The phrase elan vital is French or “vital force.” In Chinese the words are “chi” or “qi,” in Japanese “ki”, or “prana” in Sanskrit. The genesis of this force can be traced to the most ancient of written texts like the Hindu Bhagavad Gita and the Chinese Tao Te Ching (“Way of the Force”). Many claim that this essence is the sole differences between animals and humans, the consciousness allowing choice of action rather than instinctual responses alone. Religious dogmas allege to be the “spirit” or “soul” and its origin the immortal breath of the “creator.”
The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E), in his Physics, formulates Occidental thought syntax: “Men do not think they know a thing until they have grasped the ‘why’ of it (which is to grasp the primary cause).” “Causation” searches for what cannot be known: a first cause. Its theory holds that something (or someone) caused creation, a creator, and that to understand our present we must establish such absolutes from our past. This is what some call the “God-myth.”
Western society spends an inordinate amount of energy and time attempting to discover answers to these “essential” questions while it chastises its congregations for doubting their absentee landlords’ existence. Most Westerners, in truth, are closet atheists (if they really believed their dogma, their actions would prove such). But on Sunday mornings, Easter, Christmas, or on the floor of a Congress established to separate dogma from the affairs of state, seemingly intelligent beings conduct ceremonial rituals much like the ancient priesthood of defunct empires of Egypt, Greece and Rome. The psychological diagnosis for this conduct is folie a deux or shared delusion disorder: a psychological virus shared among peers due to the fear of the unknown. Worshipping the popular prejudice of a culture is a system of thought constructed upon biased beliefs called dogmas: “truth-claims backed only by authoritative fiat” (Wilber).
In The Web That Has No Weaver, Dr. Ted J. Kaptchuk, a Harvard medical professor, offers an alternate perspective from ancient Chinese Taoism dating back nearly three millennia. The title alludes to the obvious irrelevance of religion-based philosophy’s need for the existential absolutes of the West. Eastern thought, though contradictory, is not nihilism. Rather, it is a poetic orchestration of life focusing on its synthesis rather than its unknowns. Its fundamental worldview is, therefore, diametrical to its Western compliment. The Aristotelian perspective uses an absolute/fragmental paradigm of linear progression to analyze, dissect, and compartmentalize. Its underpinning assumptions depend on upon absolutes, real or perceived. The Eastern paradigm, a polar/complete model, utilizes dynamic, fluid patterns to understand transition or change. Each phenomenon is observed in its microcosm but never without respect to its macrocosm; differences within the whole. Causation, or origins, is not ignored per se, but the focus centers around pattern recognition.
Reason, the child of Greek thought, searches relentlessly for the “why.” It requires assumptions that are usually manufactured by fiat. This cornerstone once served ancient Western civilization’s philosophy; it acted as a necessity to give life meaning, non-preventable suffering purpose, and a world of chaos order. The Greeks told a myth about a prisoner in the Cave of Ananke named Kairos. Kairos acted contrary to the bias of his peers and such earned his freedom from the self-imposed cave of imprisonment. The Greek word Ananke represents the popular prejudice or status quo of convenient dogma, whereas Kairos represents possibility and opportunity through resistance of biases of peers. Growth is a process of evolution which requires movement, opposition, and resistance. If humanity is ever to evolve beyond Ananke’s cave, superstitions must be recognized as our plague. Wars over the correct name of God, the truth of “holy” scribbling, or the sacrifice of entire societies defending myths that never answered their cries for help can end. The ideal world of perfection, of immortal permanence, of good without evil is a fairy tale. Eventually, children mature to understand that the Santa Claus-type folklore (what all religions are based upon) is bogus; that such a realm, if it existed, would envy us because our mortality makes each moment taste precious; that the risk of the unknown offers the remedy to what would otherwise be the excruciatingly ordinary, (possibly hell?).
To paraphrase Mark Twain: the failure to know leaves one uninformed, while knowledge leaves one misinformed. Reared on a diet of moving stillness, effortless effort, active inactivity, and “no mind,” students of the East knowingly nod. They comprehend that the reason is limited by its subjectivity to one’s personal perspective and can only produce differences called opinions. These are not competing for status of right or wrong but simply acknowledging a separate set of experiences occurring within the same world.
The Chinese symbol of this discipline is the Tai Jai, or Yin/Yang. It is believed by the West to merely represent polarities: black versus white, evil versus good, wrong versus right. It is much more. In every situation opposites simultaneously exist; they “compliment” each other. One cannot exist without the other. Aggression and passivity are referred to as male/female energy, fire versus water, or hard versus soft. Within each representation opposing contrasts construct complimentary or positive and negative forces of equal but opposite kind. In the male body, the back is considered male and the front female, the right male and the left demale, the top half yang and the bottom yin, etc. This synthesis of polar opposites creates symbiotic relationships. To extinguish one part of this dualistic equation is, therefore, utterly impossible, Characteristics of one perspective always, and necessarily, exist within the opposite. This is represented in the Tai Jai by the white dot within the black yin, and vice versa.
Science is now discovering what Eastern thought stated thousands of years ago. Black is not “black” without white present for comparison. It is only darkness in comparison to something less dark, also called white. There is no absolute black but instead a comparison to something that is non-black. Both exist within a universe called color, which may be the categorical constant, but no absolutes exist within color. Colors are gradations of differences within a whole. They are synthesized fluctuations within a bigger picture. Eventually, their contrasting differences shrink from sight as the observer’s worldview continues to expand. The only constant part of the Yin/Yang symbol is the outside circle, but even it rotates. The internal parts are always in flux—moving, opposing, resisting, complimenting, and coexisting. The “s” curve that separates the two distinctions is not a line of demarcation but gradations of one mixing into the other. This is the benefit of the Eastern polar/complete perspective. The focus is on the comprehension of existing symbiotic relationships instead of manufacturing assumptions to be established as (false) absolutes.
In Zen the epiphany is not the nonexistence of the perfect cherry blossom, but rather the excellence realized in the blossoms’ contrasting imperfections. Zen and Taoistic disciplines teach less movement and more stillness, mindful awareness through patience, effort without emotion, and freedom through un-attachment Such Eastern paradigms rescue a world from its quest for meaningless (false) absolutes, but the resonance of the pause between movements, the stillness in the heart of the storm, the essence discovered in the absence. Less is more.
Like the wind, the vital force has no form to be seen or grasped; its destination is uncharted and its origin remains unknown… and irrelevant.
KAIZEN-DO-KA 