Hi Sally,Sally wrote: The principle of 'Yin' and 'Yang' which teaches that there is never one aspect without the other in any being, demonstrates the Eastern beliefs which have been held for thousands of years.
As you appear to be familiar with Yin and Yang, I presume you'll know what I'm going to say, but I thought it might be interesting to anyone less knowledgeable of the subject, so forgive me if it sounds like 'I'm trying to teach my Grannie to suck eggs', as we say here.
Most people are familiar with the symbol for Yin and Yang. You know, a circlular motif formed by two intertwined 'tadpoles', one black with a white 'eye', the other white with a black 'eye'. This symbolic figure,which is referred to as tai ji, or the primal beginning, has many meanings, but they all stem from that given to it by Loa Tzu, a contemporary of Confucius, who lived in the 6th century B.C.E.
Lao Tzu is perhaps more famous for the work, Tao Te Ching, or Dao De Jing, depending on which version of romanisation of Chinese you prefer.
According to Lao Tzu, the tai ji represents the duality which is all part of the whole. In other words, the path towards the absolute leads to cognition of the transcendent (i.e. thinking); the path towards existence leads to cognition of the world of spatial extent and individuation. These two, thinking and being, however, are only properties of the all-One, or wu ji, the blank circle that is left if we think only of the circumferential line that encloses the two 'tadpoles'. This wu ji is what Lao Tzu meant by the great secret of the unity of existence and non-existence;it is the 'non-beginning' in which all our differences are as yet unseparated and intermingled with one another.
This wu ji is also what Mahayana Buddhism means by 'the void', as does Zen.
Well, what does all this mean to me, you ask?
Not a lot; it just give me an opportunity to pretend how clever I am!
Seriously, though, there is a relevant message, and that's what Sally was trying to put across. The world of duality can only be defined by reference to its complement; truth by falsehood, night by day, man by woman, etc., and that thes two dual aspects of the whole contain elements of each other.
Zen takes this even further, by using all sorts of 'tricks', physical and mental, to stop one cerebrating and just start being. As a famous haiku has it:
Sitting quietly,
doing nothing;
Spring comes,
and the grass grows by itself.
Or as Lao Tzu said in the Tao Te Ching:
He who speaks doesn't know;
He who knows doesn't speak.
And that's my cue to take my leave, before I expose more of my ignorance.
Take care everybody,
Caroline.
I meant pumpkin. 
