Yin-Yang and the Five Elements in East Asia

From the Struggle for Survival to Culture and Civilization

All living things are made to compete and fight in order to select and raise good seed. The horns and claws and fierce temper of the males exist because they are duty-bound to become the strong and pass good seed on to the females. In human society, too, war has gone on without end, and human history is full of competition and war. Where water was plentiful and then dried up, people migrated in search of water; when food ran out, fights began to seize food; so fighting and war were the way of life of all that has life. When a culture and civilization won through new knowledge and competitive strength, that culture and civilization was passed on in turn to the next winner.

People kindled fires with wood and roasted their food, broke stones to use as tools and as hunting axes, and as they grew used to group life in the Paleolithic, language began. In the Neolithic period of East Asia, settled farming began, and around the time people were smelting bronze over charcoal fires, they dragged rocks from far away and set up dolmens as shrines to their ancestral spirits. They shaped clay and fired it to make vessels in which to store grain. Wooden tools developed into stone tools and gradually into bronze tools. As they gathered food by the seasons and began to farm, they also acquired the custom of burying dok (large crocks of fired clay) in the ground to store the family's food.

Coal production in East Asia allowed metal culture to develop earlier than anywhere else in the world, and just as the pottery relics of Greece show us the cultural history of Europe today, the metal relics of the Shang dynasty of East Asia are displayed in museums all over the world. The high heat of coal in East Asia also allowed Iron Age culture to develop first in the world. Ponies bred throughout Manchuria, and wolves and wild boars raised at home evolved into dogs for eating and domestic pigs. When we see that the Huns, armed with powerful metal weapons and riding ponies, took their dogs and pigs along and rode from East Asia all the way to western Europe to wage war on Ro
me, it seems the Eurasian continent was their playground.

The Silk Road, as the Huns and the Mongols showed, was the road by which East Asians had moved to the Mediterranean since 30,000 years ago, and it became the great highway crossing the continent from the Korean Peninsula at its eastern end to Europe. It was the courtyard path by which East Asians advanced to the western side of the Asian continent. As the Huns moved west, a new tribe was born on the Mongolian side, and the name of that tribe was the "Dolgwol" (Göktürks). These Göktürks came south and founded a nation, which became today's Turkey, and this is why Turkey is called a brother nation to us, the Korean people. Turkish history, too, says, "We are the Asena people (the Asadal people: the people of the land of light, the sun people)." The nations the Huns made as most of them moved west became "Hungary," "Bulgaria," and "Finland," and as they kept pressing westward, it seems the Germanic peoples were set on their great migration.

Looking at the history of China, where 56 peoples live together, most of it — apart from the Song dynasty — is a history of empires in which northern peoples held power, and even the Great Wall was a border line where northern peoples fought one another. That the Great Wall and the Silk Road began around the Korean Peninsula, where East Asia's population density was highest, and stretched westward shows that this was the starting point of East Asian history, which began 50,000 years ago.

The seafaring people who settled on the Korean Peninsula around 50,000 years ago grew accustomed to farming, and the fact that rice grains from 17,000 years ago have been excavated at Cheongwon in North Chungcheong Province shows that farming culture developed there early by world standards. The population density was high, and, befitting so large a population, heaps of dolmen tombs — which needed many hands — remain as an archaeological heritage. Some 20,000 Neolithic dolmens are gathered at the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula. Of the roughly 60,000 dolmens on the coasts of the Eurasian continent, about 30,000 are concentrated in East Asia.

In 1982, dozens of jade objects, including jade earrings, were excavated at Xinglongwa village in Chifeng. They were identified as relics from around 6,200 BC and introduced as the Xinglongwa culture; they are the same as those unearthed from the shell mound at Munam-ri in Goseong County, Gangwon Province, Korea. The jade is said to be of the same quality as the jade deposits of the Xiuyan area on the Yalu River. The Chahai, Fuhe, and Zhaobaogou cultures excavated around the Liao River came together in the world-famous Hongshan culture (4500–3000 BC), which represents the Liao River civilization.

