vonkrankenhaus

Obviously, that is a problem. I know you just told me to go back and re-read my own comments, but perhaps if YOU do that and come back with literally the first item I wrote that you didn't understand, and then any others - perhaps I can clarify. My comments are also my replies to what you have written, my "response" to them - so if any are not clear to you or confusing, then you wouldn't know what I wrote to continue, and you would end up posting same thing again - and my response is going to be the same or similar. So, obviously - point by point, starting with first statement that wasn't clear - might help. I know what I am writing is different from your mindset, but I would like to make it clear why and how, especially to make this part of Taoist thinking clear and describe how it differs from Western Number and Logic. -VonKrankenhaus

Abstract Number-Based Symmetric Geometric figures do not represent accurately the TaiJi. Yang is Movement, Yin is Stillness. The "divisions of YinYang" that you see are asymmetrical. The TaiJiTu is not showing symmetrical subject matter. It is a stylized figure. Fire and Water are non-commutative. Your abstract Numbers ARE - 2*3 = 3*2. Things and Processes are Actions, not Numbers. Planck's constant is a clunky admission of the asymmetry of YinYang. You must resort to subspace geometry and funky diagrams like the Alain Connes diagram that was posted earlier. You won't find the number dimensions you calculate. They aren't real. The real ones bend all your numbers into pretzels, and that is what people are doing now who are thinking - building better and more stylish pretzels. Me - I am okay with just One Good Bao, as always. -VonKrankenhaus

Yes, it is. Movement is a Thing. "Instant" is just an adjective reference to that Thing. If you mean Instant like "Infinite" and "everywhere at once", then there is no Movement. Must be a Here and There or other Polarity for there to be Movement. The Movement itself will establish Stasis - a Polarity. In a state of true Emptiness or "Nothing", then there are no Polarities. Everything Same. No extent, no distinction. YOU wrote: "positive energy is not a "thing". It is. Energy is Movement. Even "Positive" is a distinction of Things. "Positive" "alone" means "Negative" exists, and that is Polarity. Without a reference there is no meaning to "Positive" and no way to discern it. If there IS a reference, then there is Polarity. Means "Something" is there. No Polarity = Emptiness - "WuJi" - No Thing. But the way you are originally using it "positive" would be an adjective reference to "Energy". -VonKrankenhaus

Movement is a thing. Energy is a thing. Both Movement and Energy can be measured. All things exhibit Polarity. There is no such thing as "fast" or "slow" Nothing. If it is Fast or Slow - it is a Thing. Positive and Negative, or Polarity in general, means some Thing is there to discern. No Polarity = No Things. No Polarity = No Energy. No Polarity = No Movement. No Polarity in Chinese is "WuJi" - "Emptiness" or "Nothing". Supreme (obvious) Polarity in Chinese is "TaiJi". -VonKrankenhaus

Nothing, "No Thing" means no "1" exists. If there is "1" there is a Thing. If there is a Thing, that One single Thing produces, has, and exhibits polarity. The very first Movement - even a "quantum fluctuation" is a Thing. "Positive energy" is a Thing, and "energy" requires Polarity. Energy is movement between the poles of any polarity. No Polarity = No Movement. -VonKrankenhaus

These are incorrect. One is a thing. There is no one manifested thing that is all Yin or all Yang. That would be WuJi - No Polarity. All "single" or "lone" things inherently exhibit polarity. Even the first movement exhibits polarity and establishes polarity. No need for "2" physical poles like objects to establish polarity. Any One object has and exhibits "poles" of polarity - sides, inside, outside, beginning, ending, etc. You are using abstract numbers to try to do impossible stuff to real things and processes. That's what Classical Mechanics did, so replaced by Quantum Mechanics about 100 yrs ago. Your Numbers are Fictions preventing you from seeing Polarity and Movement as they really are. The symmetrical diagrams and animations do not match real manifested objects and how polarity really works. -VonKrankenhaus

What would be the sources such people would follow? DaoDeJing? Ultimate Reality? The Alchemists? The Legalists? YinYang school? The Fang Shi? Folk Religion? The Official Daoist Priests? Can these all even be called one "Philosophy"? If so, it will be a Mess to "follow". Or would one "cherry pick" from these and make up something? That is the "New Age" way. Do you mean that? -VonKrankenhaus

