Yin and Yang: Ennis and Jack

[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.

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

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

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

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.

[Brown Eyes]

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

I think we're definitely on to something here.   I like the use of the word "sage" here as well as the "nothing" connections.

Thinking of a question that came up earlier, I asked the professor I know about the relationship between Buddhism and Taoism (on a really broad level...) and he said that they're interconnected in lots of ways (since certain veins of both developed along side one another and as off shoots of one another, etc.).  I still don't really know enough about either to speak very intelligently about this.  But, I think it's definitely an interesting avenue to explore given this quotation that seems so related to BBM dialogue.  It's truly interesting to me if the yin and yang idea is not only visual but extends into the dialogue... because this would mean that both Lee and the screenwriters would be deeply involved in implementing this metaphor.

Of course, when I asked all these questions, I didn't let on that the whole reason I was inquiring was so that I could try to figure out the relationship of yin and yang to BBM and Ennis in particular.    .

[serious crayons]

Of course, when I asked all these questions, I didn't let on that the whole reason I was inquiring was so that I could try to figure out the relationship of yin and yang to BBM and Ennis in particular.    .

 

Yeah, I guess saying "I need to study up on Eastern religions so I can better understand Brokeback Mountain" might be a little startling to the uninitiated. 

[YaadPyar]

In many translations of the Tao Te Ching, the word "Master" is used instead of sage (my very favorite is the Stephen Mitchell translation - transcendent!!).  Not just a wise person, but someone in whom lives the yin and yang, and has thus mastered the essential underlying creative force.  The Tao that can be named is not the Tao, because whatever it is that the human mind can wrap words and philosophies around is already something less than the Tao.  It has already been reduced to ordinary human definitions, and so it cannot be the Tao.  The Tao cannot be constrained by anything as mundane as words or philosophies.

I think understanding Taoism, or yin and yang here, goes back to "Love is a Force of Nature."  You can't simply piece together the details of this movie and come up with a whole.  You can't assign yin to one character and yang to another and feel the love between Jack and Ennis.  The 'Force" here, love or tao, is an amazing synthesis of many elements culminating in an experience, NOT just a story or idea.  It's not just black hat/white hat.  It's the two hats on top of the two heads of the two specific individuals in this story with their two hearts and the underlying energy that connects them in love.  That to me is the force - the tao - the thing that we felt when we watched this movie.  And you can't disect every element and find where that lies.

The invitation to me of the Tao Te Ching is to consider how to return to the essence of life at every turn.  To strip away too much thinking and too much feeling and too much doing, and just let the original, eternal quality of a thing emerge.  And I think that's what so much of BBM is, and why it's such a simply crafted movie.  Instead of adding layers of complexity to the story for depth, Ang Lee and Annie Proulx both, continually strip away everything that isn't the essential story.  And the more you strip away, the more the force of love emerges because it's not clouded over by everything else. 

Y'know...it's like the end of the movie.  Ennis has nothing, is nothing, and all that's really left of him, for him, is his love for Jack.  Strip away everything else, and the underlying generative force is all that's left...

[Meryl]

Gadzooks, Celeste, that's a brilliant post! 

The invitation to me of the Tao Te Ching is to consider how to return to the essence of life at every turn.  To strip away too much thinking and too much feeling and too much doing, and just let the original, eternal quality of a thing emerge.  And I think that's what so much of BBM is, and why it's such a simply crafted movie.  Instead of adding layers of complexity to the story for depth, Ang Lee and Annie Proulx both, continually strip away everything that isn't the essential story.  And the more you strip away, the more the force of love emerges because it's not clouded over by everything else.

Thank you.  That's the best explanation I've seen yet of how Ang Lee brought this miracle about. 

Talk about the pull of opposites!  Co-existing in this film are thousands of details of character, place and event along with a vast simplicity of approach.   It reminds me of how the yogis describe the nature of Consciousness as "The Many in One."  No wonder it is so powerful.

[Front-Ranger]

I knew you would have the definitive answer for us, Celeste, even if the answer is "It depends." !!