The hallmarks of the Hongshan culture include refined pottery, jade brought from distant Baekdusan and carved with metal tools, and large rocks split with metal tools to the needed size and shape and dragged great distances to build stepped stone-mound pyramids, in which bodies were laid to rest in small, finely made stone coffins. Hongshan jade carving came 1,000 years before the Yellow River civilization, and its stepped stone pyramids came 2,000 years before Egypt's. In the Neolithic period of the Korean Peninsula, the dolmen culture combined with the earthen-mound (mound) culture to begin the building of stepped pyramids in Manchuria, which leads to the reasonable supposition that it passed pyramid building on to Central America and to the Nile basin in Southwest Asia.

Yin-Yang, the Five Elements, and the Seven Days

The sun-worshipping, farming seafaring people seem to have told the time by shadows during the day and at night by the position of the Big Dipper around the North Star. The ancients thought that just as there was a royal palace on earth, there was a Dragon Palace under the sea and a Heavenly Palace in the sky; in the Heavenly Palace, the North Star (photo below) was the king and the seven stars of the Big Dipper were his seven ministers. So they began to regard "7" as the holiest of numbers. The meaning of "7" came to be applied in many ways in the celestial religion of East Asia.

The idea of yin-yang and the Five Elements, which began in the celestial nature religion of East Asia, was made up of seven elements: sun, moon, water, fire, wood, metal, and earth, signifying every element between heaven and earth. Yin and yang signify the moon and the sun, woman and man, night and day, cold and hot — the many pairs of opposing contrasts. The Five Elements began with the five fingers: just as the thumb sits in the middle and the other four fingers form the surroundings, they were divided with man and earth in the middle and east, south, west, and north around them. The east was water and fish, the south fire and birds, the west wood and the four-legged beast, the tiger, the north metal and the creature that crawls on its body, the snake — surrounding the four directions — with man standing on the earth at the center.

They divided the materials of life into water, fire, wood, metal, and earth, divided living beings into fish, birds, four-legged beasts, legless creatures, and man, and arranged space into east, west, south, north, and center. East was blue, south red, west white, north black, and the center, where man stands, yellow; from that time on they recognized light and dark and the three primary colors. That human knowledge developed in such a long, stable way from the Neolithic onward can be seen, anywhere in the world, only in East Asia. It makes us think that with the use of metal in the Neolithic period in East Asia, metal had already become an element of daily life early on.

The yin-yang and Five Elements thought of East Asia from thousands of years BC appears in the Babylonian culture and Judaism of Southwest Asia, just as it appears in the cultures of the Native Americans. After Christianity, which imitated Buddhism (600 BC), took root in Southwest Asia, the seven-day cycle began from the time the Roman emperor Constantine (AD 330) proclaimed Christianity the state religion. The seventh day, the Sabbath, became a day of rest, a market day (shopping day), and a holy day.

The Sabbath, the day of earth, was a day of rest and a market day for farmers, but since the dead are buried in the earth, it was also a day of death. In yin-yang and the Five Elements, the first day is the day of the moon (Monday); Tuesday, the day of fire, is Mars; Wednesday, the day of water, is Mercury; Thursday, the day of wood, is Jupiter; Friday, the day of metal, is Venus; Saturday, the day of earth, is Saturn; and Sunday, the day of the sun, is the Sun. In an age when the universe was thought of as divided into 28 spaces, the use of seven days seems to have come from dividing the 28-day cycle of the moon's changing shape [into four], so that the repetition of the week has continued ever since.

In East Asia, the worship of the sun god by day was accompanied by the worship of the North Star and the Big Dipper by night, and this became the beginning of celestial religion. The celestial thought seen in East Asia's Taoism and India's Hinduism appeared as the idea of yin-yang and the Five Elements, was passed to Babylonia and Judaism, and it seems the Sabbath cycle, symbolizing the completion of creation in Christianity, was formed from it.

