Cloudscape

If one goes too fast, it is much more likely for balance to be lost. On the other hand, if one goes too slow, this is in itself an imbalance. In the end, one still goes fastest if one goes so fast that one meets difficulties, but only if one can deal with those difficulties. Even if you cannot go faster, you can still work to enable yourself to go faster. When you cannot advance further, you can still make preparations to advance further, so that you do not truly need to slow down, for advance may happen in subtle ways. You will go fastest when interchanging slow and fast in balance. To find this balance, know yourself. Do not overestimate or underestimate yourself.

That our society inclines towards yang might be because of our primal ancestry, for the African jungles in which they lived are a very yang environment: basking in sunlight, broiling with heat, brimming with life, whirling with activity and abundant in food. Vivacity, hedonism, sociability, industriousness and materialism are all values characteristic of our species, and they are also all very yang. Scientists have already found that war is something we inherited in common with primates from our evolutionary ancestry, and so are language and community; why then, not materialism? That so much of the earth's surface is covered with our factories might be a direct consequence of the fact that we share our original homes with the primates.

Yin and yang can be hard to reconcile. The only reason that nature has managed to combine them is that this was necessary for it to exist at all, since neither yin nor yang can exist by themselves in any form at all. It was needed for nature to achieve this balance between yin and yang in order for it to be able to evolve at all. We must be cautious to retain this balance.

Yin and yang cause one another; yet at the same time, they also avoid one another, as night shuns day and day shuns night. Try at all times to be mindful to be balanced between the two. Do not fear sadness when you are in joy, and do not fear joy when you are in sadness, but try to accept that one flows into the other as day and night. There can be joy in sadness and sadness in joy, and neither is above the other.

As our species are more yang than yin, we tend to fear sadness rather than joy, even though, when our joy remains too long, it will turn into anxiety. Some who are in sadness, on the other hand, fear joy when it comes to them. Try to accept both. Do not deny your sadness, but neither deny your joy. We must accept it when one has to succeed the other. The same counts for all things yin and yang, such as work and rest, or society and solitude.

The love of man and woman is the same as that of all things hard and soft in the universe.

Do not be afraid to be content, even though you dream of more, but always keep dreaming even when you are content, and keep being content even when you dream of more; so that your thankfulness, and so your happiness, might help to make your dreams come true, and that your dreams might also help to make you happy.
Day and night must alternate within you; but so too, in some part they must be one. When night falls, keep the light of day within you, and when dawn comes, keep the dreams of night within you.

Yang seeks out what it loves; yin loves that which it finds. The yin side of love is to be thankful for beauty; the yang side of love is to nourish it.

To be loving, one must be both thankful (accepting, yin) as caring (giving, yang).

Compare everything to absolute nothingness, so that you are thankful for that which you already have; at the same time, compare everything to absolute perfection, so that you can be ambitious to strive towards it.

When unsatisfied about something, imagine what it would be like if it weren't there at all. When apathetic with something, imagine what it would be like if it were complete.

It is perfectly possible to be both thankful and ambitious at the same time; to combine these in balance will bring us most beauty. Yet again, we are here faced with the question of combining yin and yang.

Earth needs water, or it will crack; water needs earth, or it will stagnate. Either put alone will destroy itself.

Everything has both a yin and yang aspect, and therefore in some aspects it wil be yang, in others yin; in particular, it may be yin in the more material world yet yin in the more spiritual world, or the other way around. It is clear, then, that even this is relative as are all things.

Anger, for instance, is an emotion and therefore yin when compared to material things, but for an emotion is a yang emotion. A dance is an example of the opposite.