Yin and yang, black and white, night and day. The meaning of this dualism runs very deep: it is no coincidence that love is also the joy of meeting — and clashing.
Yin and yang are the two forces that flow through human beings and make up the energy that pervades us. In Eastern culture, this energy flows through the human being by means of two forces known in Chinese medicine as yin and yang. The energy that comes from the earth and provides nourishment and support as it rises upward is called yin. The energy that comes from the sky, the air, the sun, and that warms as it descends downward is called yang. Yin and yang: complementarity and opposition.
Love — love is universal. From love of life, of the planet, of an idea, to love of love itself, to the pleasure of loving, of being loved, of allowing oneself to be loved. It is the feeling that should and could accompany our every action and thought; it is the most natural thing there is, yet also the most difficult. For love is the fruit of inner growth, of knowing how to cultivate the qualities of the mind and the heart, and of knowing how to offer them to others.
Yin is woman, yang is man — so different, and yet complementary — and love is the balance of two souls destined to meet. Perfect love is made of complicity, desire, friendship, sharing and respect. To love is to always follow the heart and passion, to let oneself go to feelings beyond conditioning and rationality.
If we learn to love, we will be happier. Love is the universal religion because no one questions its value (Geshe Ciampa Gyatso, Tibetan Lama).
The ideogram of yin and yang is formed by a hill, a symbol of taking shape, of existing as a distinct entity. A dance of light and shadow. Life manifests itself in duality. From the moment a living being is conceived and pulses in its mother's womb, to the moment it draws its last breath and returns to the womb of mother earth, every living being exists within duality. Over the course of its life it experiences joy and pain, desire and fulfilment, action and rest, strength and weakness, love and hatred.
Within this dualism, one element cannot exist without its opposite; no one can claim to have experienced a life of pure joy or pure pain, nor to have spent it in constant activity without ever resting. The ideogram of yin and yang is formed by a hill, a symbol of taking shape, of existing as a distinct entity.
Yin is receptivity, the dark, deep and mysterious aspect; it is symbolised by water for its characteristic of flowing downward and adapting to every form and container. Yang is activity, the luminous, surface and manifest aspect; it is symbolised by fire for its nature of ceaseless upward movement, of lightness and instability.
On this basis we can identify a yin aspect and a yang aspect in all the phenomena of the universe, thus creating an infinite number of pairs of complementary opposites. For example, the day (luminous, a period of activity, movement and action) is yang in relation to the night (dark, a period of rest and withdrawal), which is therefore yin. These classifications, however, must not become a cage into which life itself is forcibly confined. Frameworks and models should serve to analyse and interpret life; life must not be forced to fit into frameworks.
In the human body, yin energy enters through the front of the body and rises upward. Yang energy enters through the back of the body and descends downward. Yin energy, feminine energy, is subtle but not weak; it grows inside the body and is always contained within it. Yang energy, masculine energy, is faster but not necessarily stronger; it grows outward.
Specifically, there are 6 yin meridians that influence feminine activity and 6 yang meridians that influence masculine activity. At birth, masculine and feminine activities are not distinct; energetic differentiation occurs later, coinciding with puberty, when yang energy more markedly predominates within the male body, and yin energy predominates within the female body.
This is what is splendidly expressed by the two ideograms of yin and yang. Something is not yin or yang in an absolute sense, but only in relation to something else with which it is compared. We say, for example, that man is yang in relation to woman, who is therefore yin; but the elderly man is yin in relation to the young man, since the latter is full of strength and vital energy, whereas the elderly man, by contrast, struggles to move and is more inclined towards meditation than action.
There are two aspects of relativity:
Man and woman attract each other because hidden within each is something of the other — a "feminine" quality in the man and a "masculine" one in the woman: the man is drawn, for example, to the typically feminine inner qualities such as grace and gentleness, just as the woman often idealises his courage and vigour.
