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Saturday, November 2, 2013

Bergoglio's New Age doctor

Preaching the kingdom of God, and teaching the things which concern the Lord Jesus Christ, with all confidence, without prohibition.
 -- The Acts Of The Apostles 28:31
While he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Bergoglio (Pope Francis) was treated for his heart condition and other maladies by a Taoist monk, Liu Ming. Ming would go regularly to the Cathedral to treat Bergoglio through the use of  acupuncture and massages.

The original Spanish article is here:
“Francisco va a vivir hasta los 140 años”, dice su médico chino

Here is a link to a Google translation in English:
"Francisco is going to live to 140 years," says Chinese doctor

My translation of a portion of the article -- which is in the form of an interview -- follows.
- Did he ever make ​​any recommendations to you regarding our culture?
- (Thinks) He asked me if I was familiar with San Lorenzo [NOTE: The soccer team!]. I don't even have a television (laughs). Yes, he talked to me about Argentinian beef. Oh! It's not like the beef in China, here you don't even need to add salt. He made another suggestion: the name of my daughter.

- Did Bergoglio give your daughter her name?
-Yes. Her name is María Guadalupe.

- Did you have conversations about Eastern philosophy? Was he interested?
-Yes, we exchanged books. For example he gave me the "Book of I Ching" in Spanish. I use it to teach courses in Buenos Aires. He gave me the Bible and a book called Reasons to Believe.

- Did you have any kind of disagreements?
-No. This world had a religious origin and life cannot exist without religion, otherwise we would be just animals. Since I am a Taoist monk I spoke to him a great deal about the Tao, which in China is the only truth. In your culture, it is called God and in China it is called the Tao. It's the same. It is the same truth.  He listened to me very attentively.

Regarding the "I Ching" here is what Wikipedia has to say:
The I Ching (Wade-Giles) or "Yì Jīng" (pinyin), also known as the Classic of Changes, Book of Changes or Zhouyi, is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts. The book contains a divination system comparable to Western geomancy or the West African Ifá system; in Western cultures and modern East Asia, it is still widely used for this purpose.

Traditionally, the I Ching and its hexagrams were thought to pre-date recorded history, and based on traditional Chinese accounts, its origins trace back to the 3rd to the 2nd millennium BCE. Modern scholarship suggests that the earliest layers of the text may date from the end of the 2nd millennium BCE, but place doubts on the mythological aspects in the traditional accounts. Some consider the I Ching the oldest extant book of divination, dating from 1,000 BCE and before. The oldest manuscript that has been found, albeit incomplete, dates back to the Warring States period (475–221 BCE).

During the Warring States Period, the text was re-interpreted as a system of cosmology and philosophy that subsequently became intrinsic to Chinese culture. It centered on the ideas of the dynamic balance of opposites, the evolution of events as a process, and acceptance of the inevitability of change.
NOTE: See also "The Taoist Background of Jorge Bergoglio" by Atila Sinke Guimarães. While I don't agree with some of Guimarães' conclusions, I give him credit for being the first to discover this story in the English speaking blogosphere.

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