No Separation

The Tao, like a tapestry, cannot be separated into individual threads, otherwise the Oneness would be lost, the harmony destroyed.
~ from Chapter 1 of The Spirit of Tai-Chi: Essential Principles ~

I don't know about the rest of the world, but Americans love denim. Blue jeans -- though now they come in more colors than you can shake a stick at -- hang in most every closet in the nation. As I've remarked before, denim is very big in my life as I wear overalls ALL the time.

Though one can, of course, purchase jeans these days that are pre-ripped (never made a lick of sense to me), fraying is the enemy of denim and almost all other types of cloth and apparel material. When an article of clothing begins to fray, we soon find that the integrity of the whole will suffer. In a manner of speaking, "the harmony is destroyed."

While a pair of jeans is made up of thousands of threads, they mean nothing until they're sewn together. We certainly couldn't wear each thread as an article of clothing and think that we would cover our nakedness or provide a measure of protection from the weather. They only hold meaning when they are joined together to form a whole.

Life is like a pair of jeans.