The culture of yin-yang and the Five Elements, well preserved in the tombs of Goguryeo, which ruled territory in Manchuria and the north of the Korean Peninsula, shows well the character of East Asian religion as a fusion of ancestral religion and celestial religion. Celestial religion, which began with the sun god, recognized time by the changing shape of the moon at night, the unchanging position of the North Star, and the turning angle of the Big Dipper, and so recognized the four seasons, the months of the calendar, and the hours of the day, dividing the time and space of the universe. Yin-yang and the Five Elements signify ourselves and everything around us, so the meaning of "7" became a symbol of completion and perfection, and it seems it later took on the meaning of the Bible's creation being completed in seven days.

East Asian Medicine and Yin-Yang and the Five Elements

Since the Neolithic period, East Asian (Korean) medicine has been explained in many ways. Selecting the best of these, I set it out as follows. The theory of yin and yang (陰陽) is the natural philosophy (自然哲學) that forms the foundation of Eastern thought: all of nature is formed by the combination of yin (陰) and yang (陽), and as yin and yang come into being, heaven and earth and all things change. Human beings are governed by the environment of the living conditions that surround us — climate, season, soil, and so on. That is, we live within the universe and live along with the changes of the universe. Because the activity of the human body living in such an environment is the same as that of the universe, the human body is called a microcosm (小宇宙). Korean medicine (韓醫學), which follows the principles and rules of natural philosophy, was inherited and developed through the wisdom of our ancestors; it sees our bodies, like the universe, as an organism in diagnosing and treating disease, and it understands and recognizes all the activities and functions of the body's organs as the harmony of yin and yang, the providence of nature.

Everything in the universe is one, yet contains two opposing sides. Just as a coin is one thing but its front and back are two opposing faces, these two sides are classified as yin and yang. For example: heaven and earth, sun and moon, sea and land, day and night, cold and heat, man and woman, body and spirit, life and death, above and below, inside and outside, movement and stillness, water and fire, the breath breathed out and the breath breathed in, brightness and darkness, emptiness and fullness. Just as there can be a back only if there is a front, yin and yang are not absolute but always relative concepts; this is the recognition of the principle that things develop and change as yin and yang are always in opposition and unity, waxing and waning (消長), and transforming (轉化) into each other.

To understand more concretely the relative, not absolute, nature of yin and yang, let us look at a few examples. Humankind is one, yet made up of men and women. Compared with woman, man is yang. But even in the case of a yang man, the upper body is yang and the lower body yin. The front, where the chest and belly are, is yin, and the back is yang. And the upper part of the front, the chest, is yang, while the lower belly is yin. So the chest is the yang within yin (陰中之陽), and the lower belly is the yin within yin (陰中之陰). For this reason, in nothing does yin or yang exist absolutely and in opposition; each exists as yin or yang by virtue of the other's existence.

To take an example from the physiology within the body: the production of matter, represented by yin, depends on the amount of energy, represented by yang, and the amount of energy, represented by yang, depends on the foundation of matter, represented by yin. Here matter and energy are ultimately the same thing, but when one side alone is emphasized, matter (理) and energy (氣) are treated as separate. Because each depends on the other's existence in this way, mutual restraint and cooperation always take place, and through this the balance of yin and yang is maintained. This is called "the waxing and waning of yin and yang" (陰陽消長).

Korean Medicine and Yin-Yang

Korean medicine is precisely the application of the basic philosophy of yin and yang to the treatment, prevention, and diagnosis of bodily disease. To give an example of distinguishing yin and yang in pathology: when yin overflows in the body, the inside of the body, which corresponds to yin, grows cold, and when yin is lacking, a mild fever arises. Conversely, when yang overflows, fever appears on the outside of the body, which corresponds to yang, and when yang is lacking, the outside of the body grows cold.

