I just answered this on Quora, and related to writing a couple of posts here recently it reminded me that the ideas fit this blog theme. That answer link.
This might seem to relate more to Taoism than Buddhism, but the answer does touch on how the two overlap.
Lots of different answers here cover different scope, and they aren’t necessarily wrong, but they also don’t really provide a common sense answer. Any answer that attempted to simplify that down to an ordinary language based concept set would leave out a lot, but that’s what I’ll attempt. I studied Taoism a reasonable amount, and Chinese Buddhism, and other Buddhism. This set of concepts is really mainly from the first, but it can mix with other ideas.
Yin and Yang relate to experienced reality tending to be experienced as a pairing of opposites. The Wikipedia answer would do better with listing out which is which, hot versus cold, male versus female, and so on. Parts of a reference like that would include spirituality scope, but it would likely make reality sound like some mystical theme, occurring on indescribable and complex levels. Maybe related forms and actual reality really are a little like that, but common sense and conventional reasoning captures part of it too.
It’s obvious enough that our worldview and perspective is geared to interpret everything in reference to binary pairing of types: hot / cold, male / female, true / false, dark / light, good / evil, high / low, long / short, easy / difficult, wrong / right. Why is that? Is it because the universe is like that, or because we are biased towards that framework? What about variation across three parameters instead, or mapping of ideas and factors across several dimensions at the same time, or dropping the emphasis on two extremes and doing more with a continuum?
It seems to be both; it works well to simplify and isolate any one factor as a set of polar opposites, which really typically involves a continuum, but gets mapped out as a binary pair. Take hot and cold: that means completely different things (temperature ranges) depending on the context it’s used in. For weather it’s one thing, and even then a cold day in Bangkok is 25 C (77 F), which is a warm day elsewhere, maybe just not hot. Something you touch is hot or cold based on relationship to body temperature, obviously, with soup tied more to a range of other expectations.
Binary truth values tend to introduce special kind of error. That is sort of a framework for how we think but it takes some doing setting up any concept as regarded as true or false. Background context does a lot of the work prior to any final judgement. The more that you study formal logic the clearer you realize that it’s not really how we think. A proposition can be partly true, nonsensical, indeterminate, or misleading; all sorts of things beyond true or false. Something can only be true or false based on being situated within a context that defines whatever parameter it’s covering. All of that fleshes out in logic classes; there’s too much to it for a short set of sentences to do the subject justice.
One might next wonder, how does this tie back to the subject of Taoism and Chinese religion? Is it only used as a description of the framework for human cognition, and the nature of experienced reality, versus an assertion about what is external to us? Mostly yes, per my understanding. I take the main general point to be very clearly realizing what we add to reality as we interpret it. Of course lots of things do occur in nature, outside our interpretation and concepts, as binary pairs. Temperature doesn’t, or truth value, but male and female do (just not to everyone), and lots of other pairs and spectrums.
Let’s let the Tao Te Ching weigh in on it (the main Taoism core text, as I take it):
(chapter 2)
When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.
Being and non-being create each other.
Difficult and easy support each other.
Long and short define each other.
High and low depend on each other.
Before and after follow each other.
Therefore the Master
acts without doing anything
and teaches without saying anything.
Things arise and she lets them come;
things disappear and she lets them go.
She has but doesn't possess,
acts but doesn't expect.
When her work is done, she forgets it.
That is why it lasts forever.
The observation about duality is clear enough; to me that part doesn’t require a lot of interpretation. To me the last part does, extending that to a suggestion about more functional perspective, and other passages go further in explaining that.
(chapter 16)
Empty your mind of all thoughts.
Let your heart be at peace.
Watch the turmoil of beings,
but contemplate their return.
Each separate being in the universe
returns to the common source.
Returning to the source is serenity.
If you don't realize the source,
you stumble in confusion and sorrow.
When you realize where you come from,
you naturally become tolerant,
disinterested, amused,
kindhearted as a grandmother,
dignified as a king.
Immersed in the wonder of the Tao,
you can deal with whatever life brings you,
and when death comes, you are ready.
Really the meaning of this never could be completely clear, as I interpret it, because it’s not written to propose simple, isolated ideas with one clear meaning. It’s guidance in proper form of use of reason versus experience alone, and approach to reality, so it transcends that sort of thing.
A lot of Chinese beliefs are something else altogether. Superstitions and stories about gods and all sorts of minor deities are common enough. Zen Buddhism (derived originally as Chan Buddhism, as a merging of Taoism and Mahayana Buddhism that occurred in China, and later was transmitted to Japan) took up these other ideas, from Taoism, and developed practices and perspective beyond this early expression. The idea is to live beyond the bounds of conceptual frameworks, as I interpret it, to experience reality directly. How that would work out in practice would be a bit complicated, but the theory is that it becomes simpler instead of adding things.
We’re not on to “spiritual” in the ordinary Christian sense yet, right, or into what one would expect from a Chinese worldview? The ideas get taken in different ways; some parts would match such expectations better. Since it seems to clearly relate to an approach and perspective that simplifies things, versus adding layers and levels, to some extent bringing in spiritual forces and realms probably opposes one main take.
No comments:
Post a Comment