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Compares world views, mythologies, origins of universe & human life among Chinese yin-yang school, Amer.-Indians & Mayans.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Compares world views, mythologies, origins of universe & human life among Chinese yin-yang school, Amer.-Indians & Mayans.
Paper Introduction:
Different cultures produce their own particular way of structuring the world they see around them. They use religion and ritual to explain, to gain control, and to express their own sense of connectedness to their environment. Pre-scientific societies develop their own mythologies to explain the origin of the universe and of human life. A comparison of three such societies shows how varied these ideas can be, with reference to the Maya, the ancient Chinese, and the Indians of the American southwest.
The New Text School in China was dominant throughout most of the Former Han dynasty and was given its name only later in apposition to the Old Text school, which rose to prominence in the time of Christ and gained ascendance through the Later Han dynasty. By "old" text the name means that the work was written
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Tuttle, 198 .Powell, J.W. This philosophical structure applies to humanrelationships and behavior as well as to the creation of the universe: The relationship between a person and a piano is Wu-Chi if the person has no intention to play it. When the person starts to play the piano or has the intention to play, the relationship becomes Tai-Chi. Fundamentals of Chinese Philosophy. New York: Alfred A. Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge,Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 351.Tsung Hwa Jou, The Tao of Tai-Chi Chuan (Rutland, Vermont: Charles E.Tuttle, 198 ), 78.J.W. Knopf, 194 ), 323-324.R. All of this is in keeping with the mutualdependence of yin and yang.[iv] The Yin Yang school came to ascendancy between the fourth and thethird centuries B.C. Tai-Chi isthe source of yin and yang. The Tao of Tai-Chi Chuan. The World of Thought in Ancient China. Thesymbol can be interpreted so that the whole circle represents the harmonyof yin and yang. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953.Herskovits, M.J. Yin is female and is thought to be passive, negative,dark, cold, soft, and wet; yang is male and is thought to be active,positive, light, hot, hard, and dry. Yin and yang together symbolize the eternal andprofound duality in nature. Patterns of Culture. When something arises from this nothing,the nothing no longer exists and the state of Tai-Chi begins. Each alsojustified their given political structure with evidence from their world-view to show that their political structure was in harmony with theuniverse and often derived its power directly from the gods. It has form and yet is unformed. The terms are used to refer to the two complementary creativeforces in nature. Breaking the Maya Code. Knopf, 1931.Schwartz, Benjamin I. New York: Alfred A. Ceremonial life demands the time of the men of the tribe andalso preoccupies their attention. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1992.De Surany, Marguerite. The symbol also shows some of the characteristics ofthe yin-yang system. The priests rollround stones across the floor to produce thunder and sprinkle water tocause rain. The Maya mathematical systemis based on the number 2 . These have been important in Chinese philosophy ever since andhave spawned other schools of thought related to the concepts as delineatedin the New Text school. New York: University Press of America, 1986.-----------------------Fung Yu-Lan, A History of Chinese Philosophy: Volume II (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1953), 7.Laurence C. New York: Times Books, 1992.Benedict, R. Different cultures produce their own particular way of structuringthe world they see around them. Ssu-ma T'an would treat it as one of the "sixschools" under the title of the "School and the Yin and the Yang" (yin-yang-chia). For sedentary folk such as the Hopi and the Zuni, attentionand interest focus on the produce of the fields rather than on theownership of the land as an end in itself, though private ownership, withthe right of alienation, was the rule for the Zuni.[ix] The Zuni religion centers on a rich ceremonial life, with cults ofthe masked gods, of healing, of the sun, of the sacred fetishes, of war,and of the dead. Pre-scientific societies develop their own mythologies toexplain the origin of the universe and of human life. One determinant ofhow the people view their relationship to the land is whether or not thegiven tribe is sedentary or mobile. Zuni Folk Tales, F.H.Cushing (New York: Alfred A. A History of Chinese Philosophy: Volume II. The worship of the gods is a system intended to please the gods.singing and dancing are universal as ceremonial rituals at appointed timesand placed for every tribe.