By this logic, a person whose hands and feet are always colder than other people's lacks too much yang, and the tidal fever (潮熱) that a tuberculosis patient develops every afternoon is due to a severe lack of yin. So what such people need most in their present condition are foods that strengthen the body's yang, or yin, and the basic principle of Korean medicine is to supply the properties of such medicinal ingredients so as to restore the balance of yin and yang in the body.

When the balance of yin and yang in the body is broken by an excess or deficiency of one or the other, a dynamic (動的) change follows; and since yin and yang can exist only by virtue of each other, if yin continues to be lacking, yang too eventually becomes lacking, and in the end both yin and yang are lacking, so that the active interrelation of yin and yang can no longer be maintained. When this happens, the living organism reaches a fatal state in which it must cease its activity. Therefore, the way to keep yin and yang always in balance is the foundation of what Korean medicine calls preventive medicine, and the basic condition of nurturing life (養生).

The theory of yin and yang described above applies not only to physiology and treatment but is also a basic theoretical tool in all of Oriental medicine, including anatomy, pathology, and diagnosis. Let us take one example of how medicine is prescribed in Oriental medicine. Even among diseases that show the same outcome, some present yang symptoms (陽症) and some yin symptoms (陰症), and the medicines prescribed for them are likewise divided into yin medicines and yang medicines. Even for diarrhea, yang-type diarrhea should be treated with a yin medicine (a bitter-tasting, cold-natured remedy), and yin-type diarrhea with a yang medicine (a sweet-tasting, warm-natured remedy).

If these are reversed, the diarrhea may perhaps be cured, but considerable side effects follow. In Western medicine, if the stomach hurts, medicine is given directly to the stomach, and for diarrhea of whatever kind a single medicine is given, a simple and direct treatment; but Oriental medicine, Korean medicine, is a healing art whose results are indirect, treating by balancing the body so as to remove the fundamental cause of the disease.

Korean Medicine and the Five Elements

The Five Elements theory (五行理論) in Korean medicine is a further extension of this concept of natural philosophy, combined with medical practice. That is, it applies to medicine a system of thought that divides the properties (屬性) of matter into five abstract concepts and explains their interrelations and their generation and change. Yin-yang theory reflects the phenomenon of the universe in which two phenomena, yin and yang, form opposition, unity, and balance; Five Elements theory explains, through five chained interrelations, the organic cycle of the universe — the changes of all things, such as the movement of the universe, the passage of time, and the rise and fall of living things with the seasons.

The five (五) of the Five Elements are wood (木), fire (火), earth (土), metal (金), and water (水). Among these five, some have relationships of cooperation, promotion, and encouragement, and these are called generating (相生) relationships. Water nourishes wood, so water generates wood (水生木); wood can kindle fire, so wood generates fire (木生火); when fire dies down it becomes earth, so fire generates earth (火生土); metal comes out of the earth, so earth generates metal (土生金); and water forms from metal, so metal generates water (金生水). These are the so-called generating relationships.

On the other hand, some exist not in relationships of mutual help and cooperation but, on the contrary, of restraint and obstruction, and these are called overcoming (相克) relationships. For example, wood is stronger than earth, so wood overcomes earth (木克土); metal is stronger than wood, so metal overcomes wood (金克木); fire is put out by water, so water overcomes fire (水克火); fire melts metal, so fire overcomes metal (火克金); and earth dams up water, so earth overcomes water (土克水) — so it is explained.

The Five Elements and the Organs of the Body

Korean medicine has long applied to the treatment of disease the wisdom of extending these concepts of generating and overcoming among the Five Elements to the relationships of the five viscera and six bowels. By relating the properties of the Five Elements to the internal organs of the human body, there are physiological and pathological phenomena that arise from their helping and restraining one another. In the term "five viscera and six bowels," the organs corresponding to the viscera (臟) are those that maintain their activity automatically and ceaselessly from the time a human life is conceived until its activity stops, while the organs corresponding to the bowels (腑) are those that are active only when needed. Distinguishing the five viscera by the properties of the Five Elements: the liver (肝臟) is wood, the spleen (脾臟 and 胃, spleen and stomach) is earth, the lungs are metal, the kidneys (生殖器官 and 膀胱, reproductive organs and bladder) are water, and the heart (心臟) is fire.

