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Return to The Macrobiotic Times Home Page Original Yin/Yang and Five Transformations by Bill Neall Published in Macrobiotic Times ©Bill
Neall There continues
to be a difference of opinion within present
day macrobiotics as to the interpretation
and use of yin/yang and the Five Transformations.
Why this is, I don’t know, but I suspect
that the difficulties with the healing process
and beyond manifesting today in all levels
of practice and teaching stem from the unwillingness
or inability to see and use these tools
for what they really are. To help clear
the air, I would like to present two similar
views, one from George Ohsawa in 1960, and
the other from Roy Collins in 1998, having
to do with the chronology of this philosophy
and its physical origin. “The Unique Principle
of Far Eastern philosophy, the very basic
unique foundation of all our cultures, including
medicine, is definitive. However, its translation
and interpretation may be either physical
or metaphysical. At the beginning, over four thousand years
ago, the Unique Principle was a physical
dialectics. Later, metaphysical commentators
and interpreters, such as Confucius, twisted
or complicated the explanation of it. Then
the physicians did the same. Here lies the
reason for the confusion and uncertainty
beclouding the philosophy and medicine of
the Far East. The Far Eastern peoples, always referred to
as spiritual, metaphysical, or primitive,
use a quite peculiar language; they inhabit
an infinite, eternal, and absolute world,
and in consequence their tongues are indefinite,
uncertain, and extremely simple, but deep
and often lacking in clarity. the Chinese
and Japanese languages (the Easternmost
ones) lack the notions of time, number,
and sex. (As a matter of fact, according
to my method, you can learn colloquial and
pure Japanese in four hours. It is the easiest
language that I know of in the whole world.)
This factor has also unquestionably contributed
to the misunderstanding and misinterpretation
of the philosophy of the Far East. In the beginning, over four thousand years
ago, the sky, or infinite space, was considered
the supreme yin symbol, and the earth, the
supreme yang symbol. The sky, being infinite
space, the boundless expansion, was considered
the representative of yin, the centrifugal
force. The earth, on the contrary, was considered
yang, the centripetal force. Later, metaphysicians described the sky as
the generator of all the phenomena and beings
in the world, including all celestial bodies(the
major force, or supreme divinity), and they
classified it as yang. The earth was considered
yin. Metaphysically
speaking, the sky, infinite space, may be
called yang, the greatest producer. In the
physical sense, however, the sky - infinite
space, the boundless expansion - may be
called yin, the greatest entropical passiveness.
From this point of view, the earth is compact
and yang. In old Chinese medicine, the small intestine,
bladder, stomach, large intestine, etc.,
are classified as yang while the heart,
kidneys, pancreas, liver, etc., are classified
as yin. This is a metaphysical
classification. Physically speaking,
this must be reversed: all empty organs
are yin, as they are passive and receptive;
all solid organs, with density and compactness,
are yang. (The stomach, intestines, bladder,
lungs, etc., are yin; the liver, kidneys,
heart, pancreas, etc., are yang.) We are living in a scientific and physical
era. We therefore need a physical, up-to-date
classification to unify terminology for
the introduction of the Unique Principle
into all the natural sciences, in addition
to medicine, and all the cultural sciences
as well. Most of all, it is necessary in
the formation of fundamental concepts for
a world government.” Roy Collins Roy Collins, student of Chinese philosophy
and author of two books on the subject,
presents a historical view. (Compiled from
conversations on the Internet) “I will state historical facts that point to Yu as the conqueror
of the Great Flood around 2600 BCE. It was
Yu who diverted the floodwaters by dividing
the flooded land into four irrigation lines
so that from a bird’s eye’s view the land
looked like a tic-tac-toe board ( 9 squares).
