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Thoughts on Opposites

In regards to bomjumaku's article on the cross, here are my musings on duality and unity.

From a purely Daoist perspective, there aren't really any opposites or duality. Such things are just convenient labels for us humans, but have no meaning in respect to the actual Path. Everything just is as it exists within the Dao, thus eliminating the imperfect descriptions of whether things are Good or Evil, Light or Dark, Yin or Yang. Yes, even the infamous Daoist symbol of the Yin-Yang is simply the best attempt of our ancestors to define the state of Being Unified. To follow their own analogy, it should really be simply one plain circle of gray, or maybe purple, something completely different from Black and White. This is known as the Wuji, the ultimate or empty circle. But because just a plain circle looks really dumb and doesn't explain anything, the originators did the best they could to teach the concept better without actually teaching it (but of course, by doing that, they are still teaching it after all).

So we come to the Yin-Yang. I get the feeling from television and the internet that a lot of people use it without actually knowing what it means. So if you get it or already understood it, congratulations! For everyone else, here's the basic rundown. Do you see how there's a black dot and a white dot in the opposite-colored field? This isn't just for aesthetics, it means that nothing is pure on either side. Nothing is totally dark, and nothing is totally light. A lot of people like to deal in absolutes, especially in popular media, but nothing is actually that simple or clear. To try and talk about history or politics this way is to invite disaster and often prevents us from discussing things honestly or fairly. Rorschach was wrong (and yet somehow still right), and we're all supposed to understand that by the end of Watchmen. This is part of what makes him such an interesting character, and I think a big reason why he's the fan favorite. For someone who sees things completely in Right and Wrong, he himself is all mixed up and conflicted, lost in his own gray area that drives him crazy. If we really want to be able to exist in peace and have conversations about Big Important Things, we must accept that things simply are as they are, and will never be wholly good or wholly bad.

Now, let's take another look at the Yin-Yang. Do you notice how those two fields of black and white aren't actually rigid against each other? There isn't just a straight line separating the two halves; the curve represents the two sides flowing into each other, one after the other in a constant flow. This, to me, indicates the illusion of thinking of the two as separate entities or concepts. They are both part of the greater whole, unified as a single entity. This is what the Wuji represents, a single essence that simply is. Contained within it, of course, is the system of Yin and Yang, but the main point is to recognize that it's not a dual duel between the two, but a partnership. People like to talk about how Yin represents the Feminine and how Yang represents to Masculine, but to me this is missing the point. The two simply exist in harmony with each other, and you cannot have one without the other, as they are a single unit.

Of course, this won't stop people from using it as a convenient Chinese cure-all for symbolism, and it certainly won't stop people from using it as a label for any given two-part analogy. And that's okay, because duality labels are still convenient and useful for us. But we do all need to recognize that the duality is an illusion. The concept of opposites is only true in strictest of languages, where something is either Good or Ungood. But for everything else, it's better to think of things in terms of different (and often completely non-polarized) qualities. Like Pathik says, separations are illusions.