Yin and Yang

I’ve been thinking about yin and yang recently, and really appreciating the teachings of this now ubiquitous symbol. On a simplistic level it is possible to look at the yin and yang, or tai chi diagram, and see opposites: good/bad, light/dark and so on. “There’s a balance between good and evil” someone might say. Or they might perceive the motion of the diagram, and imagine that we should aim for balance, or that “what goes around comes around”, some sort of “justice” in the way things are (the Buddhist notion of karma is often misunderstood in exactly the same way…what a legalistic bunch we Westerners seem to be.) Neither of these really captures it. The tai chi diagram must be swallowed whole. Where there is one, already there is the other. It’s not so much that we aim towards balance, but that things are instantaneously balanced. In our training for example, if we make effort, then ease appears in terms of better technique and a refined learning process. If we seek to make ease by cutting corners, then difficulty arises as holes appear in our knowledge and confusion and disappointment set in. In the pursuit of strength, perhaps we lift some weights. But at the same time, the weights we lift don’t attend to the body as a whole, so weakness is inherent as we over-refine our musculature. As soon as you act, two sides (at least!) arise in what Buddhists would call “co-dependent arising”. It is not so much that we aim for balance, or that balance will come sweeping in like a supernatural judge, but that balance is inherent: it’s not possible to not be balanced. It’s just that the manifestation of that balance may not be agreeable to us, as with the Gaia theory of climate change where the Earth achieves climatic balance but to the detriment of humankind. The “balance” of overeating might be said to be diabetes or a heart attack. Once we realise that each action contains this dynamism, this multi-faceted quality, then we can hopefully avoid becoming one dimensional in our training, or sharpening one area to the detriment of all others. We may also realise that to feel and embody certain qualities, we may need to approach them obliquely; or if we attack them directly, that we will at some point feel the frustration of diminishing returns.