People often talk about yin and yang without having any idea what they are talking about. This is a sad reality, given that this fundamental tenet of Taoist philosophy is one of the most elegant expressions of natural phenomena ever devised.
Yin and yang are often thought of as the dark side and the light side of the hill. People usually consider this to indicate a static duality: light versus darkness, good versus evil, Luke versus Vader, and so on. First of all, these polemics mistake the duality of yin and yang to be a moral one, between good and evil. Yin and yang have no moral value, they are complementary and do not exist except in relation to each other. What these similitudes also fail to represent is the dynamism of the yin and yang concept. The dark side of the hill eventually becomes the light side of the hill. Each becomes the other. This is accomplished in one of two ways. Either one wanes, till it segues to the other, or it gains to its maximum, and then abruptly transforms into the other. Consider a water balloon. It can be emptied by poking a hole in it, or filling it with water until it bursts. The calm before the storm is another analogy (do not forget the calm afterwards either). Likewise, the outbursts of an otherwise taciturn friend can often be more violent than any other.
Where yin and yang is most frequently misunderstood is in discussions of causality. There is no distinction in Taoist thought between the cause and the effect. They are regarded as inevitable cyclical complements. The rain falls because it rose. Reaching the zenith, it must necessarily return to the nadir. Likewise, water rises because it fell, and reaching the nadir it inevitably rises to its zenith. Note that I do not impute causative agents to either event. They simply are. Beyond this cyclical conceptualization of all phenomena is the dissolution of the idea causality. Whereas people often think of events as occurring because of external forces, Taoist thought views events as the complementary culmination of both internal and external factors that are intrinsic rather than dependent upon externalities. I cannot sum this system of thought more eloquently than did Joseph Needham:
Things behave in particular ways not necessarily because of prior actions or impulsions of other things, but because their position in the ever-moving cyclical universe was such that they were endowed with intrinsic natures which made that behavior inevitable for them… They were thus parts of existential dependence upon the whole world-organism.
Events occur not as the result of singular causative agents, but as the inevitable culmination of a universal pattern. Things are not accomplished so much as they simply happen. At the heart of this duality of internal and external “natures” (as Needham describes them) is yin and yang. They describe the constant flux and change of the universe not as events between distinct entities but as an unending, continuous harmony of the entire universe. It is difficult even to conceptualize, much less to explain in writing. Many wiser men than I have spent ages meditating upon such subjects, only to declare themselves little improved at the ending than in the beginning, not for want of improvement but simply because of the relative magnitude and complexity of the problem.
For more on yin, yang, and all aspects of Taoist thought explained eloquently, consult Ted Kaptchuk’s, “The Web That Has No Weaver.”
