Circles

There's a good article on the circle in the NY Times, which uses Vasily Kandinsky as a jumping off point.

This being December, I’d like to honor Kandinsky through his favorite geometry, by celebrating the circle and giving a cheer for the sphere. Life as we know it must be lived in the round, and the natural world abounds in circular objects at every scale we can scan. Let a heavenly body get big enough for gravity to weigh in, and you will have yourself a ball. Stars are giant, usually symmetrical balls of radiant gas, while the definition of both a planet like Jupiter and a plutoid like Pluto is a celestial object orbiting a star that is itself massive enough to be largely round.

On a more down-to-earth level, eyeballs live up to their name by being as round as marbles, and, like Jonathan Swift’s ditty about fleas upon fleas, those soulful orbs are inscribed with circular irises that in turn are pierced by circular pupils. Or think of the curved human breast and its bull’s-eye areola and nipple.

Our eggs and those of many other species are not egg-shaped at all but spherical, and when you see human eggs under a microscope they look like tranquil suns with Kandinsky coronas behind them.

Full article here.

Behold the Power of the Sun

This incredible display of yang energy comes to you courtesy of the sun. Scientists call it a spreading coronal mass ejection. I call it freakin' awesome!!!

Click here for even more jaw-dropping pictures of the sun.

太极图 Tai Ji Tu

The 太极图 Tai Ji Tu, or tai ji diagram, illustrates the everchanging nature of yin and yang. Yin and yang are mutually supportive, oppositional, dynamic, and so on. For every up, there is a down. For every inside, there is an outside. Not only that, for the concept of "inside" to exist there must be an "outside". If everything was "inside" there would be no need for the term "outside".

This philosophical argument becomes real when applied to medicine, fighting, art, sex or any other area of life. What starts as the common cold, affecting the yang or upper part of the body in the nose and sinuses, can become pneumonia, affecting the deep interior or yin parts of the body. When your opponent attacks high, you attack low. When he advances, you retreat. When he retreats, you advance. Tai Ji is the separation of the essential wholeness of the universe into two parts, yin and yang.

Yin and yang must work together harmoniously in your body and in relation to the "outside" world. When there is a disturbance, you get sick. When there is no disturbance, you have health. All we do in acupuncture is balance yin and yang. There are further divisions of yin and yang, complicated disease models and mechanisms, but it all comes back to yin and yang.

The Origin of This Picture is Unknown

Take a look at the first two characters of the third line. 阴 is romanized as "yin", as in yin and yang. Yin and Yang are a set of opposites that underlie all creation. In general, yin relates to the moon and things that are cold, dark, contracting, downward moving and female. In general, yang relates to the sun and things that are warm, bright, expansive, upward moving and male.

Everything (absolutely everything) in the universe has yin and yang within it. Although yin generally relates to the "female principle" and yang generally relates to the "male principle", it is an elementary mistake to equate everything female with yin and male with yang (see Charlotte Furth, "Blood, Body and Gender: Medical Images of the Female Condition in China, 1600-1850", 1986. Chinese Science 7: 43-66 and "Concepts of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Infancy in Ch'ing Dynasty China", 1987, Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 46, No. 1 for an example of this mistaken thinking).

The next character is 道, which is romanized as "dao". This is the Dao or (Tao) or Daoism, and can mean the Way, a road, a path. If your mind works a certain way, your next question is, path to where? Way of what? In regular Chinese grammar, 道 is usually preceded by another character - 武道 meaning the Way of martial arts or war, 茶道 meaning the Way of tea. Taken by itself, 道 becomes a subject for philosophical inquiry, meditation, contemplation.

In the case of our unfortunately translated picture above, the 阴道 is the pathway of yin - the vagina. The vagina can be thought of as a pathway to the ultimate physical expression of yin in the world of humans - the interior world of a woman. It should therefore be treated with respect and care by those fortunate enough to have one and by everyone who is fortunate enough to come in contact with one.