This important concept in Chinese philosophy can be encountered in various Qigong and Tai Chi forms and sets. This article sets out to explore these critical ideas further.
I once spent three weeks in a Chinese city, and seeing that our group didn’t speak a word of Mandarin, a Chinese man took pity on us and decided to teach us. To my surprise he didn’t start by teaching us how to say “hello” or “how are you” – instead, he pointed upwards and said “tian”, the Chinese word for sky, or heaven, and then pointed downwards and said “di”, the Chinese word for earth. For him, these were the two most fundamental words in the Chinese language that he could teach us, the first step along our road to learning Chinese.
Where did this come from? Why did this man choose these two words as the first and most important words to teach us?
Heaven and Earth are a very important idea in Chinese thought, particularly in Daoism: they are at the basis of everything else. Heaven, the utmost yang, is above, and earth, the utmost yin, is below. People, or humanity, are in a humble place in the middle of them. Humanity is where these two forces meet and balance out, in constant interaction.
This ever-changing interaction was understood in great detail in ancient China. The Daoist classics talk of heaven and earth as being at the origin of movement and change. They naturally control the cycle of the seasons and therefore the creation and destruction of life in its many different forms. A definition of Daoist wisdom could be to understand the way of heaven and earth and to live in harmony with them – not to struggle against changes that are beyond our control, but to understand them and to move with them.
However, as can be seen by our impromptu Chinese teacher, the importance of heaven and earth is not only an ancient idea in China. Modern Chinese people still see Heaven and Earth as being two fundamental forces that govern the world. They are deeply embedded in the Chinese language and in the Chinese psyche.
In the Tai Chi Form, we find heaven and earth right at the beginning, as part of the opening movement. Out of this beautifully simple yet powerful movement comes the rest of the form. It is such a fundamental movement, that it can in itself be studied for extended periods of time and will yield deeper and deeper rewards to those who practice it.