It’s difficult to break out of the Western habitude of dualism. But it is especially important to make the effort when thinking of the Chinese notion of Yin Yang. Rather than another form of dualism in the history of philosophy, it teaches the insight of dynamic equilibrium.

Since the beginning of western encounter with China, we have tended to not only dualize–therefore separate–the Yin Yang but to allow other preferences to come to play, like writing “Yang and Yin” because we privilege the masculine over the feminine.

The practice of writing “Yin-and-Yang” often pretends to be a conjunction of two concepts when really presenting a preference by disjunction “Yin-OR-Yang.”

Yin Yang as iconography present the entirety of reality through the cypher. The point I was trying to make by emphasizing this sentence rests on recognizing Yin Yang as such an encompassing concept, No-thing can be outside. Thus, any “there” as we would talk about “going there, outside” becomes a paradox.

Thinking in terms of the notion of DYAD, an always appearing TWO, a boundary pair that cannot NOT imply the other.

A few examples of Dyads

One of Heidegger’s most famous aphorisms.

After a short break, we came back and discussed Dào 57. Here I was concerned in driving home how our social prohibitions, while they serve a purpose in the beginning, become constraints upon our ability to flow with Dào. I talked for a short time about an historical parallel between Laozi and Diogenes of Synope, the famous Cynic of 4th century Greece.

Laozi questions the prohibitions made by states and the presuppositions adopted by people. From Dào Dé Jing, Trans. with Intro. by LU Wenlong and Keith W. Brown © 2016

The 4th century BCE Greek philosopher who is a coeval anarchic thinker to Laozi.

The relation in our own language between “law” and “legend.” Plato says that no law will last long that does not have a legend or narrative attached to it that everyone believes to be the case.