[viii] The various Indian tribes may have a similar cosmology, but they havesomewhat different views of their relationship to land. Strong leaders were later talked of as if they weregods.[xi] Mayan astronomy is thought to be part of the promotion of the idea ofdivine kingship and was used to demonstrate the power, the regularity, andthe reliability of kingship.[xii] Some Mayan symbols have not been fullydeciphered. One side is dark, the other light, and each has asmall circle like an eye in the opposite shade embedded within it. "Introduction." In Zuni Folk Tales, F.H. The Hopi Indians, for instance, seethe clan as an important agent of land-control so that village boundariesare merely limits within which assignments are made according to clanaffiliation. They are opposites, but they counterbalanceand complement each other.[ii] Life is thought of as a combination of yin and yang. This school was not linked to thevision of any single individual or to any single text, and the beginningsof the school remain in dispute. Medical Graphology. Eachinvades the other's hemisphere in the way the curve affects the whole, andeach also possesses an element of the opposite at its very center (in theform of the "eye"). The Economic Life of Primitive Peoples. There were wide ideological differences between the two schools: Textually speaking, the New Text school's version of the classics is generally considered more authentic than that of the Old Text school. Benedict, Patterns of Culture (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1934), 59-61.Anthony Aveni, Conversing with the Planets (New York: Times Books, 1992),88.Ibid., 9 .Michael D. In this earlystate, while it is said there is nothing, there is certainly something,though unformed. Thereare suggestions of a division of power that was probably based on kinshipamong the elite classes. Powell, "Introduction," in F.H. A comparison ofthree such societies shows how varied these ideas can be, with reference tothe Maya, the ancient Chinese, and the Indians of the American southwest. The Mayadeveloped a calendar and a social structure based around agriculture. Moons symbolically were grouped in sixes,sometimes with a five-moon grouping. Ancient Chinesephilosophers called it the phenomenon of nothingness, or "thing of none."Everything in the universe, including yin and yang, evolves continuallyfrom this unperceivable source. One such is the tree that appears on certain tablets, a cross-shaped tree surmounted by a fantastic bird. The dark area is yin and the light area is yang. the constantly disrupted balance must unceasingly be re- established in a perpetual movement, for if there is imbalance, the result will be psychic and physical disorder which eventually leads to illness.[iii]Such illness can be physical or spiritual. Wu, Fundamentals of Chinese Philosophy (New York: UniversityPress of America, 1986), 157.Marguerite De Surany, Medical Graphology (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser,1991), 8-9.Wu, 16 .Benjamin I. The yin bringsdeath, cold, and darkness, while the yang brings life, heat, and movement.Yin is an interior force, and yang is an exterior force: Phenomenal life results from the interaction of these two current- forces. The Maya displayed knowledge about the sun andthe moon and about the eclipses of each. This is explained in terms of thelunar eclipse, which might occur at every sixth moon, and a five-moon cyclewas used to take up the slack because a six-moon cycle over time creepspast the multiple eclipse half-years.[xiv] Each of these civilizations sought to explain the world and theirrelation to it in terms they understood. Each had some association withastronomy, often bleeding over into astrology, as with the Maya. It is a mode of thought which in itsbasic principle corresponds closely to what Lévi-Strauss has called theprimitive "science of the concrete," which he sees as a pervasive dominantmode of thought in most "primitive" societies: It is a kind of anthropocosmology in which entities, processes, and classes of phenomena found in nature correspond to or "go together with" various entities, processes, and classes of phenomena in the human world.