Carry One, Embrace the Other

For a book that gave the world the idea, the Daodejing has almost nothing to say about yin and yang. The two words appear together exactly once, in its forty-second chapter, in a single line about the ten thousand things, which is the old way of saying everything that exists.

The line is usually translated like this: all things carry yin and embrace yang. Some versions make the body in it clearer. The ten thousand things carry yin on their backs and hold yang in their arms. Carry one. Embrace the other. It is not a sentence about balance. It is a sentence about a posture.

Now think about what you are carrying

Set the book down and think about what is on your back right now. Not what you are holding. What is behind you, where you cannot see it.

Think about what it means to carry something on your back. You cannot look at it. You feel its weight, you change your stride for it, you know exactly how heavy it is without ever turning around. It goes where you go. You do not put it down to get through the door.

That is the shadow in the line. The grief you have been walking with for years now, that most people have stopped asking about. The failure you do not bring up. The parent who is gone. The diagnosis. The thing you did at twenty-three. On your back, where it belongs, where you do not have to keep looking at it to keep carrying it. And here is what the line does not say: it does not say to set it down. It does not say to balance it out until it weighs nothing. It says you carry it. That is allowed. That is what everything alive does.

Carry the dark on your back. Hold the light in your arms. Do not put either down.

And what you are holding

Now think about what is in your arms. The light is held in front, where you can see it. The kid. The work that is going well for once. The friend who still calls. A plain good morning with coffee and nothing wrong. Embraced, which is a stronger word than balanced. You hold it the way you hold something that could be dropped.

Notice what the line does not promise. It does not say the light will outweigh the dark. It does not say a wise person gets them to fifty-fifty. It does not say that carrying one means you have failed to embrace the other. It says every living thing does both at once, all the time, and that this is simply the shape of being alive. Shadow at the back, light in front, and a body that holds both and keeps walking.

If you have been waiting to put the dark down before you let yourself fully hold the light, you have been waiting for something that does not happen. You can grieve your mother and laugh at your daughter in the same hour. The line says that is not a contradiction. That is the posture.

There is a mala strung in black and white with a knot between every bead, and I think the knots are the teaching. The two colors share one string. They never blur into grey.

Name both

The practice is the plainest one in this series. Once a day, say the line with your own words in it. I am carrying, and name it. I am holding, and name that. Both in one breath. Do not try to make them even. Do not try to set either one down. Just notice that you are, in fact, doing both, and that you have been all along, and that you are still standing.

That is where the series ends, back at the hill it began on: the shady side of the hill. The lotus essays, which came before these, are gathered on their own page. This is one of a series of short essays on the yin yang. The rest are gathered here.

Somewhere a hill is throwing a long shadow behind it at the end of the day, and its face is still warm.