Overview
- Beyond yīn and yáng: Oneness
- One
- Attaining Personal Oneness
- Gaining Oneness
Beyond Yīn and Yáng: Oneness
Yīn and yáng represent reciprocal pairs. But those pairs always represent a unity of the two sides. Beyond that, though, is the concept of Oneness. The Dàodéjīng regards the attaining of oneness as fundamental to the development of many entities, beginning with heaven and earth:
In the beginning,
this was how Oneness was gotten:
Heaven got One by clarity.
Earth got One by repose.
Gods got One by spirit.
Valleys got One by fullness.
Myriad things got One by birth.
Lords and kings got One for the world’s purity.
And so:
if heaven did not get clarity,
we’d fear it splitting.
If earth did not get repose,
we’d fear it bursting.
If the gods did not get spirit
we’d fear them stopping.
If valleys did not get full,
we’d fear them exhausting.
If myriad things did not get birth,
we’d fear them extincting.
If lord and king did not get noble heights,
we’d fear them falling.
—Dàodéjīng, ch. 39
One
Oneness is a simple idea to visualize. It’s represented by the numeral “one,” yī, 一, one of the easiest ideograms to understand. The single stroke represents oneness and thus, unity.
Lǎozì refers to primordial time, “In the beginning,” as the moment when oneness was gotten. “Beginning” is xī, 昔: a picture of the days, 日, of the flood (wavy lines representing water were replaced by 龷). Dé, 得, means “get; gain; acquire.” Our universe had a beginning. Theoretically, other universes might have begun before ours—but they might not have gotten or maintained Oneness and so they collapsed.
The line that illuminates this sequence is: “valleys got One by fullness.” If we can posit a “first valley,” we can see that it gained its functional status after it was first filled. Heaven’s nature is clarity, as in the clear sky. Earth is realized through repose. All things on earth are pulled by gravity and tend toward inertia. Gods became whole because they gained divine spirit. Myriad things became whole and functional when they could be born generation after generation.
A whole contains parts. Parts add up to a larger whole. None of that refutes the idea of one. There may be vast transformations but all is held within One.
It’s cumbersome, but you could count by ones. We’ve developed shortcuts—counting by fives or tens, for example. We can make use of multiplication or exponential notation. All that means, though, is that you “bundled” a group of singles and defined that resulting sum as “one.”
Our bodies keep a strong imperative toward unity. Let us not define ourselves by schisms but by wholeness. If we realize our essential selves, we also realize our own oneness—as well as our oneness with heaven, earth, and all other people.
Attaining Personal Oneness
If heaven and earth had to “get” oneness, then how do we do that? The Dàodéjīng, chapter 28 states:
This means the virtue of non-contention,
This means the strength of leadership,
This means to join with heaven
as the ultimate classic standard.
That means that we should try to be one with heaven (and by extension, Dào), and is to be done by non-contention and proper leadership. The stipulation of avoiding conflict means that we cannot attain unity by divisiveness and setting ourselves apart from others. It might be a challenge to imagine leadership without contention, but that’s exactly what Lǎozì asks us to do.
The first half of chapter 28 sets forth guidelines:
Excellence for warriors is not martial.
Good fighters don’t get angry.
Good victors don’t engage.
Good leaders stay low.
Dominating others as well as trying to dominate oneself is not right. We cannot force unity onto ourselves. Instead, unity appear if we avoid anger, don’t engage with those who have been defeated, and we stay low.
Gaining Oneness
Another way to achieve oneness is to realize “mysterious sameness.”
Block all exchange,
close the doors,
grind the sharp,
sort the parts,
mediate the light,
gather the dust.
Consider this mysterious sameness.
—Dàodéjīng, ch. 56
Look at the line, “block all exchange.” Talking uses up breath, which is expressed as, “to waste qì, 氣” (see chapter 42). Chapter 55 declares: “the heart uses up breath calling for power.” If we “block all exchange, close the doors, grind the sharp, sort the parts, mediate the light, gather the dust,” then we resolve seeming contradiction and unity is possible.
Sameness reconciles extremes. This directs us toward understanding the unity of pairs—consider the Oneness in chapter 39. That sameness is tòng, 同. The ideogram depicts people, 凡, speaking with one voice, 口. That relates it to harmony, hé, 和: “To know harmony is called the constant.” (Dàodéjīng, chapter 55) Meditation helps us access unity, and unity brings harmony.