The Tao of Kung Fu #21

We Only Know Good Because of Evil

Learn more about this philosophy here..... This is another clip from "The Hoots" episode, from the 1970's TV series "Kung Fu". Caine (David Carradine) is disheartened over the hostility he has witnessed in the marketplace. Like most of us, Caine wishes for a world that only knows harmony. Yet Master Po (Keye Luke) explains we can only know peace and harmony because of the existence of conflict and discord. He then recites the words of ancient Taoist master, Lao Tzu: "In the Universe all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good only because there is evil. Therefore having and not having arise together. Difficult and easy complement each other. High and low rest upon each other; Front and back follow one another." This verse comes from the observations of Nature made in the Taoist sacred text, the Tao Te Ching. The ancient Taoists noticed that everything in Nature has an equal and opposite aspect. They also noticed that mankind could only ever know and experience something by also knowing its opposite aspect. Needless to say this interaction of opposite forces, is what is being symbolized by the well-known Taoist motif, the yin-yang. The ancient Chinese masters understood we could only know something if it was contrasted by its opposite. Naturally, we can only see text if the background is a contrasting colour. We are only able to define the warmth of summer if we have experienced the chill of winter. We can only see something as beautiful because of the unattractiveness of something else. We can only know something is big because we know of something smaller to serve as a comparison. We can only know something as benevolent when we have knowledge of evil. In the same way, we can only know peace and harmony because we have experienced conflict and dispute. Therefore we can not experience anything positive without also having experienced its negative counterpart. How could we know joy without ever experiencing sadness? How could we define success if we had never failed? How could we know we were awake if we had never been asleep? How could we appreciate the value of life if it did not always end in death? After careful consideration we will soon see that our usual ideas of utopia are really a wish for a long boring existence without variety or surprises. It would be like eating the same food for every meal; having the same weather everyday; or never encountering anything unfamiliar. As Master Po states so elegantly in this video, "Would you make the whole world a temple?"