But if the man is yang — that is, strong and vigorous in body, externally — the woman is so inwardly, and so on. And the woman is attracted to this quality in the man precisely because she recognises something of her own in it, because she feels a certain 'quid' vibrating in him that resonates, even if more hiddenly, within herself too. And, desiring and encountering it, she moves towards union. The fulfilment of this singular encounter leads one to transcend one's own individuality in pursuit of a higher harmony, and to recover that original unity — which is neither masculine nor feminine — that we lost upon entering the world and assuming a form, thus entering into separateness and duality.
Duality in Chinese terminology is expressed by yin and yang, understood as the two interconnected and intermutable aspects present in every expression of life. The force that drives change in existence is called Qi, literally "breath", since to live means to breathe.
Staying healthy and knowing how to face illness means moving with lightness within yin-yang and keeping one's own Qi active — one's own vital energy, whose intrinsic nature is movement and therefore change. The entire human body is viewed as an expression of this yin-yang dualism and of the movement of the vital force Qi.
Reference is made to organs (Zang), viscera (Fu), channels through which energy flows (Jing Mai), different aspects of energy (Jing, Qi and Shen), and more besides. All these elements are seen in mutual correlation and in a state of continuous change, much like the air we breathe in is transformed to nourish and sustain our body, only to leave it again when we breathe out.
In Chinese medicine, the analysis of the energetic condition of these various structures is carried out through a range of diagnostic methods (palpation, observation, auscultation and questioning), after which a targeted intervention is undertaken, which may in turn employ a variety of tools: manual stimulation (massage), the insertion of needles, the warming of specific points and areas (moxa), the administration of herbs, and more. In this context, fundamental importance is attributed to the response of the person being treated; in practice, it is they alone who can accept — and accept to a greater or lesser degree — the therapist's intervention. It is on the basis of this capacity that a change is achieved, a new condition of greater health and wellbeing, which more precisely is one of greater self-awareness and awareness of one's own path.
According to the Taoist view, the Chinese have always maintained that relations between male and female are the principal earthly manifestation of the universal principles of yin and yang; thereby transcending the barriers between the sacred and the profane that Western culture has erected around sex. The one element to which the Taoists attach great importance is that relating to habits — healthy and unhealthy — which are decisive in determining whether health is preserved and longevity promoted.
Astute connoisseurs of human sexuality for more than three thousand years, Taoists hold that the true distinguishing feature between the sexual nature of men and women lies in the different rhythms and modes of orgasm during sexual intercourse.
The male, the yang element, quickly exhausts his energy and projects his "seed-essence" outside his body, with a consequent loss of vitality and an increase in vulnerability. The woman, by contrast, reaches satisfaction slowly and retains her secretions within the body, dispersing none of them — indeed, acquiring from sexual intercourse additional strength and resilience.
In light of this observation, the Tao offers the key to correcting the inequality between the sexual potency of man and woman. The male must practise constantly the techniques aimed at seed retention. In this way, the man (yang) recovers strength in relation to the woman (yin) and transforms sexual encounters into a harmonious and synchronous dance between yin and yang. Through this practice, both preserve their precious vital essence in proportions so perfectly balanced that neither surpasses the other.
Our species continues to survive because the mechanism by which we reproduce is earthly, not intellectual; reproduction is unconscious. As regards conception, the spleen meridian is important for the woman, and the stomach meridian for the man. The spleen meridian passes through the energy of the reproductive system, nurturing it. Pregnancy is a yin energetic condition.
Everything in the universe presents itself as the opposition of two halves that, at the same time, tend towards one another, just as the positive pole of a magnet is attracted to the negative pole, or as man is attracted to woman: on the one hand they are clearly opposed, and on the other they are inevitably drawn together. It is usually easier, for our way of thinking, to grasp the aspect of opposition rather than that of complementarity, since we are more accustomed to dividing than to uniting: either it is white or it is black, either it is good or it is bad.
We must instead try to think in this way: precisely because something manifests as white, it is because it already contains within itself some black (which it does not manifest, but knows); from the outside, moreover, it is possible to perceive the difference precisely because both categories — white and black — are in some way already present within us.