Becoming

I. Self-Becoming

In Chapter 1 you saw: there is only becoming, always becoming, and nothing outside it. Now a question will surface on its own—you cannot stop it: then who makes this becoming become?

Chapter 1 recognized becoming itself—that it is movement, not a thing; that it cannot be grasped and cannot be said to the end. This chapter takes one step further: if there is only this becoming, and it is the ground, then a few of the biggest questions can no longer be avoided—who gave birth to it? Why does it become? Can it be said to the end? These three are the questions a person, standing before this ground, is bound to ask. This chapter will take you through them, one by one, to the very bottom.

You will certainly ask this question. Because everything you have ever seen in your life was made by something else. The table was made by a carpenter; the child was born of its parents; the rain falls from the clouds, and the clouds gathered from vapor. You live in a world where everything has a cause, and about everything you will ask: and that—who made that? So you follow this chain upward, tracing the origin of the table, the origin of the universe, the origin of the first cause. You always feel that in the end there should be a someone—a first mover—who set all of this going.

Then let us follow your questioning upward, all the way to the top, and see what is at the end.

Who gave birth to that becoming?

Before you answer this question, see the trap inside it. When you ask who gave birth to becoming, you have already assumed: before becoming, there was something else, and that something gave birth to becoming. But in Chapter 1 you already saw—becoming is the ground; outside becoming there is nothing, and before becoming there is nothing. If something existed before becoming to give birth to it, then that thing would also have to be, would also have to move—would it not also be a kind of becoming? Then it would not be before becoming at all: it would be becoming itself. You want to find where becoming came from, but any origin you find, as long as it is and it moves, is already becoming. You can never step outside becoming to find something that gave birth to it, because one step outside becoming is nothing—and nothing can give birth to anything.

So this questioning, at becoming, has reached its end. Not because we are too tired to keep climbing, but because further up there is nothing—further up is nothingness, and in nothingness there is no thing that could serve as the source. Becoming is the end of the line. There is no one behind it.

Then who gave birth to it? No one. It becomes of itself. It has always become of itself, and it never needed anyone to set it going, because there is no one earlier than it. This is the name of this section: Self-Becoming.

You may feel this answer leaves you unsettled. You worked so hard, climbing up the chain of causes, hoping to see a someone at the top—a first designer, a hand that arranged everything—and at the top there is no one, only it, becoming of itself. You may feel a little empty.

But sit with that emptiness for a moment. No one gave birth to it—what does that mean? It means it exists without depending on anything else. It was not started by anyone, so no one can switch it off; it was not arranged by anyone, so it owes no one an explanation. It simply becomes of itself: it is its own ground, its own cause. This is not an emptiness that unsettles you—it is the most solid ground there is. Because a thing that can only be by leaning on something else is suspended, dangerous, something that can be pulled away. But a thing that becomes of itself, that leans on nothing outside, is the truly stable one—the one that cannot be taken, cannot collapse.

Turn back and look at yourself, and you will see it more clearly. How much of your unease in this life comes from hanging yourself on other things—on other people’s opinions, on a job, on a person, on a goal? The moment those things waver, you shake all over, because your root is planted in them, and they can change, leave, collapse. But there is one thing in you that has never leaned on any of them—your being, your becoming. It needs no one’s approval and no one’s reason. The moment you open your eyes, it is there, becoming of itself. The more you recognize this root that becomes of itself and leans on nothing outside, the less you can be shaken. Self-Becoming is not just the business of the universe—it is the business of whether you stand firm or not.

Self-Becoming means this: its becoming does not come from outside; it comes from itself. It is not born—it is self-born. In the whole of existence there is no external switch, no external design, no external arrangement propping it up from behind—it props itself up, gives birth to itself, and has always been so.

II. Becoming Is Its Own Reason

The last section arrived at a place that unsettles many people: no one arranged it; it becomes of itself. The moment the arranger disappears, a second question surfaces at once, and it presses harder than the first:

Then why does it become? What is all this becoming for?

You see—you are searching again. The first question searched for a who; this question searches for a what-for—you are looking for a purpose, a meaning, a reason it cannot help but become. Because everything you do has a why: you eat to live, you work for money, you strive to become better. You live in a world where everything has a purpose, so you take it for granted that all this becoming must have some great purpose behind it too.

Let me show you something. Look at yourself.

Right now, you are breathing. Let me ask you: why do you breathe?

You will probably say: to stay alive. Fine. Then why do you stay alive? You answer further: to… to what? Push a few steps further and you run out of answers. You will find that in the end, living is not for the sake of anything else—living is for the sake of living. Breathing does not serve some higher purpose; breathing is life giving birth to itself. That opening and closing of your breath, right now, is pointing at no distant goal—it is becoming, becoming now; becoming itself is its entire reason.