In terms of the generating relationships, wood generates fire (木生火), so the vigorous activity of the liver, belonging to wood, helps the activity of the heart, belonging to fire; but in terms of the overcoming relationships, wood overcomes earth (木克土), so it actually restrains the activity of the spleen, belonging to earth — that is, the activity of the digestive organs. Meanwhile the spleen (earth), restrained by the liver, supports the lungs, belonging to metal, through the relationship of earth generating metal, and the lungs, since metal overcomes wood, restrain the liver.

The correspondence between the human body and the natural environment is similar. Things alike in property, form, or phenomenon are grouped together and divided into five, each belonging to one of the Five Elements. Taken as a whole, one cannot help but call it a quite reasonable classification. In this way, the physiological activities of the five viscera in our bodies sometimes help and cooperate with one another and sometimes restrain and obstruct one another, and ultimately all the organs maintain balance by encouraging and restraining one another.

The words in our everyday vocabulary that contain the number five — the five viscera (五臟), five sense organs (五官), five emotions (五志), five colors (五色), five grains (五穀), and so on — derive from the Five Elements.

The Five Elements of the body: Wood (木) Fire (火) Earth (土) Metal (金) Water (水)

Five viscera (五臟): liver (肝), heart (心), spleen (脾), lungs (肺), kidneys (腎)

Six bowels (六腑): gallbladder (膽), small intestine (小腸), stomach (胃), large intestine (大腸), bladder (膀胱)

Five sense organs (五官): eyes, tongue, mouth, nose, ears

Five tissues (五體): muscle, vessels, flesh, skin and hair, bone

Five emotions (五志): anger, joy, worry, sorrow, fear

Five climates (五氣): wind, heat, dampness, dryness, cold

Five colors (五色): blue, red, yellow, white, black

Five tastes (五味): sour, bitter, sweet, pungent, salty

Five sounds (五星): shouting (呼), speaking (言), singing (歌), weeping (哭), groaning (呻吟)

Five secretions: breath, tears, sweat, saliva, nasal mucus

The Five Elements and the Properties of Things

As shown above, the liver, belonging to wood (木), is in the same column as the gallbladder, eyes, muscles, anger, wind, blue, sour taste, exhaled breath, and tears, so these are held to share the same property.

Bile, the digestive fluid secreted by the liver, is stored in the gallbladder, and if the liver is not well, the eyes, which have the property of wood, may turn red or yellow, or eyesight may weaken. Symptoms such as trembling of the muscles may also appear. And when liver function worsens, one is quick to anger; even when the liver is in good condition, getting angry too often raises blood sugar and worsens liver function. Vegetables, fruits, and grains (by the color of their skins) of the blue-green color that shares the same property strengthen (補) the liver, and among the tastes, sourness can strengthen the liver.

That a pregnant woman in early pregnancy craves sour things like apricots is a natural phenomenon: because liver function is weakened by the growth of the fetus, she instinctively seeks to boost her liver function by eating sour foods. But if she eats too many sour things, since wood overcomes earth, the function of the spleen (脾臟), which corresponds to earth, declines. Also, when liver function is poor, the complexion may become dark or sallow, and tears increase. If the face often takes on a bluish tint, it is a sign that the disease is severe. Judging a person's health, and further the health of the internal organs, by the color of the face is a method of diagnosis that discerns by these properties of the Five Elements.

Yin-Yang, the Five Elements, and Natural Health

Natural living therapy, like Korean medicine, is also based on the philosophy of yin-yang and the Five Elements. In principle, in our healthy bodies the activities and functions of all the organs are made to complement, cooperate with, support, oppose, and restrain one another in balance, so securing this balance is the shortcut to maintaining one's health.

