zen_tom

Much of our thought and culture contains the idea of opposites, from Good and Evil, Light and Dark, Heaven and Hell, Newton's action-reaction and the laws of Thermodynamics - Whatever example you choose to illustrate it, the notion of things having opposing attributes is a powerful and ancient one.

I remember as a child going crazy over trying to catalogue the opposite of all the things I could think of. (Try working out the opposite of 'door', 'brown', or 'cat' and you'll see what I mean!) Yet despite these obvious difficulties, it was something I felt was important to do.

It may be that we find it easier to describe the world in terms of binary parameters, or perhaps there is something deeper about the universe in which we live. There are some schools of thought that teach us to be careful of looking too far down the path of duality, suggesting that it is a dead-end of sorts.

So which is it, this twoness? A manifestation of the way we perceive the universe, or something deeply rooted in the universe's structure? Something to be trusted, or something to be wary of?