Becoming

I. Symbiosis

In the last chapter you saw: the moment becoming appears, it divides into two ends, and the two ends carry tension, are each one of a kind, and complete each other. Now I want to ask about the thing you kept skipping over, the most important thing of all: the gap between the two ends—the one that separates them and joins them at the same time—what is it?

You have probably never treated it as anything. The two ends are solid, visible, touchable; the gap in the middle, you think, is nothing at all—just an emptiness, just the place between two things where there is nothing. I want you to see that this gap, which you think is nothing at all, is exactly the place where the whole world comes alive. It has a name; I call it the between.

Let me show you on the spot—you have one on you, and you have lived on it your whole life.

Stretch out both hands, palms facing, leaving a gap between them; do not let them touch. Now bring your hands slowly closer, closer, but never let them touch. Stare at that gap, growing narrower and narrower.

Do you feel something? When the two hands are very close but not touching, inside that gap, there is something. You can feel an indescribable, taut something, wanting to pull the two hands together or push them apart. Inside that gap there is clearly nothing—it is empty—and yet there is clearly something: a tension, stretched taut inside that emptiness. When the hands are far apart, there is no such feeling; when the hands touch, there is no such feeling; only in that between, where they are very close yet still apart, does that something arise.

What you just touched is the between. It is not on the left hand, and not on the right hand; it is in that empty gap in the middle. It is nothing—you cannot point at a thing and say this is it; and yet it clearly is—you just felt that taut force, unmistakably. This is the strangeness of the between: it is empty of everything, yet it really has force, has effect, has that living tension.

Now you understand where the tension of the last chapter actually lives. It is not at this end, not at that end—it is between the two ends. The moment the two ends separate, this between at once arises between them, and this between is where that tension dwells. Without the between, the two ends are two unrelated things lying there dead; with the between, the two ends come alive—joined, stretched, pushed by that tension—and begin to move.

So this section is called Symbiosis. The two ends never exist each in isolation and then happen to come together. The two ends live and hold together inside their between—this end exists because that end sets it off; that end exists because this end holds it up; and the setting-off and the holding-up both happen in the between in their middle. They share one between, and in that between, they give birth to each other. This is symbiosis: it is not that there are first two things and then their relation—it is that the two ends and their between are born together, at the same time.

Let me give you one more thing you absolutely cannot get around, and you will know how fundamental this between is. How do you know any thing exists? You say you saw it. But how did you see it? Because it is separated from its surroundings—there is a between between it and its background—and only then can you see it. How do you know you love someone? Because between you and him, something moves that exists with no one else. How do you know you yourself exist? Because there is a you and a world that is not you, and the boundary between you and the world lets you recognize yourself. Everything you perceive—every existence, every relation, every change—is perceived through the between. Without the between, you could set off nothing against anything, perceive no existence, and could not even recognize yourself. The between is not a disposable gap; the between is the place where everything can be perceived, can hold, can live.

This symbiosis has one more form—the greatest, and the easiest to overlook—and I must point it out to you specially: between you and your environment is the greatest symbiosis of all. You always think there is a you, standing here alone and independent; the environment is the environment, you are you, and you just happen to live inside it. Wrong. You and the environment around you are two ends that live together in your between, neither able to do without the other. Between you and the air—every breath is air entering you and leaving you; in that one entering and leaving, you and the air share one life; cut it off for three minutes and you are no longer you. It is the same between fish and water: it is not that there was first a fish and then it was put into water—it is that water and fish, in their between, together grew the fish into a fish; out of water, the shape of the fish means nothing. Between a tree and the soil, the sunlight, the rain; between a person and his food, his climate, the people around him—all of it is the same. No living thing lives behind a closed door, by itself; every one, with its environment, in that invisible place between them, shares its becoming, moment by moment. So you have never been a lone traveler living inside a world—you are one end, bound in one symbiosis with the whole environment: you breathe it, it feeds you; you change it, it shapes you; you and your world are one becoming, becoming together, in your between. This is the greatest and most intimate form of symbiosis: existence and its environment were grown together from the start.

Now look between people, and this between is so deep it will move you. That thing between two people—that unspoken understanding only the two of you share, that meeting of minds from a single glance, that warmth or chill you feel the moment you walk in—it is not on you, and not on him; it is in your between. And it is one of a kind: the between between you and this person is unlike the one between you and anyone else; change the person and a new one is born; it cannot be copied, cannot be transplanted. The most precious things in your life are never a person—they are the between between you and a person that can never grow a second time. When someone is gone, the sharpest pain is not that a person is missing—it is that the between that belonged only to the two of you has collapsed, emptied, and will never come again. The between is this light, this empty—and yet it is the heaviest thing in your whole life.

