Attempt to understand Tai Ji

My first encounter of this graph could be dated back to my childhood, probably at the age of 4 or 5. It was seen on the back of the costume robe of a Taoist priest known as "Saigon Mingnga" meaning "Master Ming of the Daoist" in the town where I was born and raised up, Saigon Mingnga was well known in the town. Whichever family having issues unsolvable for examples having family member  suffering from acute shock, prolonged sickness, or any disease with symptoms diagnosed  Schizophrenia, were recommended to call on Saigon Mingnga for consultation.

He was probably about sixtyish when I saw him first time. He had a pair of very thick eyelids. You could hardly see his eyeballs when he inspected you carefully. His voice was coarse and low. I wondered how his clients could hear what he talked about but they just seriously nodded to express their agreement of his comment or diagnosis.

Saigon Mingnga would normally went with the assist seeker to their home to have a look of the patient in concern and had a brief looking around the whole house and gave his assessment according to his findings. 9 out of 10 cases were related to unhappy ancestors, or the patient had some kind of misconduct that offended certain deity or ghost. He then put on his  Daoist robe and hap; burned a couple of sticks of incense; picked up his dome bell with his left hand and a wood sword in his right hand; blew his cow-horn and shook his dome bell a couple of times during the rit session. This made him look more authoritative.

Was his Daoist rit effective on my case? Well, may be a yes, because I survived from that sickness otherwise I will not be here recalling this reminiscence of past. Or it might be a bunch of nonsense cose most likely I would recover eventually without Saigon Mingnga's ritual service. Anyway, it doesn't matter whether it is effective or a bunch of nonsense, that icon representing Daoism is the focus of this post.

I like to refer to it as Tai Ji Tu meaning "the icon of Tai Ji"

What is it meaning?  Who created it? What was he thinking the moment he drew it up? There are tons of web posts and forums explain and interpret in detail about this logo.

After about 59 years of time since my first encounter of it embroidered on Saigon Mingnga's rit robe, I have more or less of insights about the philosophy this icon contains.

I believe the evolution of everything is constantly moving to its next new milestone by way of setting a conclusion that is able to define it perfectly. Before the perfection of the attempt to work out a definition for the subject is reached, the evolution with regard to that branch of human being's culture will not be accepted by the majority of this planet, and the process of trial and error in the attempt to work out a perfect definition that can explain everything and anything flawlessly will be going on and on till the ultimate one emerges. And I think this Tai Ji Tu (TJT) is the end product of this evolutionary process.

I imagine the TJT creator was contemplating the constant up and down natures of everything he had experienced in his life. One day he seemed to be suddenly enlightened and he raised up his head and said, "ah-ha! got it. Nothing in the universe will remain unchanged within any given period of time. And as the thing is striving toward a direction there must be another force striving to pull it to the opposite direction." So he drew a sketch that well depicted his conclusion of everything on the ground where he sat, and that sketch is the very origin of TJT we see today. Don't you think the icon looks like revealing the truth of this theory?

Tai Ji was mentioned about in one of Chinese ancient classics, I Jing. The oldest manuscript is said to have been found during the Warring States Period which was from 475 to 221 BC*. This ancient publication explains how the universe forms. Its core theory in the process of exploring and reconciling of all about the universe was based on Yin and Yang, positive and negative which matches the messages contained in TJT.

In the Western part of the earth, archaeologist found a Yin Yang motif on an enameled bronze plaque from  Celtic art of late 5 BC**. South Korea uses TJT  in the design of their national flag. All these facts point to one thing that TJT passes the massive test of history and stands out a truth of human civilization.

Notes * and ** are referenced from Wikipedia.