Look at one more thing. A flower opens. For what does it open? To be beautiful? It opens the same on a cliff where no one sees it. To bear fruit? Many flowers never bear fruit. Follow it to the bottom and you will find: the flower does not open for anything—opening is becoming, at that moment, appearing as a flower. Its opening is its reason. It does not open for the sake of something else; it opens, and that is existence giving birth to itself in that place.

Now carry this seeing onto everything: becoming does not become for the sake of anything. It did not become in order to achieve some purpose, realize some meaning, or turn into something better. It becomes because becoming is its nature; becoming itself is the purpose, becoming itself is the reason. It points at nothing outside becoming, because outside becoming there is nothing. A becoming that serves no external purpose, that is its own reason—this is what this section says: Becoming Is Its Own Reason. Becoming itself is its own reason.

And with this, a phrase that people have overused and misused is turned back to its original meaning: what exists is rational.

People have used this sentence to excuse every evil: it exists, therefore it is rational, therefore do not oppose it. That is misusing it. Its original meaning is far deeper and far cleaner: the very fact that a thing exists needs no external reason to approve it. It did not earn the right to exist by being useful, by being correct, or by matching some higher purpose. It exists because becoming, in that position, at that moment, simply became that way. It itself is the entire basis of its own existence. This reason is not outside it—it is in the thing itself. That it exists is itself the reason it exists—this is what “what exists is rational” really means.

So look at yourself. You often feel that you must be useful, must improve, must live out a meaning, must be answerable to someone—only then do you deserve to be here. You have hung your existence on a pile of external reasons—you must earn this, become that, reach some standard, before you feel you can stand. What this section wants you to see: you do not need those reasons. That you exist is itself the reason. Becoming gave birth to you, and you are becoming appearing at this one place. Your being, like the flower opening on a cliff where no one sees, is not for anything—it is becoming giving birth to itself. You do not deserve to be because you are useful. You are—and that is the whole reason.

And this being of yours is not something you hold up alone—the whole universe is holding it up with you. That you can be here, sitting, reading this line—behind it is a whole set of conditions, vast beyond your imagining, that all happened to be right: a universe that happened to be able to give birth to stars; a planet neither too far nor too near, neither too hot nor too cold; water, air, and a billion years of just-right evolution—and only then this body of yours, able to breathe, to think, to read. Not one piece of this was earned by you. All of it was given, all of it carried. You did not win a ticket to exist by your own strength; the environment of the whole universe, over a billion years, by just-right steps, carried you forth. So that you exist is itself the universe, at this one place of yours, appearing as you—you no longer need to prove to anyone that you deserve to live, because what is holding you up is the whole universe. It never asked you for credentials, so why should you demand them of yourself? Rest easy in being—that is the best answer you can give to this carrying.

Think of a newborn baby. He has done nothing, been of no use, achieved nothing—yet when you look at him you do not think he does not deserve to live, or that he must first prove something to deserve it. There he is, already complete, already enough. The eyes with which you look at a baby are the true eyes for looking at all existence—including yourself. Later, living, you forgot this, and began to think you had to earn the right to live. There is no such right to earn. You deserved it the moment you were born, and you deserve it in this moment now, because becoming is its own reason—that you are is the reason.

Here I must block off a misunderstanding that is easy to slide into. To say that every existence is its own reason, is so of itself, sounds like saying everything was arranged long ago, that all is fate—that is not what it means. To say everything is arranged smuggles in an arranger behind it, a someone who fixed everything in advance from outside—but you have already seen that there is no such external someone (remember Self-Becoming: no one set it going). What I mean by “so of itself” is the reverse: there is no external arranger, but each thing’s existence is its own ground—in its own position, at its own moment, it naturally became that way. It was not arranged into being so; it simply became so from the beginning. So your existence needs no external reason to approve it, and it was not written in advance by an invisible hand—it is simply becoming, at your one place, appearing as it naturally is. You owe no one an account, and no one fixed your fate in advance: you are becoming, here, of itself, becoming.

That restless energy of yours—busy hunting for meaning, for purpose, for a reason that makes you deserve to live—can loosen now. Becoming does not become for anything, and you do not exist for anything. That you are is becoming, at your one place, becoming itself. That is enough. It has always been enough.

III. Inexhaustible, Yet Becoming

At the end of this chapter there is one more thing to speak of—something that may have been quietly bothering you. Say it plainly, and the stone in your chest can come down.

In the last two chapters I showed you: there is only becoming; becoming becomes of itself; becoming does not become for anything. As you read, a small voice may have been muttering: then explain this becoming clearly, say it to the end—tell me what it is, how much of it there is, where it will go; give me a complete, closed answer. You want something you can hold in your hand, something said to the end, so that you can rest easy.

I will tell you right now: this becoming cannot be said to the end. It can never be said to the end.

Do not be disappointed too quickly—because this is exactly what should put you most at ease. Let me show you why, on the spot.