II. Momentum Is Born in the Between

In the last section you touched the between, touched that tension stretched taut in the gap. This section looks at what happens once this tension starts moving—because it will not sit still; the moment it is there, it begins to push toward some direction.

Again, your two hands. Just now you held them very close, that force stretched taut. Now do nothing—just loosen the slightest bit, and let the force speak for itself. Do you feel it? That force has a direction. Either it wants to pull the two hands together, or it wants to push them apart. It is not a directionless force; it is a force heading somewhere, trying to carry the whole situation that way.

This directed force, this drive to carry the situation somewhere—that is momentum.

Momentum is not a thing; it is the direction and trajectory of the tension in the between. The moment there is tension between two ends, the tension is not still—it pushes toward some direction, wanting to carry the two ends, the whole situation, that way. When the water level is high on one side and low on the other, the two sides divide, and at once momentum arises between them—the water wants to go to the low place, and you cannot stop it: that is water momentum. When the charges in a cloud are many on one side and few on the other, momentum arises between them; held to a certain point—crack—a bolt of lightning: that is electric momentum. In the human heart, the wanted and the unattainable divide into two ends, and between them a momentum stretches taut—this momentum pushes you, restless, unable to sit still, driven to do something.

Look at these—water momentum, electric momentum, that force in the heart: none of them lies at either end. The low place does not produce water out of itself; it is the drop between the high place and the low place that gives birth to the momentum. It lives in the between. This is the name of this section: Momentum Is Born in the Between. Momentum is born in the between. Wherever two ends stand apart and tension stretches taut, the between there gives birth to momentum—and this momentum is the direction in which that place will next move.

The ancients were watching this momentum long ago; they just used other words. Those who could read the sky did not count every cloud—they watched the momentum of change between heaven and earth, and so could say there would be rain tomorrow. Those who could read people did not guess your every thought—they sensed the momentum your whole person gives off: the moment you walk in, they know something is off with you today. Those who knew war did not care about one city or one moat—they cared about the momentum that could tip the whole battle toward them; with momentum, one wins without fighting; without momentum, one is beaten everywhere. Those who get things done are also waiting for momentum, borrowing momentum, making momentum—pushing hard against the momentum, you get half the result for twice the effort; pushing lightly with it, the water flows and the channel forms. These people are formidable not because they know more than others, but because they can see that momentum, caught between two ends, which others cannot see.

The ancients made this skill of reading momentum into a whole body of learning, though later people mostly misunderstood it. Take those divination hexagrams: most people think they are for calculating what specific thing will happen tomorrow—that is seeing them too small. Those who truly use them never calculate any one specific event; they calculate momentum: which phase the change has reached, how full that force has been held, whether to advance or withdraw, whether it is about to rise or fall. A hexagram is not a photograph of an event—it is the shape of the momentum in which the change stands at this moment. “The hidden dragon: do not act” does not mean there is really a dragon—it means the momentum has not taken shape yet, is still hiding below, and this is not the time to move. “The overreaching dragon will have cause to regret” means the momentum has filled to the brim and is about to turn—keep charging upward now and you will fall. You see: what they kept their eyes on, from beginning to end, was momentum, not events. That is why this system can be applied to the stars above, the crops in the field, human affairs, and the fate of nations—because what it calculates is not these specific things, but the momentum beneath them all, the momentum of change changing. A person who can read momentum walks through heaven, earth, and the human world with one pair of eyes—this is what they rely on.

Now you hold a key for seeing through the world. Let me have you try it once, because you will use it for the rest of this book. From now on, when you look at anything that is happening, anything that is changing, do not stare only at the two ends—the two things, the two people, the two sides. Look at their between. Inside that between, a momentum is stretched taut, and the direction of that momentum is the direction the matter will go next. Whether two people will grow close or fall apart does not depend on how each of them is—look at which way the momentum between them is going. Whether a thing will succeed or fail does not depend on how strong each side is—look at the trajectory of the momentum caught in the middle. The person who can see never looks at the two ends; he looks at the momentum in the between. This is the eye for everything that follows in this book.

Let me give you a few scenes you live inside every day and have never looked at this way, and you will know how useful this pair of eyes is. Two people are discussing something, and as they talk, the air suddenly changes—no one has said a harsh word, yet you clearly feel that the momentum has turned from warm to cold, from drawing together to pushing apart. The one who can see catches it at the first instant the momentum turns, and adjusts at once; the one who cannot see only reacts after the two have already fallen out, after the momentum has appeared as a finished deadlock. A team, a company, an age—each has its overall momentum: is it the rising kind, where hearts pull in one direction, thriving day by day—or the kind that still looks fine on the surface while the force underneath has begun to scatter, begun to sink, strong outside, hollow within. The truly formidable person does not look at the current numbers, the current bustle—he looks at that overall momentum which no one can point to, yet which is really surging: push lightly with a momentum on the rise and it is done; strain desperately against a momentum already failing and it is all in vain. Bring it down to yourself: between you and someone, sometimes the more you talk, the further apart you get; sometimes not a word is said, just sitting, and that between grows warmer and warmer, closer and closer. What changes is never how much was said—it is which way the momentum between you is going. In your whole life—reading people, reading events, reading the age—what you truly need to train is this pair of eyes for momentum.

