Why is Heaven Yang in TCM?

[MJS]

Can someone clear up for me, why Heaven is considered Yang and earth Yin in Traditional Chinese medicine? In all ways it seems the opposite to me.
Thanks, >>>MJ

[Nancy]

Dear MJ,

Sorry your question went unanswered for so long. I think Heaven/Yang and Earth/Yin, is one of the rare occurrences
where y/y are looked at the same, in both Chinese and Japanese Yin/Yang. Heaven is considered a powerful spiralic descending force. Earth is considered a nurturing, spiralic ascending force. These are best represented by Heaven/Yang/Male and Earth/Yin/Female (ie. Mother Earth /
Heavenly Father). As you can well imagine, thunder results when the two meet. This subject gets excellent treatment in Michio Kushi's book, "The Gentle Art of Making Love".

A comprehensive article on this website, treating the historical origins of y/y theory, is Roy Collins, "The Origin of Yin/Yang" or "On the Trail of Fu Xi". This includes reasons why Macrobiotic/Japanese y/y is considered true y/y and why
changes affected Chinese y/y. Roy has also written a book on the subject, "Fire Over Heaven". Click on "Articles" on the Cybermacro Menu or this will link you to it:

http://www.cybermacro.com/articles21.html

Nancy
How many marriages do you know depicted like this? --


yin/yang

[MJS]

Thanks for your response, which makes good sense. I actually managed to find Roy Collins' article on my own a little while back. It's very complete.

Oh, too many marriages like this: /

Mine will be like this
/

I hope.

Mara

[Roy Collins]

A few years ago I attended a lecture by Michio Kushi in Boston. A number of other cybermacro subscribers attended as well. During the lecture, Kushi started to use the terem "heaven" and gave it a yang designate. As both George Ohsawa and Herman Aihara classify "heaven" as yin I asked Kushi to clarify his definition of what heaven is (in front of an audience of nearly 200).

As I had assumed he was not talking about the same "heaven" as we Westerners use it in our modern colloquial (sp?): as the "place" were only the good go after they die; or the void in which all the celestial bodies are suspended; or the sky (atmosphere) that envelops the earth
(all are Yin, correct?). No, Kushi was clear that the heaven he was talking about was the energy that is generated by the solar system from the interaction of the sun, gravitational forces, orbiting physical bodies, etc. Quite correctly these forces are tremendously yang, but like the bodies from which they emanate, all are held within a larger void of space which in itself lacks gravity (the term free-fall is used instead) and this SPACE is YIN.

I hope this helps.

In peace, Roy

[mike chen]

pretty spooky.