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morosoph wrote on Aug 21
Yep, it's Tim.I think that we're on the same track. BTW (regarding your clarification) pantheistic isn't polytheistic.Yin and Yang aren't quite it: the concepts are too "human"; it's the same error that leads to the Christian God, IMO, and leads to the need for a theory of evil (such as Yin not "obeying" Yang). Such theories are usually too simple.To me, it is the "being" that is the wrong concept. At that point we are overgeneralising, and we are doing so to an even greater extent as to when we "personalise" nations (vis, Britannia, Uncle Sam, etcetera). At least nations are made of people; nature is not a being, and making it one falsifises our intelligence concerning nature, as one would if one were seeking comfort, rather than truth.The image that I chose is called "The Treachery Of Images"; that is no arbitrary title. It is our greatest risk, that in seeking meaning, we overturn truth.

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ullangoo wrote on Aug 21
Sure - I know Spinoza and pantheism, but I wrote something about polytheism in a reply far above and thought I'd gather the loose ends.I don't really know what to call the fundamental principles; yin and yang are better for me personally than most others because I don't hear these words as one negative and one positive. I don't trust all those human value judgments (including my own at this stage). The "Being" - well, sometimes I sense a presence that feels like a "person". Aspects, manifestations, something/body that shows me the tiny parts that I'm able to comprehend. I can't define it. Maybe it's one aspect of whatever and nature is another, and you and I have chosen to focus more on one than on the other.Maybe there's nothing that chooses except me, i.e. sometimes I'm open and sometimes not. Jeez - this is difficult to put in words. I don't have so many answers, anyway.

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ullangoo wrote on Aug 21, edited on Aug 21
Do some people say that Yin should obey Yang? I didn't know that - it's utter baloney. It's just one more judgment of something we don't understand.
Reply deleted at the request of the author.

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morosoph wrote on Aug 21
ullangoo saidDo some people say that Yin should obey Yang? I didn't know that - it's utter baloney. It's just one more judgment of something we don't understand. Only strong Confucians would say that, but it is assumed in Chinese philosophy that Yang should lead and Yin should follow. To interpret that as "obey", and to rigidly allocate Yin and Yang to particular people is to miss the subtlety, I agree.Partly, I am sure, to avoid this, the Richard Wilhelm translation of the I Ching uses the terms "firm" and "yielding" concerning the six-line forms that the book describes. The Lynn translation, while academically superior, simply doesn't have the Wilhelm translation's humanity. It uses "Yin" and "Yang" to refer to the lines, and doesn't cushion the reader from patriarchal assumptions within the text. In a way I prefer that, for it leaves me the job of contextualisation, but it can go too far, as I feel that it does in another book "The Elemental Changes" that is structurally interesting, but the interpretations in that book are pointlessly strict, IMO.