Think about your own future. What you will think in the next second, what you will become next year, where this life will finally go—can you say it to the end? You cannot. Your life, until you have lived to that moment, has no answer; it keeps becoming, giving birth to things you could not have foreseen. Now turn the thought around: suppose you could say your whole life to the end, second by second, thought by thought, written out as a final draft in which not one word would ever change—would that still be living? That would be a puppet acting out a finished script. That would be death. You are alive precisely because you cannot say yourself to the end—because the next moment has not yet been born, because there is always more. This inability to be said to the end is not your defect; it is the proof that you are still alive.

Becoming is the same—and it is the root of this matter. Becoming cannot be said to the end, not because we are stupid, not because our tools are not good enough, not because we have not studied it deeply enough. It is because a becoming that could be said to the end would not be becoming at all. The moment you say it to the end, you have calculated it to death, framed it, put a period on it—but the nature of becoming is never to close its mouth, always to have a next, always to be giving birth to the unforeseeable. A source that could be finished by one sentence, written out by one book, is a dead source; it could not give birth to this world of ceaseless becoming. It is precisely because it cannot be said to the end that it proves itself alive, proves itself the one that can truly give birth to everything. Being unsayable to the end is becoming’s design, not becoming’s flaw.

Let me take this layer one step deeper, and you will see how much this unsayableness matters. Suppose one day this becoming really were said to the end by someone—calculated to the end, written out without a word left—what would happen? At that instant, everything would stop. Because once all the answers are given, there is nothing left to ask; once asking stops, change stops, because change comes out of that gap where there is no answer yet, where something must still become; once change stops, experience, growth, recognition, wisdom—all of it stops. A world said to the end is a dead world. So this unsayableness is not a wall blocking you—it is the opening kept alive: precisely because there is always another layer not yet said, this world always has something to pursue, something to change, something to live. Unsayable-to-the-end is the breath becoming keeps for itself; the moment that breath breaks, the whole board dies.

So you must turn the word “perfect” completely around. The perfect you have in mind is probably: complete, flawless, fixed, never changing again, no more problems—like an endpoint where everything is set in place and nothing needs to move. But test it against that standard: a thing with everything fixed to death, never changing, with no gap left in it—is it alive or dead? It is dead. Lacking nothing, it gives birth to nothing; having no more problems, it has no more road ahead. That is not the highest perfection—that is the most exquisite death. True perfection is not that fixed fullness; it is the very flowing in which things keep filling and keep emptying, keep becoming and keep changing, with always one more layer. The moon is most beautiful not when it stops, frozen at its fullest moment, but when it wanes and waxes, waxes and wanes, turning there, alive. The movement that lets waxing and waning, arising and passing, unfinishedness all be present—that is the greater perfection, because it is alive. You do not need to reach for a fixed completeness. You are already inside that living perfection, which has always been turning.

Think of the things you love most. Which one do you love because you have calculated it to the end? A piece of music that still has a new flavor after a lifetime of listening; a person who can still surprise you after years together; a landscape that is different every time you visit—they hold you precisely because you cannot say them to the end, cannot calculate them to the end, because they always have one more layer. And the reverse: the moment you have seen through a thing completely, with no suspense left, your interest in it is finished. Unsayable-to-the-end is not the wall between you and the world. It is exactly why the world is still fresh, still worth living.

So from here on, this book holds one consistent attitude. Let me state it plainly now, so that no one can fool you later.

Whatever can be said clearly, I will say it to the bottom for you, without one step of vagueness, and never bluff you with mystery—you have already seen it: Becoming Is Becoming, Self-Becoming, Becoming Is Its Own Reason—each of these I pressed, step by step, right in front of your eyes, with not one sentence left half-understood. But when we reach the place that is by nature endless, I will honestly stop and tell you: here, it cannot be said to the end. I will not pretend I can say it to the end, and I will not, in reverse, use this unsayableness to raise myself up—you cannot understand it, I can, come kneel before me. That is what swindlers do. I will simply tell you, truthfully and plainly: here it opens into the infinite; you and I alike stand before the same unsayable, and neither of us stands higher than the other.

This is where this chapter lands: inexhaustible, yet becoming. It cannot be said to the end, yet it keeps becoming; precisely because it keeps becoming, with always a next, it cannot be said to the end. Being unsayable and becoming without cease are the same thing. You do not need to fear this unsayableness—you are part of it. You yourself cannot be said to the end; you yourself keep becoming; your own next moment has not arrived. You are not standing outside an unsayable thing, worrying about how to say it to the end—you are inside it. You are one unsayable stroke of it, being written now.

The steadiness you are looking for was never in an answer said to the end. It is in the moment you recognize that you were always inside this ceaseless, ever-renewing becoming. There is no answer said to the end—and that there is none is right, is alive, is becoming.