is like large-scale logging and deforestation on land bringing chains of ecological and climatic disaster. Of course, the West will absolutely deny this problem. Likewise, Earth's climate can link across space as if it "teleported." For example, when El Niño occurs, the Japanese archipelago and northeastern China experience continuous low temperatures in summer; in some years precipitation across most of China tends to run low. This reflects the integrity of Earth's surface environment: a change in one sphere causes changes in others; a change in one region triggers changes elsewhere; local changes can induce hemispheric or even global environmental shifts. In other words, Earth's climate possesses a marvelous synchrony. So when the ecology of a place is destroyed, unexpected chain reactions often follow. As Taoists, this is perhaps the last situation any religion would wish to see. Because Taoist cultivation is intimately tied to Heaven, Earth, and nature—not independent of the human person—this "nature" encompasses the myriad things of Heaven and Earth and the various actual and potential factors of humankind. It defines an optimized state or tendency of things. As the Zhuangzi says, "Heaven and Earth were born with me, and the myriad things are one with me": among the diverse myriad things there is unity and mutual interconnection; all things stand equal, and each possesses inherent or intrinsic value. There are absolutely no valueless natural things; even the process of natural things' arising and perishing possesses value. Professor James Miller, Taoist studies scholar and sinologist, wrote in China's Green Religion: Daoism and the Quest for a Sustainable Future (Columbia University Press, 2017): Taoism, China's native religion, can provide aesthetic, ethical, political, and spiritual insights for resolving the contemporary ecological crisis at its root, and help China and the world construct a flourishing, sustainable ecological civilization. One very important reason is that, in Taoism, the exchange between the human body and the world can be seen as a complex system formed on the alternation of yin-yang waxing and waning—a dynamic, cyclic process, like water threading through mountains and rivers. Qi likewise circulates between the human body and nature, so the flowing vitality of the body and the flowing vitality of its environment are tightly linked.