[v] In ancient Chinese philosophy, the void and boundless state whichprevailed before the world was created and from which the universe wasformed was known as Wu-Chi, or the ultimate nothingness. Since the two are complementary and mutuallybalancing, if the yang grows larger, it will soon have to yield to the yinin order to restore the balance. Cushing. The terms "positive" and "negative"in this instance do not have the meaning of good or bad or desirable andundesirable; instead, they are used in the same general sense thatphysicists use the terms to refer to the positive or negative electricalcharges of particles. Religious change also seems to have affected theMaya at about the same time as the beginning of our Christian era, and itis seen in messages about the gods and their relation to real people, asseen in works of art sculpted on cornices and over doorways of religiousstructures and in the layout and orientation of special buildings towardthe cosmic directions. The tree is referred to inboth ancient and modern Maya thought as standing at the center of theuniverse and sustaining the heavens.[xiii] The Maya were both astronomersand numerologists and placed great store in mathematical calculations andin the supposed relationship between numbers and life. Coe, Breaking the Maya Code (New York: Thames andHudson, 1992), 212.Aveni, 8 .----------------------- 11 The New Text School in China was dominant throughout most of theFormer Han dynasty and was given its name only later in apposition to theOld Text school, which rose to prominence in the time of Christ and gainedascendance through the Later Han dynasty. Endnotes BibliographyAveni, Anthony. Conversing with the Planets. Knopf, 194 .Jou, Tsung Hwa. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1991.Fung Yu-Lan. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1934.Coe, Michael D. They use religion and ritual to explain,to gain control, and to express their own sense of connectedness to theirenvironment. Themaya were a people who developed i part from the Olmec and in part theZapotec who had preceded them, and by the third century B.C., they haderected vast complexes of monumental structures in different states. By "old" text the name meansthat the work was written in the archaic and obsolete script of the Choudynasty, while the New Text was written in the newer form of scripts thenin use. All are established bodies of ritual with priestlyofficials. The Zunis place great reliance on imitative magic. The symbol for yin-yang is a circle with a curve not unlike a reverse"s" through the center. The primitive religion of the tribesis an organized system of inducing the ancients to take part in the affairsof men. Cushing. Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Knopf, 1931), xii-xiii.Ibid., xiii-xiv.M.J. Wu- Chi then exists before anything happens, for even the intention to act arises from Wu-Chi.[vi] There is a similarity among the various Amerindian societiesconcerning the cosmology expressed, for it is always a cosmology of regionsor worlds: About the home world of the tribe there is gathered a group of worlds, one above, another below, and four more: one at every cardinal point; or we may describe it as a central world, an upper world, a lower world, a northern world, a southern world, an eastern world, and a western world.[vii]In this view, all the animals of the tribes, whether human, animal, orvegetable, have an appropriate habitation in the zenith world, the nadirworld, or one of the cardinal worlds. The concepts of Yin and Yang in Chinesephilosophy are complex and difficult to grasp, and they are said to beindefinable in the strictest sense because they are such all-embracingconceptions. it cannot be comprehended rationally, and its existenceis only implied. They recite prayers that are formulas, and the effectivenessof the formulas derives from their faithful rendition.[x] The world-view of the Maya is more difficult to explain clearlybecause much of their writing has only recently been decoded. Herskovits, The Economic Life of Primitive Peoples (New York: AlfredA. Those not actively involved arespectators, and there is a great preoccupation with detail on the part ofall. The sun and the moon were eachprimary deities, and knowledge of eclipses would tell the people when theface of either of these deities would vanish. It has also been described as the doctrine of the "Interrelation ofheaven and Man" (T'ien-jen chih chi). as a new mode of thought about the general frame ofthings, a mode of thinking which would survive the Ch'in revolution andachieve the height of its influence in the Former Han dynasty and that woldleave its lasting mark on the entire alter development of the "philosophyof nature" in China. What we know ofthese subjects comes from a set of codices which survived the sixteenth-century Spanish conquest. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press, 1985.Wu, Laurence C. Ideologically speaking, however, the New Text school tended toward various superstitious excesses (such as the belief that Confucius was a supernatural being) which were shunned by the more rationalistic and sober minded Old Text school.[i]The important concepts embodied in the New Text school include elements ofChinese cosmology and the traditions of the yang and the yin and the FiveElements.
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