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It is a most powerful symbol. It evokes the fundamental order of nature. It includes the whole, and it introduces the notion of differentiation. It presents the images of duality, opposition, and complementation. It displays movement, and it contains stillness. It does nothing, and it propels all of creation. It is the emblem of universe: the Taiji Symbol. | |||||||||||
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| Taiji means “the grand ultimate.” But this implies differentiation, separation, and/or division. Before there can be division, there must be wholeness. Everything must be contained in the wholeness. Nothing that exists or can exist can be separated from the wholeness. This is the primordial void, the “before the before” in Taoism. It is called Wuji (shown as a circle). It is the undifferentiated state of non-existence. Taiji is the beginning and end of creation. It is the first thing that happens. It is the point time commences, the moment nothing comes into existence. Of course, once there is nothing, there is nothing and no nothing. In other words, nothing is now something; it is no longer no nothing. Therefore the first occurrence, the moment time formed, the initial movement was separation. Yet in this separation, unity was not violated. The whole remained unchanged for that is its essential quality. And, at the same time, something had happened. “Two” could be distinguished. What was undifferentiated was now separated from all else. There were now two aspects to the vast un-nameable. In the cosmology of ancient China this symbol demonstrates the essence of the visible universe. Yin and Yang are the terms most commonly used to describe this idea. But to think of the symbol’s meaning in these terms, does a disservice to the essential ideas that unity and infinity are one and the same, that all is one and one is all, and that the present moment is where eternity dwells. So the first thing that occurred in the great, indescribable wholeness, what may be called the Tao, or God, or The Void, set forth the primal paradox. Change was installed as the first constant. Oh, so complicated was the first occurrence, that the ancients spent millennia unraveling its hidden mysteries. So the symbol contains and releases both the undivided whole and the infinite number of parts. It demonstrates the spiritual law of paradox by challenging the mind to contain two seemingly contradictory thoughts simultaneously in the mind. Paradox acts as a door into the intuitive by cracking open the structure of cohesive thought, and breaking the thinker out of his or her normal pattern of understanding. Paradoxical things thrive, facilitating life in its constantly changing forms. Spiritual teachers use these ideas to break through students’ blocks. Think of Zen Koans. Look carefully at the Taiji symbol and you notice that when black is full, a speck of white emerges. When white is most bountiful, black shows up. At its darkest black begins to return to white. The symbol illustrates the existence of two. It demonstrates the opposite natures of paired elements. All is relative. However, what we describe as opposites, exist on a single scale, one with the other. Therefore, black and white are both colors; up and down are both directions. We recognize slow by comparing it to fast. The “two” are inextricably linked to the “one.” This is why the symbol is still contained within the bounds of a circle. The “Tao Te Ching” goes so far as to say that these complementary opposites define one another. Day and night flow into one another. Activity and rest are mutually assured. The curving shapes set up the cyclical natures of time, space and matter. The taiji symbol implies movement. The image shows this in the way the shape (sometimes called two fishes) seems to spin. This emphasizes the point of the universe’s cycles. All this is contained in this simple symbol. Of course, computers are built upon this idea of a binary system. And what they confirm with their eventual complexity is that this ancient cosmology translates into very practical expressions. I hope this elucidates some more interest in this fabulous symbol. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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