The concepts of yin/yang tend to be familiar to most people. They are useful to really understand, even though they might sound so basic. They are representations of all the complementary forces and manifestations in the world, such as: dark and light, male and female, hard and flexible, ugly and beautiful, and so on. I often hear people say that they are opposites, but I think to say this is to miss something of their inherent unity. In western thought, we tend to think of things such as beauty or ugliness as separate.
To use an analogy from slightly further east, consider Japanese swordsmiths. These craftsmen have elaborate rituals involved in the construction of blades, in part to honor the spirit of the tool they’re making, and it part to make sure they get just the right balance of hardness on the outside and soft pliability(toughness) on the inside. Without both of these properties, the blade sucks. A totally tough blade would be dull, a totally hard blade would break easily. Both properties combined, they made perfect blades.
