Brokeback Mountain: Our Community's Common Bond > Brokeback Mountain Open Forum

Yin and Yang: Ennis and Jack

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Brown Eyes:
Heya Alec716 and Nakymaton!  Thanks for the insights.  I have very, very little background in this topic, so I'm a little unsure about all the proper aspects of the actual understanding of yin and yang in Chinese philosophy and/ or religion.  I'm generally not religious at all, so I'm not great on these topics, but I think it's really important to think about in terms of BBM just as all the Christian symbols in the movie seem really interesting and moving eventhough I'm not really Christian either.  I'm increasingly curious about Ang Lee's thoughts and the screenwriters' thoughts on these topics.

nakymaton:
My only background is having taken college courses in Chinese Religious Thought and Japanese Religion and Culture (so I only know about Buddhism within those cultural contexts; I don't know much about Tibetan or Southeast Asian Buddhism). Intro courses, so not a lot of depth, but really wonderful profound courses -- I felt like I learned more in them than in any other courses I took.

But what I really wanted to say has to do with another symbol from Taoism.

The "Tao" can be translated in a lot of different ways -- the first line, "If the Tao can be Taoed, it's not Tao" is also translated as "The way that can be spoken of is not the constant way." Tao is... well, the book is partly a suggestion for how a wise king should behave, so it's partly practical, a way to behave. But it's also kind of an underlying nature of things, I guess. I don't fully understand it.

Anyway, it's mostly explained through symbols and metaphors, and I think I probably miss the point of most of them given that I'm not part of Chinese culture. But one of the metaphors for Tao is, get this...

Water.


--- Quote ---Nothing beneath heaven
Is softer and weaker than water.
Nothing is better
To attack the hard and strong,
And nothing can take its place.
--- End quote ---

Reminds me of how water is a symbol for love in the movie.

Love is a force of nature.

Front-Ranger:
Going back to Ang Lee, if you look at his entire body of work, it's always about dualism. Even the titles, Sense and Sensibility; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (in which there are two pairs); Eat Drink Man Woman; etc. Reading the Tao te Ching has helped me understand his films much better.

Front-Ranger:
Here is some explanation from one of my books on the Tao de Ching:
The Tao Te Ching can be seen as advocating mostly "feminine" (or Yin) values, emphasising the qualities of water — fluidity and softness (instead of the solid and stable mountain), choosing the obscure and mysterious aspect of things, and controlling things without ruling them, in other words to 'have without possessing'. In this respect, this book can be understood as challenging "male" (or Yang) values such as clarity, stability, positive action, and domination of nature; such values are often referred to as Confucian values. Yet a perfect balance between the Yin and Yang is still encouraged in Taoism.

serious crayons:
I briefly embraced Taoism in high school and college -- though on a pretty superficial, uninformed basis (a couple of classes and a book or two). My impression is that this


--- Quote ---Whoever acts spoils;
Whoever grasps loses.
The sage does nothing.
He grasps nothing;
Therefore he loses nothing.

--- End quote ---

is more or less the equivalent of "if you don't got nothin, you don't need nothin" and "if you can't fix it, you gotta stand it." In other words, worldly attachments and desires cause unhappiness. The path to contentment is being satisfied with beans.

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