We all have seen this circle with the profile of an S that separates one side being white from the other side that is black and both having a little dot of the other color in them. Taijitu its called when referring to its Daoist meaning. But just a view of us know how powerful and liberating knowing its concept and meaning can be for our lives. In Daoism and Confucianism, the two opposites or contrary forces or polarities form due to the circle a unity and cycle or dance. Meaning that dualities are actually indivisible wholes.
Introduction of the concept
Yinyang means in Chinese lit. “dark-bright” or “negative-positive”. The concept of Yin (and) Yang describes how seemingly opposite forces or principles that are contrary, actually are connected in a way that is difficult to see with a dualistic eye. It is a cosmic principle that describes how contrary forces are secretly or hiddenly for the dualistic eye complementary, interconnected and interdependent.
This is easier recognized in the natural world. Demonstrating clearly how the seemingly contrary forces or opposite elements are interrelated and involve, condition and cause each other.
The two most known descriptions of Yin and Yang, with natural examples, is two fishes that chase each other’s tail, or a mountain with a sunny and shady side.
Yin is the black fish, containing in its head a white eye, and the shady side of the mountain.
The two fishes are chasing each other. males seeking females, females seeking males is just one of many examples.
The sunny side of the mountain has to have a shady side too. There is no one-sided mountain.
Yin and Yang trade places gradually in nature.
The maximum effect of one quality will be followed by the transition toward the opposing quality.
Both aspects are a dynamic equilibrium. As one aspect declines, the other increases to an equal degree.
As the sun moves across the sky it reveals what was obscured in the shady side of the mountain and obscures what was unobscured before when it was sunny.
Due to the fact that the sunlight comes in the northern hemisphere, as in China, predominantly from the south, the southern side of a mountain or river are considered to be Yang, because of their tendency to receive more direct sunlight than the northern one.
The seasons in nature show the circle of life. There is birth (spring), growth (summer), aging (fall), and death (winter). And rebirth, I mean just spring again.
According to YinYang, there are four kinds of imbalances.
A deficiency of either Yin or Yang and an excess of either Yin or Yang. They can be paired, meaning that an excess of the one is a deficiency of the other and vice versa.
Here is what Yin and Yang each stand for:
- dark – light or bright
- female – male
- night – day
- moon – sun
- wet – dry
- cold – hot
- slow – fast
- negative – positive
- passive – active
- quiet or still – in motion
- water – fire
- low – high
- shadow – shiny
- cloudy – sunny
- descent – ascent
- fall – raise
- backside – frontside
- weak – strong
- soft – hard
- yielding – solid
- diffuse – focused
- minus – plus
- earth – heaven mother earth – father in heaven
- down – up
- death – birth
- old – young
- even numbers – odd numbers
- valleys – mountains
- poor – rich
Important to understand is to not misunderstand the associated traits with considering the one (female for example) to be “lower” of value or position than the other (male in the example).
Both are equally important, condition each other and form one play. (The human race in the example)
As Alan Watts has emphasized:
“After all, we are all the result of a boy and a girl.”
Or more accurate: of a woman and a man. Possessing even, usually in lower degrees, features of the other gender ourselves. By degrading one, you degrade yourself.
More examples of the conditioning of each other
Due to the limited capacity of our conscious mind, it can easily happen to overlook the relationship and conditioning of and between seemingly opposite things or states.
Which makes us want something, without realizing that we can get it only by also getting the opposite of it. Potentially.
- You can’t get more power without more responsibility.
- You can’t get more money without losing potentially as much as you get more. Losing it can hurt in the degree, that having got it was joyful.
- You can’t get the love relationship of your dreams without the potential pain that losing it can bring.
- You can’t become successful without failing.
- You learn best from mistakes. They are a big reason why you’re as good as you are now in something.
- Sadness helps you to appreciate joy and happiness much more.
- Loneliness helps you appreciate social activity and connection. Too much social activity helps you to appreciate solitude. Or makes you incapable of appreciating solitude in the worst case.
- Being broke helps you to appreciate not being broke. Maybe even to learn to manage money better.
- You can’t get big riches without worries about it. As well as people to like you for it and people to dislike you for it.
- The more successful you are, the more envies you get.
- When one door closes another opens.
- A job cut can turn into opening your own business or going for a more fulfilling and fitting job.
- A disease, accident or time in the hospital can bring clarity and much more appreciation and quality of life, relationships and the famously beautiful, free and little things in life.
- The wrong way can show you the direction by showing you to turn when the moment is right.
- We only appreciate sunlight so much in the northern hemispheres because of the cloudy days or weeks.
- Most plants need rain and sunlight.
- You can’t become a master in something without being the student of it.
- You can’t reap without having sown the right seeds.
- It is difficult to get a partner with awesome character or personality traits when you don’t possess them.
- Receiving comes by giving. If you expect nice actions and words from others, make sure you do them too.
- Hate can be transformed by love. Love can, unfortunately, get replaced by hate.
- Negative patterns and habits can be transformed by their positive counter patterns or habits.
- You can’t expect an extraordinary income without offering extraordinary high value in the market place in one form or another.
- The more you want to achieve, the more you usually need to sacrifice in one way or another. Fortunately, the sacrifices are mostly worth it when you are sure of your goals. Though by smart time management, one can, in some cases, sacrifice a bit less.
