Dualistic cosmology Confucianism, beliefs that divide the universe into the complementary oppositions of yin and yang. In traditions such as classical Hinduism, Zen Buddhism or Islamic Sufism, a key to enlightenment is "transcending" this sort of dualistic thinking, without merely substituting dualism with monism or pluralism. The opposition and combination of the universe's two basic principles of yin and yang is a large part of Chinese philosophy, and is an important feature of Taoism, both as a philosophy and as a religion, although the concept developed much earlier. Some argue that yin and yang were originally an earth and sky god, respectively.
Yin and yang 阳 "sunny side" are linguistically analyzable in terms of Chinese characters, pronunciations and etymology, meanings, topography, and loanwords. The Traditional Chinese characters and for the words "yīn" and "yáng" are both classified as radical- esphonetic characters, combining the semantically significant "mound; hill" radical or with the phonetic indicators "ying" and "yang" . The first phonetic "yīn" "cloudy" ideographically combines "jīn" "now; present" and "yún" "cloud", denoting the "今 presence of 云 clouds". The second phonetic "yáng" "bright" originally pictured the "sun" with "rays coming down". This phonetic is expanded with the "sun" radical into "yáng" 暘 "rising sun; sunshine". The