Symbolizing Non-Duality: Musings on the meaning of the Taijitu (Yin/Yang symbol)
The Chinese Taijitu symbol is a beautiful illustration of non-duality. It contains both poles of the duality - yin and yang, the feminine and the masculine, passive and active, dark and light - whose relation is always in motion. The symbol shows their interdepence by illustrating that each pole contains some of the other, implying that reality cannot be reduced to one or the other pole - black or white, yin or yang. So every conclusion that we make is necessarily imperfect, partial, because a conclusion reduces reality to one pole of a duality: it is either the case or it is not, something is either “bad” or "good”. This two-valued logic of the egomind makes the relative absolute and thereby gets into trouble.
Daoist Cosmology
Tao creates one.
One creates two.
Two create three.
Three create all things.
All things bear yin and embrace yang;
blending their energy to achieve harmony.- Tao Te Ching, Verse 42
This playful duality on yin and yang is united on a deeper level because it’s being carried by the empty circle of Awareness, called the wuji, synonymous here with the Tao. The wuji is the starting point, consciousness as the infinite emptiness, as pure potentiality - in modern terms, the pure, undifferentiated quantumfield - and can be symbolized by the number 0. This emptiness of pure potentiality then brings forth the Taiyi, the Great One - the singularity - which can be symbolized by the number 1. This singularity then differentiates itself into the 2 polarities of yin (negative) and yang (positive) - when the inflation is over, protons (positive) and electrons (negative) are created. Yin and yang then combine into the Taiji (or Tai Chi), which means “The Great Polarity” and “tu” means symbol or diagram, which is why the yin/yang symbol is called the “Taijitu”. The current between these polarities is the Qi or Chi, the life force that permeates everything, this is 3. From 3, the Taiji, everything is created, following the I Ching, the book of changes.
I love this simple but deep cosmology because it has strong paralels with modern science on the one hand, and yet on the other hand I feel it may even be deeper because it seems to refer not just to the outside world of form which science studies but to consciousness and its movements itself. The Wuji being the Absolute, the Void, Shunyata in Hinduism and Buddhism, the womb of creation from which everything emerges, but also the Non-Dual state of Awareness that is always present as the background, the substance of one’s experience. In other words, the Wuji is still here. This Non-Dual state of Awareness then contains the everchanging polarities that make up the world, from yin and yang to the chi, to the elements, and so on. This map of consciousness can also be used than to make one’s way back, from the world of the ten thousand things back to the absolute. All consciousness has to do is withdraw the polarization it creates. This is the way back to the Source. And this is meditation.
Non-Duality & Paradoxes
Other than our Western minds, the Daoist sages are very comfortable with paradox. Our Western minds want certainty. The Non-Dual master knows there is no certainty. Anything can turn out to be different than you thought it was. You can always be wrong. But if nothing is certain, certainly, that cannot be certain, can it? But yet, isn’t that the only thing we can really know? Maybe you can feel your mind flip here, from the inside of the triangle to the outside. Reality is a strange loop. This is exactly what the Taijitu shows as well, by the yin being in the yang and the yang being in the yin. If you go to one extreme far enough, you will magically end up on the other side, just like walking a straight line on a sphere. Does that mean we’re missing a dimension in our everyday thought?
A penrose triangle, one form of a strange loop.
From this first paradox of radical uncertainty, another follows: if there is radical uncertainy, one cannot know anything. This is what Socrates knew, for he knew that he knew nothing. But then what is the relationship between these two paradoxes? Between the chaos of Radical Uncertainy, and the emptiness of Total Ignorance? It is Necessary Indeterminacy. Because it is indeterminate whether the Radical Uncertainty causes Total Ignorance, or whether it is Total Ignorance producing Radical Uncertainty - and necessarily so. Another word for this Necessary Indeterminacy is freedom. Freedom implies Total Ignorance and Radical Uncertainty. Because how could you be free if you already knew for certain what is going to happen? We can only be free because of these paradoxal cornerstones of reality. These are actually self-protection mechanisms of reality, protecting us from knowing everything, controlling others/reality perfectly, and from the boredom of eternal repitition of the same. Our very nature is freedom. How does that feel?
