Yin and Yang Sun and Moon

Taijitu. Sun and Moon. Yin and Yang


My title is a teaser. I am for it and against it. Meaning, this post is too short to fully develop the dif­fer­ences between cul­tures, or to explore the fact that many of those dif­fer­ences that were are no longer. Sad to say.

That said, Tony Jones offers a very con­cise and thought-​​provoking essay on the sub­ject of var­i­ous dualisms below. He, too, slimmed it down for the pur­poses of open­ing up dis­cus­sion, rather than try­ing to close some­thing that can’t be closed. It’s advice grounded in care­ful thought, cen­turies of thought, and is worth con­sid­er­ing on a per­sonal as well as national level.

I can say, how­ever, that in gen­eral the dualisms employed by East and West tend to mean vastly dif­fer­ent things. In gen­eral. Eastern dual­ity tends to be about bal­ance between this and that, har­mony between that and this, not con­flict. The West tends to see those dual­i­ties as engaged in bat­tle, con­flict, war. Obviously, there were and are excep­tions within each cul­ture. There are sub­cul­tures and sub-​​sub cul­tures which do not share in gen­eral trends, ide­olo­gies or philoso­phies. There are count­less indi­vid­u­als who seem to fall out­side all of these group­ings. But if we pull from dis­parate groups and group dis­parate groups, we can find ten­den­cies, cul­tural mores, rules, even. We can gues­ti­mate and tabulate.

Personally, I much pre­fer the Eastern sense of dual­ity, and I some­times won­der why any­one would choose another Way. Balance, Harmony, rid­ing the wave with your body, at one with the ocean’s rhythm, at one with the sun and the moon. Life truly is far too short to burn it up in a con­fla­gra­tion that just doesn’t have to be. And when we study his­tory, we quickly find out just how many wars never had to be. We are in one right now. And isn’t it the height of insan­ity to start unnec­es­sary wars? Isn’t that the most crim­i­nally demented of all ventures?

I recently talked about a book here, The Judgment of Paris. In that excel­lent study and in Graham Robb’s The Discovery of France, I was reminded about the insan­ity of the Franco-​​Prussian War. How it was started after lit­tle more than the per­cep­tion of a slight between diplo­mats, esca­lated from that point into full-​​fledged cat­a­stro­phe for France and for all of those who died on both sides. The inva­sion and occu­pa­tion of France then led to a crack­down by the new gov­ern­ment and the slaugh­ter of thou­sands of fel­low French cit­i­zens in Paris, the com­mu­nards, soon after. Pure mad­ness. Unadulterated madness.

Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?

Ironically enough, the dual­i­ties dis­cussed above form their own meta-​​duality. As in, to be most annoy­ing, the dual­ity of dual­i­ties between East and West. But, and here is where it gets really tricky: they don’t really mesh very well as dual­i­ties. In a sense, the Eastern Way is that oppo­sites can­cel each other out. That is the goal. An Eastern adept is actu­ally striv­ing for that. In fact, one way of gain­ing enlight­en­ment is to con­tem­plate a series of oppo­sites to the exclu­sion of every­thing else until the light dawns, the ocean roars, the moon falls from the sky and the mas­ter hits you with a bam­boo stick on the head.

All you have in your mind at that moment is the at-​​one-​​ment of all oppo­sites. The No-​​Spot for every­thing, where every­thing and noth­ing meet. Where all dual­ism dies and every­thing is every­thing. One. Just one.

Now, when I think of the idea of Western dual­ism … that oppo­sites must fight each other, must be in eter­nal con­flict, I really can’t see that as being dia­met­ri­cally opposed to the idea that All is One. As in, I don’t see West and East hav­ing com­pet­ing dualisms of an oppo­site nature. To stretch a movie metaphor to the point of break­ing some strings, duel­ing dualisms …

I then have to ask myself: “Self, what is the oppo­site of All is One?”

And I’d have to answer: “That’s easy. One are Many.”

But the answer would not neces­si­tate that the Many would be in con­flict with one another. That shouldn’t be a given, if we just think in terms of oppo­sites. Unless we abide by Hobbes and his war of All against All.

So where does that leave us?

Perhaps with Spinoza. He did much to fight dualisms, espe­cially Cartesian dualisms. Which, in a sense, in yet another annoy­ing way, gave some of them momen­tary life. But ulti­mately, he might have been a bridge between West and East. As was Meister Eckhardt. And much later, Hermann Hesse …

“God, or sub­stance, con­sist­ing of infi­nite attrib­utes, of which each expresses eter­nal and infi­nite essen­tial­ity, nec­es­sar­ily exists”

 

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