But these are not "Numbers". Yang is Movement. Yin is Stillness. All movement and all growth is Yang. If you do Number operations on real things and processes - you get the reason Quantum Physics was developed. Classical Mechanics forgot that the numbers used to depict the location and momentum of particles were not actually Numbers, but "Actions". Try to divide two Numbers - no problem. Try to divide Movement - Okay - Fast/Slow. Try to divide opposite of Movement - Stillness - that way - No such Fast and Slow Stillness. Movement and Stillness do not behave like Numbers. Light and Dark do not behave like Numbers. So Number Operations performed on these will not be or act like those done on Numbers. -VonKrankenhaus

This is the problem. At 1 you have Polarity, not 2. This is the problem from assuming numbers and things are the same. Any "One" thing has and exhibits polarity already. Adding another thing to have "2" doesn't introduce "polarity". That already happened at "1". It introduces "two things" that EACH have and exhibit their own polarities, their own Top/Bottom, Inside/Outside, etc. Once you lose track of polarity and think that polarity means two physical things, then your "math" forward from there is bunk. -VonKrankenhaus

TaiJi is two poles. There is a YinYang of these, which you show. This is showing further also the YinYang of the 4 Emblems too - the Bagua: YiJing is basically derived from the YinYang of those to produce the 64 Hexagrams. Polarity itself is function the same through all the "divisions" (polarities). -VonKrankenhaus

TaiJi is "Supreme (obvious) Polarity". TaiJiTu is "Supreme Polarity Diagram". Diagram ("Tu") you know is from 1600s and uses Fire and Water trigrams to show YinYang or "Polarity". -VonKrankenhaus

ALL. We can use this to study all Polarity and Movement in Polarities. And also Wu Xing and the Bagua (& YiJing) show this. It shows Polarity, not Symmetry or "Balance". Symmetry and Balance are WuJi - No Polarity, the "Emptiness". A truly symmetric figure is an abstraction, representing something unreal and unmanifested. -VonKrankenhaus

Numbers are abstract. Real things do not behave like Numbers. Numbers are commutative - 2*3 = 3*2 But things and actions are not commutative or reversible. Life produces Death, but Death does not produce Life. You do not die first, then live. Before the first Living Thing, there was no Life OR Death. The geometric abstractions you show are based on the commutative nature of Number, but not the actual nature of Things and Processes. Chinese YinYang is about Reality, not Number. -VonKrankenhaus

How would the torus represent all polarities? Maybe you could figure out a way to use it to do so. There is no need. Try it with the polarity Light/Dark. Light is Movement, and Dark is the absence of that Movement. The torus is an abstract geometric symmetry and thus does not accurately depict YinYang. Because All movement and growth is Yang. Then looking Fire/Water - the Ming TaijiTu and Zhou's older TaiJiTu and the Later Heaven Bagua all use Fire and Water to represent Polarity, and reason is that the trigrams for these show "True Yin" and "True Yang" - the inner lines. Did you study this concept of Taoist thought? There is not much to it, but is quite relevant to understanding polarity, and is a key concept in Internal Cultivation. Previously, Polarity was shown more simply using Heaven/Earth and the ecliptic Pole, and geography of Earth - such as the Early Heaven Bagua. But in any event, Ming era TaiJiTu has swooping stylized representation of the trigrams for Fire and Water, but does not show a "Torus" figure as some New Age people think. What is depicted in the video mapping TaiJiTu onto a Torus is not showing actual Chinese YinYang understanding. Rather, it is a massive over-simplification in the wrong direction. It shows a kind of abstract reflexive geometry that is more "Greek" than Chinese. YinYang is not reversible or reflexive or commutative. A Torus figure usually is. -VonKrankenhaus

You are confusing Number for Things. Numbers are commutative. Things and actions are not. "1" Thing has and exhibits TaiJi, YinYang - or "Polarity". Only "Nothing" - "No Thing" exhibits WuJi - or "No Polarity" The appearance of the first Movement reveals both Movement and Stillness. Before the first Movement, neither existed. -VonKrankenhaus

The TaiJiTu is not a Torus. It's just a stylization of the trigrams for Fire and Water: And was in this form about 1000 yrs ago: This is a comparison of Ming Dynasty TaiJi with older one: -VonKrankenhaus

Yes. The polarity you are looking at then is Light/Dark. Dark is the absence of Light. Of Light, high frequency Light is more Yang, low frequency Light is more Yin. There is no frequency of Dark. Movement is from Yang to Yin. -VonKrankenhaus

TaiJi means "Supreme" or Obvious Polarity. A thing is there. WuJi means No Polarity. No thing is there. All you require to see Polarity is any One unitary Thing. That One Thing will exhibit polarity and have Inside/Outside, Top/Bottom, etc. See above. The first Movement revealed Stillness. The "TaiJi". Before that, no YinYang - no Movement, no Stillness, no Polarity - "WuJi". -VonKrankenhaus

