Star Wars and Philosophy (Popular Culture and Philosophy Series) - Kevin Decker [18]
“Don’t Give In to Hate: That Leads to the Dark Side”
When Buddhism was introduced to China, it entered into dialectic with Taoism and the synthesis of Buddhism with Taoism produced the Zen philosophy. The notion of ch’i is rooted in Taoism, which teaches that the ch’i is manifested as yin and yang, the light and the dark, and that one must harmonize with this energy which requires balance. Lucas said that “The idea of positive and negative, that there are two sides to an entity, a push and a pull, a yin and a yang, and the struggle between the two sides are issues of nature that I wanted to include in the film.”33
The word “tao” literally translates from the Chinese as “way” and the philosophy of Tao is about the Way of nature. Everything in nature exists in the field of opposites: up-down, left-right, in-out, male-female, light-dark, positive-negative, yang-yin, and so forth. The Way of nature has a tendency toward balance which is the Great Harmony know as Tai Chi, which literally means “Supreme Ultimate.” The so called “yin-yang symbol (a circle the inside of which is divided by a wavy line, one half being light with a dark dot, and the other half dark with a light dot) is properly called the emblem of Tai Chi. The white dot in the dark side and the dark dot in the light side symbolize the interdependence of opposites.
In The Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon Jinn refers to “the prophecy of the one who will bring balance to the Force,” believing the “one” to be Anakin Skywalker. This implies something other than a duality of good versus evil. In Taoist thought there is neither absolute good nor absolute evil, but rather good and evil are relative conditions of one another. As Obi-Wan puts it, “You’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” From a Taoist point of view, it is not possible to have the light without also having darkness, or in the language of Star Wars, one cannot exist without the Dark Side being ever-present. When Anakin Skywalker becomes Darth Vader, he is seduced by the Dark Side, but in Return of the Jedi, his son, Luke, draws him back to goodness. Anakin thus bring balance back to the Force in himself as well as to the galaxy by destroying the Emperor.
Is it possible to be out of balance with too much goodness? The short answer is “yes.” The prequel trilogy outlines just such a condition where the Jedi Order finds itself in the smugness of complacency as the Dark Side is active right under their noses. The Jedi are living so much in the light of morality, that the shadow of unconscious desire, symbolized by the Sith, takes on a life of its own and, like an unsupervised child, becomes delinquent. If one is out of touch with the shadow side of one’s nature—one’s Dark Side—it become pathological, like feeling lust or greed and living in denial or otherwise becomes unconscious, such that it only magnifies itself in the repressed unconsciousness. This, it seems, is the lesson that Luke learns in the depths and darkness of the cave on Dagobah in which he confronts his own Dark Side.
Yoda teaches Luke that “a Jedi’s strength flows from the Force. But beware of the Dark side. Anger . . . fear . . . aggression. The Dark Side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight.”
Luke asks if the Dark Side is stronger. “No” answers Yoda, but it is “quicker, easier, more seductive.”
Luke then asks, “How am I to know the good side from the bad?”
“You will know. When you are calm, at peace, passive. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack.”
According to Buddhist psychology, there are three poisons which produce the karma of suffering: attraction, repulsion, and ignorance. Attraction includes desire to have or possessiveness, greed, lust, and any other emotions of holding on or clinging to what is wanted. Anakin’s excessive clinging attachment to his mother leads him into self-destructive hate