Yu’s son was Ch’i, who founded Hsia, the
legendary first dynasty of China. It is
highly doubtful that Yu knew anything about
the I Ching, the Five Elements, or Fung
Shui, Nine Star Ki , Five Star Ki, or even
the concept of yin and yang as most of these
systems were either too primitive or had
not yet been invented. In fact one really
does not see or hear much about yin and
yang or divination until the Shang Dynasty
(oracle bone script) where writing was invented
- about 100 years after Yu. It was after
the Shang was overthrown by Chou when we
first start to hear about the Five Agents
(Wu Xing) which was a physical concept that
had not yet developed into the correlative
system that we know it as today. ...The I Ching, which is based on eight trigrams...
got thrown into the mix as well, and later
correlated to Fung Shui, or geomany, which
originated in the placement of graves. In
fact, the original sequence of the hexagrams
was rearranged as well and in the new sequence
the yin and yang axis was removed. The original sequence of the hexagrams however,
completely follows the yin/yang system as
it is understood and applied to macrobiotics,
which we call the “physical understanding”.
The revised, or altered hexagram sequence,
as well as the Five Elements, Feng Shui,
Acupuncture, and TCM all follow the “Metaphysical
understanding” of yin and yang. I have assumed nothing but have gone by facts
alone. The point is that the Five Elements
is a prejudiced, fixed system of force fits
that were redesigned by Taoist magicians
for occult purposes, yet there is a certain
beauty about the system that makes it nearly
impossible to dismiss in its entirety. That
beauty is in the interplay of transformation
and of mutual benefit and destruction, which
in reality exists universally in Nature. Yin and yang originated in the Neolithic period
in China's history near the teinshui region
by a real person named Fu Hsi. Fu Hsi came
up with this idea after observing all natural
phenomena for many years, then using his
own body began to make comparisons that
were relative to his stand. One of the earliest discussions of this comes
to us from the writings of Confucius. We
are told that when Fu Hsi looked UP at the
SKY and waved his hands that there was only
the void which he called The Yielding or
great Yin. Then he looked DOWN at his feet,
jumped on the ground and found that it did
not yield but was solid. He called it THE
FIRM or great yang. Fu Hsi then began to
make three line graphs out of broken and
solid lines (solid for yang/broken for yin)
and began to make a system of eight variants
that he related to the family. The mother
was the great yin of three broken lines
in the north, and the father was the great
yang of three solid lines in the south.
From the marriage of mom and dad came the
six children -- three boys and three girls.
The boys were placed on the right side and
the girls on the left. This is the origin
of the system the eight houses of I Ching.
This is how it all began some 5.5 thousand
years ago. After about 1.5 thousand years an egocentric
king named Wen discovered Fu Hsi's yin yang
charts and decided to change them around
a bit. He replaced the Great Yin in the
northern position with the Great Yang, and
next to it placed the Great Yin. By doing
this he destroyed the opposite and complimentary
sets of line graphs. It is at this point in history where all the
problems of trying to explain yin and yang
began. One of our macrobiotic leaders named
George Ohsawa figured out this problem and
restored yin and yang to their proper positions.
Today we call this the physical system of
yin/yang understanding. It is where we differ
from people who practice Chinese Medicine.
They use King Wen's system, which designates
yin and yang in the exact opposite way of
how it was originally conceived by Fu Hsi.
(The previous four paragraphs weren't part of the original
article, but are also from Roy Collins.
They add some clarification. Also, a correction
was made and the first paragraph of the
quotations in the article attributed to
Mr. Collins was removed after it was determined
to be something he didn't it. I apologize
for any confusion this may have caused.
-BN) A detailed account of the original sequence
can be found in my book titled Fu
Hsi I Ching, published by University
Press of America (1993) and it is scheduled
to be reprinted in a revised format by the
George Ohsawa Macrobiotic Foundation with
the new title as Yin
& Yang and I Ching: Six Thousand Years
of Changing Opinion later this year.
Personally, I'd wait for the new book as
it contains an additional 40 pages with
some 20 new illustrations and charts.”
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