Not true. Polarity is inherently asymmetrical and not symmetrical or unified. A "unified" polarity is NOT a polarity. It's an "equality". The right and left sides of your body are in a polarity, but are not symmetrical. Fire and Water - used to symbolize YinYang, are not symmetrical opposites. Light and Dark are not a symmetrical or reflexive or reversible polarity. Dark is not the opposite of Light. Dark is the absence of Light. Any One unitary thing exhibits polarity without being two or dual - Top/Bottom, Inside/Outside, etc. Also looks like you believe western numbers. Numbers are abstract and do not show reality. For example, let's say we have "1". How big is "1"? How long is "1"? Not finite. "Infinite". So when we add 1 + 1 =? The answer must be "Infinity". Numbers are commutative, so 2*3 = 3*2. But real things and actions are not. Part of development of Quantum Physics is realization that plain numbers given as position of particle are actually "actions" and not "numbers" and so are non-commutative. Chinese YinYang is not commutative or symmetrical or reversible. Because Yang is Movement and Yin is Stillness. -VonKrankenhaus

I see that "Space" is not a Movement. I see that Movement is Yang and Stillness is Yin if we also say Life is Yang and Death is Yin. No need to accept ANYTHING without understanding. None of this is about accepting or believing in any thing whatsoever. Real teachers will end that as soon as they see it. To minimize translation errors, learn both Chinese and English yourself very well. -VonKrankenhaus

This is not the TaiJi understanding. Space is not an action, so is not Yang. The actions you describe, one is looking all at once from far, and one is looking little by little up close. Your comparison is not of the supposed polarity of Space and Time, but of 2 ways or perspectives of looking at things. Comparing actual Space and Time, space is Yin. Space itself does not move. Something else must move to change spaces. If time is not taken to be simultaneous and "all at once", and is taken to be a movement from one time to another, then time is Yang. If one particular day Moon is full and in 14 days is not full, then time is Yang. If Moon is full all always and never changing - then time does not exist in any interpretation. -VonKrankenhaus

Chinese sense of time is not the same as Greek/Western linear sense of time. Chinese time is more like simultaneous or "synchronous" time and not so much linear like "alphabet". Time is handled in the TaiJiTu of Zhou Dunyi by showing Wu Xing. Wu Xing is about order and time and is based on the appearances of the 5 major visible planets. The YinYang of these is the Chinese 10 day week. The actual thing happening between the poles of the polarities you can associate with the TaiJi is Movement. Movement between the poles of a polarity is "Qi". Movement is Yang. There are Yin and Yang movements - fast and slow, etc. -VonKrankenhaus

The problem with animations like that is that it make the TaiJi seem symmetrical and reversible. But the Ming dynasty TaiJiTu they use is actually a stylization of the trigrams for Fire and Water. The "dots" show the inner lines of each of these trigrams. If you look at older TaiJiTu, such as one by Zhou Dunyi - this is also using Fire and Water trigrams, just more explicitly. But on Zhou's TaiJi diagram you can see "Yang is Movement" and "Yin is Stillness". Which shows that all movement and growth is Yang. So we can say there is fast and slow Movement, but we cannot say there is fast and slow Stillness. This means TaiJi and YinYang are non-commutative and non-reflexive and non-reversible. Modern New Age mistakes think YinYang is reversible and YinYang to be just inversions of each. None of that is true or accurate, and makes understanding cultivation and medicine fairly impossible. -VonKrankenhaus

What we call cereal grains are quite recent. They were created to facilitate civilization - large populations abstractly existing anywhere needed to insure power and control - workers and soldiers, etc. Most of these are said to have originated in mountain areas. This is where it would be smart to begin a selective breeding program. Up in the high mountains, the atmospheric protection from mutogenic cosmic radiation is much less. And the mutations found are more severe. More to select from. It is said that this kind of situation would reduce the time needed to produce the traits we see to well under 200 years. One family lineage could oversee this kind of project. There would be no need to see actual DNA to judge results. Expression will be visible and testable by growing out various examples. -VonKrankenhaus

In fact, modern people are showing degeneration and degenerative disease at "normal" food levels. So the modern Feed System is not making functional humans. And Jing being thus acquired - is defective. Out of balance in structure and functions. Must be fixed, repaired. Modern food and medicine is making Internal Cultivation and Qigong into a pipe dream for modern people. All that must be fixed first, and food and human living must be understood in the traditional way first, before techniques shown. -VonKrankenhaus