- Conversations – a back and forth of expressions, information, and ideas in the form of words, phrases and moments of silence changing with moments of speaking. One listening, the other talking. The little break of silence in between the change of who is listening and speaking, where both are quiet.
- If you focus on one thing, you inevitably take it away from another thing.
More examples of two forces.
The example of pulses.
Color TV or computer and mobile screens are a good example too. It is in its essence just a set of signals broadcasted as a stream of pulses that either indicate Yes or No. ( black or white ) This goes back to the simple binary system of 0 & 1 that are represented in a variety of arrangements.
The different types of grey between black and white. Each type of grey can be, depending on their background, be also either dark or light. It depends on the context. All colors can be translated like this in either Yin or Yang. Dark or light.
Our nervous system.
The neurons which carry messages, either fire or not fire. Also a Yes or No, the absence of firing represents the No.
This means that our perception is a vast composite of little Yes’s and No’s. In every conceivable variation as amongst more Alan Watts was pointing out.
And is also inside the game of the outer things and inner sensations and thoughts. But actually also having the outer things happening inside of our brain, not only perception. What we see gets in a complex system translated through our different senses to different parts of our brain and the cerebrum, as well as our nervous system.
The outside in some way is happening inside of us. We feel for example happenings from the outside inside of us.
Our perception is full of it.
What do you see?
You can see the black silhouettes of two women who are about to kiss or you can see a white cup.
Can you see both at the same time?
Maybe, but it is rather difficult to totally see both in the same second. Our attention tends to either this or that.
Everything we see is an interplay of things being in the focus or not. Being in the background. Forms, colors, things, animals, plants or people being closer or further away. Only due to their surroundings or environment we can recognize them.
Let’s stay with a cup. We define it due to its material form of just having the upper side open and by the fact we can have liquids in it.
But what we usually overlook is one thing:
“The usefulness of a vessel is not so much in the clays surround but in the empty space in which something could be carried.”
Lao Tse
A cup is also an interplay of material and non-material or “nothingness”.
Same with windows in houses. Their lack of something lets us see through them what we can see outside of them. The empty space inside the walls gets filled with what we see when we look through it.
Or with black letters on white paper. Or a white screen. Like the one you hold in your hand or sit in front of.
The clear and dark or black sky. We are tempted to say that what we see are the skies stars and planets. Considering the rest just darkness and nothingness. Not noticing these two let us see the stars and planets.
Absence speaks as one cannot not communicate.
Nothing conditions the existence of something.
The strange structure of an atom:
When you compare the sizes of the core of an atom with its whole size or shell, you can picture a grain of rice laying in the middle of the field of a football stadium.
Inside of this core of the atom, having about the size of a grain of rice in a football stadium, is nevertheless 99,9 % of the masse of the whole atom. In a certain way, it exists and does not.
The amount of protons and electrons inside an atom is the same in the state of neutrality. Neutrons play the third part, as the ring of the Taijitu does. The electrons are found outside the core, and the protons and neutrons inside of it. Again, an in and out. A Yes or No.
Electrons, being negatively electrically charged, are attracted to protons, which are positively electrically charged, but are repelled by other electrons. No matter how hard they try, two electrons can never touch. They move around each other in about 10^- 8 meters. Particles are moving at a fraction of the speed of light.
That electrons repel each other, is the reason that we actually don’t touch things but rather feel, due to how our brain is wired to work, the repulsion from the electrons of the objects, or beings we touch. The distance between both is ridiculously small obviously.
The nucleus of the atom was discovered in 1911 by Ernest Marsden in the laboratory of Ernest Rutherford. They discovered in an experiment that the positively charged alpha particles (helium nuclei), when directed at a thin sheet of metal foil, would easily pass through the foil with very little deviation in their paths. Just a tiny fraction was deflected. This explains the space inside an atom, between its sphere and its core.
In the solid space is more space than there’s solid.
We are made up of space. Waves can easily go through us. We are penetrated by them in cities or close to electrical devices and the internet.
The further we dig into nature, the less we are penetrated. In a certain way, you can feel this lack of artificial penetration.
The function of a wave.
According to the wave function in quantum physics, elementary particles such as electrons in the atoms or other types of particles are waves. According to the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, a wave contains a description of all information of an entity or an entire system.
A wave is also a change of going up and down. In mathematics and electronics waves are studied as signals.
Waves in the water work also in congruence with the YinYang. In a linear plane wave in deep water with its wavelength, the parcels near the surface move not simply up and down but in circular orbits. Moving forward above and backward below.
A wind-wave comes into play due to the blowing that creates pressure which leads to friction that perturb the equilibrium of the water surface and transfer energy from the air to the water. An up and down of energy that forms these waves.
Protons and neutrons are composed of other particles that are called quarks and gluons. The protons have two ‘up’ quarks and one ‘down’ quark while neutrons have one ‘up’ quark and two ‘down’ quarks. The gluons are responsible for binding the quarks to one another.
Regarding the idea or concept of having an Ego:
Only because we aren’t our Ego, we can play the game of having one.
Where is it?
In a mind that hasn’t understood its relatedness and interdependence to and with others.
I hope this post helped you to more clearly understand the interrelation, interdependence, influence, and conditioning of seeming opposites.
Secretly they are connected. Recognizing the Yin and Yang aspects inside of you, and outside of you, in a relationship, an action, or experiences, can help you to counteract and create a more desired harmony.
By action, Yang, or nonaction, Yin.