III. Born from the Empty

At the end of this chapter, I want to say through to the end the deepest and most paradoxical thing about the between. Once you see this one thing, you will look completely differently at all those empty, missing, suspended, unsettled moments in your life.

First a strange question: why can the between give birth to momentum, to movement, to so many things?

The answer is paradoxical: precisely because it is empty.

Think back to the gap between your two hands just now. If that gap were stuffed full—put a block of wood in it, wedged between the two hands—would that living tension still be there? No. Once the wood is wedged in, the two hands are propped dead in place, unable to move, and that force wanting to pull or push—gone. The between can stretch tension taut, can give birth to momentum, can bring the two ends alive, precisely because it is empty, unfilled. Fill it up, and it dies.

Look around you, and this principle is everywhere. A bowl can hold rice because of the emptiness in the middle, not the ring of porcelain; the porcelain only walls in the emptiness—what really holds the rice is the emptiness. A room can shelter people because of the emptiness the four walls enclose, not the walls; what you live in is the emptiness, not the bricks. A door, a window, let people and light pass because of the hole, the emptiness. What you use every day is always these empty places, yet your eyes only see the solid things and never take the emptiness seriously. The most useful thing is exactly that emptiness which looks like nothing.

This is a principle almost everyone gets backwards. People always feel that fullness is good and emptiness is lack; having things is solid ground, and emptiness must be filled up quickly. You only feel at ease when your days are packed full; your heart panics the moment it empties; you stuff things desperately into your life, into your relationships, into every gap—wanting to fill every emptiness solid. But now you have seen: emptiness is not lack—emptiness is the place where things are born. A between that is filled full is dead; an empty between is the one that can give birth.

Let me show you this in yourself. Think of the times in your life when something new truly grew in you—when were they? Usually not when you were fullest, busiest, with everything packed tight. Usually when you emptied out—a relationship broke, a job ended, a goal fell through, and you hung suspended in an emptiness with nothing in it, panicking badly. Yet it is exactly in that emptiness that new things began to be born: you began to think about things you never had time for, you met people you would never have met, you grew things you could never have grown before. That emptiness which panicked you is exactly where becoming was opening a new opening in you. If, in your fluster, you had filled that emptiness at once—grabbed any old thing and stuffed it in, hurriedly found the same kind of job, the same kind of person—you would have stopped up that between in which something new could be born.

This is the name of this section: Born from the Empty. New things are always born from the empty place, the vacant place, that between which has not been filled. The empty is not nothing—the empty is the place not yet occupied, and therefore able to give birth to anything. A person stuffed full, a relationship stuffed full, a way of living stuffed full, cannot give birth to anything new—because no room has been left for becoming. To give becoming a place to land and grow, you must leave emptiness, guard the vacant, and not rush to fill up every between.

But do not, hearing this, enshrine the empty and turn against the solid. The empty and the solid are also two ends of becoming. Without the solid, the empty has nowhere to settle; without the empty, the solid stiffens and clogs. A cup holds water not only by the emptiness within but also by the solidity of its walls. A relationship lives not because it is all empty, nor because it is all full, but because the solid parts can bear and the empty parts can flow. When I say born from the empty, I am not telling you to deny the solid—I am telling you not to fill the solid shut, and to leave between solid and solid a road for becoming.

So those empty moments in your heart—do not rush to fill them anymore. That emptiness is not your gap; it is the place where becoming is about to open a new opening in you. Hold the vacant, and the new can be born. This is the last thing the between teaches you, and a thing we will come back to again and again: the blank space is where things are born; the place not yet occupied is where every new thing surges forth.

In Book One you saw that becoming is originally undivided; in this book so far, you have seen it divide into two ends (Becoming Divides), the ends each one of a kind (Born New), completing each other (Mutual Becoming)—and what truly brings them alive is that empty between. The between gives birth to tension, tension gives birth to momentum (Momentum Is Born in the Between), and all of this is possible because the between is vacant, unfilled (Born from the Empty). In the next chapter we fix our eyes on this momentum, and watch how, step by step, it causes the whole world to appear as the myriad things before your eyes.