The Yin Yang sign was developed for a reason. It is your job as a Kung Fu man to figure it out.
Here is a picture of the Yin Yang sign.
Maybe you have looked at the Yin Yang sign. Maybe you did think about it and you can’t see anything. You see a black and white symbol that is important to Asian culture and the Kung Fu. No matter how much you looked, you couldn’t find anything.
I am a hobbyist auto mechanic. In auto mechanics, you have to take things apart and put them back together. I also have an interest in science. One of the principles of science is reducing something to it’s simplest components. The scientist tries to understand each component, then he might have a better change of understanding all of the components together.
For some reason when trying to figure out the meaning of the Yin Yang Symbol, you thought you were stuck with the Yin Yang sign in the picture above. You felt you had to look at that symbol and figure out the meaning(s).
Why? You do realize you are an independent person who can do what they wants, don’t you? If you can do anything you want, why do you keep looking at the Yin Yang sign as a complete symbol? I didn’t. As an auto mechanic and a scientist, I take things apart to find out how they work.
So I took the Yin Yang sign apart. The results are shown in the picture below.
See how easy that was? But you would be surprised how many people would never thing of disassembling the Yin Yang Symbol into it’s component parts to see if they provided any insight into the meaning of the Yin Yang Symbol.
The picture of the Yin Yang Symbol components shows two curved looking shapes and two circles. The two curved shapes have a hole in the wide part where the circles used to be.
Does that picture simulate your thinking any? Now that you have been shown that you can do cut up the Yin Yang sign into it’s component pieces, what might you do next to figure out the secret(s) of the Yin Yang Symbol?
One approach would be to focus on the circles from the Yin Yang Symbol.If those circles are part of some secret involving the human body, what could it be?
At first it might be hard to think of any connection between a circle and a human body. The torso of the human body has a rectangular shape. The head has a complex curved shape. The arms and legs also have a complex curved shape. The penis has a generally cylindrical shape. ( If a person wanted to, they could describe the legs and arms as cylindrical in a general way and ignore the complex curves. )
One fact concerning circles is that a cylinder can be created by extending a circle lengthwise. Maybe that is a secret of the Yin Yang Symbol? The circles of the Yin Yang Symbol are related in some way to the generally circular shape of the arms, legs or penis?
Thoughtful consideration will likely bring most people to the conclusion that particular connection does not feel like it is important enough, to justify passing it on to future generations through something like the Yin Yang Symbol.
Another possible connection between circles and the human body would be the holes in the human body. The holes in the human body can be treated as if they are circular. The eyes are circular,
the mouth is circular,
the nostrils are circular,
the ears have circular holes in them,
and both the buttocks and the penis have a circular hole in them.
What might the circles in the Yin Yang sign be trying to say about the holes in the human body? Nothing immediate comes to mind so that possibility will be discarded.
Just as an independent person can dismantle the Yin Yang Symbol to produce circles and curved shapes in an attempt to find some new inspiration into the meaning of the Yin Yang Symbol, the independent thinking person can also manipulate the circles of the Yin Yang Symbol in an attempt to figure out any possible meaning they may have.
One way a circle could be manipulated that might produce some type of insight, would be to rotate a circle like the one in the next picture 360 degrees around the X or Y axis,
which would produce a spherical shape like the one in the following picture.
Using a sphere to gain insight into the human body seems more likely than using a circle. For instance. The stomachs of long term practitioners of Kung Fu or Chi Kung will develop a pronounced spherical shape.
Some practitioners of Tai Chi almost look pregnant because their stomach is so big and round.
Perhaps the secret of the Yin Yang Symbol is that the circles in the Yin Yang Symbol are really two dimensional representations of spheres? And those spheres are supposed to represent the spherically shaped stomach of long time practitioners of Kung Fu or Chi Kung?
That possibility does not seem very likely. Although the basic facts such as “a circle is a two dimensional representation of a sphere” are true, connecting those facts into the conclusion that “the circles are supposed to represent the spherical stomach of a long time practitioner of Kung Fu or Chi Kung” seems farfetched.
There are probably more possible secrets of the Yin Yang Symbol that could be developed using the circles of the Yin Yang Symbol as a base. For now though, attention will turn to the curved shapes of the Yin Yang Symbol to see if they can be used to figure out the secret(s) of the Yin Yang Symbol.
The following picture of an ocean wave will be used to begin the discussion.
Is there anything about the picture of the ocean wave that could be connected to the secret(s) of the Yin Yang Symbol?
If nothing comes to mind, a logical first step to take to stimulate the thinking would be to place the curved shape of the Yin Yang Symbol next to the ocean wave for easier comparison.
No immediate connections between the curved shape of the Yin Yang Symbol and the ocean wave come to mind. The Yin Yang half is black while the ocean is blue. The Yin Yang half is an insubstantial symbol while the ocean wave is created from water.
There does not seem to be any connection between the curved shape of half of the Yin Yang Symbol and an ocean wave.
Continuing on with the idea of being independent individuals who can do as they please, and because auto mechanics and science are all about experimenting to figure things out, it seems like a good idea to experiment with the comparison picture. For no reason other than serendipity, the first experiment involves flipping the curved part of the Yin Yang Symbol vertically.
The same points previously made about the color of the water and the symbol being different, and the symbol being insubstantial while the water has substance are still accurate. Other than that, flipping the curved shape of the Yin Yang Symbol vertically does not appear to have provided any more insight into what the possible secret(s) of the Yin Yang Symbol are.
Leaving the curved shape flipped vertically, it is then flipped horizontally and compared to the ocean wave in the next picture.
There still does not appear to be any obvious insight into any secret meanings of the Yin Yang Symbol after flipping the curved shape horizontally. Examination of the above picture and actually seeing the “secret”, or the common sense impulse to continue the process of modifying the orientation of the curved shape, leads to the following comparison picture.
Do you see the “secret” provided by one of the curved shapes of the Yin Yang Symbol? The next picture should clear up any mystification.
A half of a Yin Yang sign looks like a breaking wave! I wonder what that could mean?
Is the secret of the Yin Yang Symbol supposed to be that Kung Fu is related to waves, since the Yin Yang Symbol is associated with Kung Fu and half of a Yin Yang Symbol has the same shape as a breaking wave?
Did you notice the hole in the curved shape of the Yin Yang Symbol just happens to match the hole in the breaking wave?