说阴道阳 Let's Talk About Yin-Yang

从小就对‘阴阳’这两个字没有好感。可能是因为把它联想到道教的道士形象，再加上认为阴阳就是不男不女，阴阳怪气。因此，对中国阴阳家的学说，一向没有兴趣，认为是迷信的东西，最好避之大吉。
最近阅读了一些中国先秦哲学，才知道阴阳学思想早已融入华人的血液里，已经是华人DNA中挥之不去的一部分了。

华人老祖宗对宇宙的由来和结构，有两支不同的思想路线。其一是阴阳家的思想路线，其二是易经的译解。后来这两个思想路线融会，统称阴阳家了。

阳代表男性，主动，热，光明，坚硬，等等；阴代表女性，被动，冷，阴暗，柔软，等等。宇宙一切现象都是由阴阳两个原则，两种力量的相互作用而产生。

‘易经’是六经之首，影响华人思想行为最大，而庄子-天下篇在论六家要旨时说：‘易以道阴阳’，表明‘易经’是讲阴阳的。

由此看来，华人阴声阳气的传统与习俗，已有几千年的历史了，现在的华人是没法避开的。
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Fung Yu-Lan（冯友兰）: In ancient China, there are two lines of thought that thus tried to interpret the structure and origin of the universe. One is found in the writings of the Yin-Yang, while the other is found....in the text of the Book of Changes (Yi-Jing 易经). Later, these two lines of thought become intermingled, known as Yin-Yang School.

The word Yang originally meant sunshine or what pertains to sunshine and light; that of Yin meant the absence of sunshine, ie shadow or darkness. In later development, Yin and Yang came to be regarded as two cosmic opposite pricinples or forces and through the interaction of these two primary pricinples, all phenomena of the universe are produced.