Natural living therapy, based on natural food, appropriate exercise, and a peaceful state of mind, emphasizes a balanced diet so that nothing is lacking on either side, and regulates the physiology of the organs through exercise therapy and special therapies so that nothing goes wrong in their activity; in this sense it can be called a health therapy that shares its roots with Korean medicine. To maintain these basic conditions at all times, we must strive to have our bodies actively adapt to the changes of yin and yang in the natural world, and in our daily lives always strive so that there is neither excess nor deficiency in the causal relationship between internal predispositions (內的素因) and external factors (外的要因).

Acupuncture

Of all East Asian medical arts, the one most widely applied in modern medicine is acupuncture. According to Wikipedia, acupuncture (鍼術) is defined as the art of stimulating certain parts of the human body with fine, sensitive needles or similar tools to regulate the body's qi and blood and treat disease. A medical art in use in East Asia since the Neolithic period, the character chim (鍼)[2] for the needle of acupuncture developed etymologically from pyeomseok (砭石)[3] to jamseok (箴石)[4], and from jamseok to chim (鍼)[5]. Here pyeomseok is a character meaning a stone fragment, a surgical treatment tool of the Neolithic period; jamseok is a more refined development of it, a character meaning a somewhat rough, thick needle, formed by combining bamboo with the character ham (咸), "to exhaust."

The next stage is the needle worked as fine as a hair, a character combining ham (咸) with geum (金), "metal"; with the development of Iron Age culture, the iron needle at last took its finished form. That is, it developed from the stone fragment pyeomseok (砭石) of the Neolithic, to the jamseok (箴石) of the Bronze Age, to the needle chim (鍼) of the Iron Age. Thus acupuncture, as known from relics and documentary evidence, began in the Neolithic period — an ancient medical art that began together with human civilization.

In the Tang dynasty, Wang Bing used the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Acupuncture (or Classic of Needling), presented by Goryeo, to supplement the Yellow Emperor's Basic Questions, several volumes of which had been lost, combined it with the Classic of Acupuncture, and named it the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic, which has been handed down to this day. Originally the Basic Questions and the Classic of Needling were separate books.

Korea is the region where 50% of the world's dolmens are concentrated, and among the Neolithic relics unearthed in 1923 at Songpyeong-ri, Ungi-myeon, Gyeongheung County, North Hamgyeong Province, stone needles and bone needles were excavated; together with these relics, which have been designated national treasures, documents and relics prove that Korea is the birthplace of acupuncture. Moreover, on June 18, 2008, the World Health Organization adopted the Republic of Korea's acupoint system as the international standard for acupuncture point locations. Relics and documents prove the long tradition and history of acupuncture in the Republic of Korea.

Because acupuncture concerns itself with qi (氣), which corresponds to living energy, it is also called "qi medicine." Qi (氣) circulates to every part of the body through the "meridians" (經絡), together with the blood and bodily fluids (津液), so if this qi circulates well, one is in a healthy state, and if its circulation loses balance through stress, emotions (感情), poor eating habits, climate change, and various other environmental factors, one falls ill. It is explained that a break in communication between the various parts of the body causes "imbalance," and from this arise health problems such as fatigue, pain, and disease.

Acupuncture treatment basically inserts fine needles at specific places on the body, the acupoints (穴), with the aim of restoring balance to the patient's circulation of qi and blood (氣血). The acupoints used in acupuncture recover a state of "balance of qi" through the best circulation of qi. The needles used in treatment were made of gold, silver, or bronze, containing no chemical substances at all. Acupuncture treatment itself is not painful, and usually has a sedative (鎭靜) effect that relieves tension and brings comfort, so the treatment takes effect immediately. Acupressure and moxibustion, medical arts used throughout East Asia's long history, are drawing the attention of the world's medical community.