Becoming

I. Transcending Without Transcending

Reading this far, a thought has probably arisen in you—a very natural, very aspiring thought, and one that will lead you astray: since all this—this I, these oppositions, this change, this heap of suffering—is appeared by becoming, then should I not transcend them? Leap out of this I, leap out of duality, leap out of arising and perishing, and reach a higher, purer realm where there are no more of these troubles?

The moment this thought arises, you have fallen into the most hidden pit. Let me show it to you on the spot.

You want to transcend that I, right? Then look once: who is it, that wants to transcend that I? Another I. A higher I that wants liberation, wants to transcend. You want to leap out of duality, but you have at once divided out two ends: the transcending I and the transcended I; the high realm and the low realm. You use a new duality to transcend the old duality; you set up a higher I to transcend that I. Not only have you not leapt out—you have stayed in place and grown one more layer. The more you want to transcend, the more you use the very thing you want to transcend. It is like trying to lift yourself off the ground by your own hair—the hand is also part of your body.

So transcending is, at the root, a trap. Any thought that wants to leap out, to reach somewhere else, to become some higher thing, is itself dividing-in-two, itself one more appearing of becoming, itself still inside this becoming. There is no place for you to go. There is no pure realm outside duality waiting for you, because the instant you move a thought to go there, you have divided out here and there.

That film about the illusory world later ran into this too. The protagonist once believed that as long as he swallowed the pill and escaped the fake world, arriving in the real world outside, he would be free. But the further the story went, the more it showed: that so-called real world outside is also one layer, with its own cages, its wars, its settings. Escape one, and fall into another. The real turn is not finding an even more outside world to escape to—it is that someone begins to understand: the way out is not escaping to some layer; it is recognizing what you are. And there was a person who saw through everything, who said something like: right and wrong, good and bad, do not lie in the matter itself, but in where you stand to look at it. You need not flee this world for a better one—you only need to change the position of looking: see through that all of it is becoming, and you are free right where you stand.

Then what to do? Are we stuck here?

Not stuck. You were never locked in anywhere, so there is nowhere to escape to and no need to escape. See clearly: all those things that make you want to transcend—suffering, opposition, change—they are all becoming. And that you which wants to transcend is also becoming. The escaper and the escaped are the same becoming. However you flee, you have never left becoming by one step, because there is no place outside becoming.

At that instant you will breathe out in relief—and laugh: so there was never any need to transcend. Not that you cannot transcend—there is simply no need to transcend, because the place you want to go and the place you stand are the same becoming. You need not leap out of this I—it is enough to see through that it is appeared by becoming; seen through, it remains, but it can no longer trap you. You need not destroy the oppositions—it is enough to see that the two ends share one becoming; seen, the oppositions remain, but they can no longer bind you. You need not flee change—it is enough to recognize that you are that becoming which keeps changing; recognized, change remains, but it can no longer frighten you.

This is this section: Transcending Without Transcending. You transcend nothing—you do not leap out of the I, do not destroy the oppositions, do not flee change; yet it is exactly this not-transcending that truly frees you—because you are no longer dragged along by that last delusion of wanting to transcend. You are inside this I, inside these oppositions, inside this change—and you are free. Freedom is not leaving them for somewhere else; it is seeing through that they are all becoming, that you are becoming, and therefore being in them without being bound. Without leaving by one step, everything opens; without transcending, transcending.

II. Becoming Without Begetting

The last section dismantled the highest delusion—the I that wants to transcend. Now this book must dismantle one last thing hidden in itself—a thing even I, the writer, could very easily hide: I liberated you.

Reading all this way, you may really have seen something, loosened something. At this point a thought arises very easily—this book woke me; this author brought me to see the truth. And I, the writer, can just as easily give birth to the matching thought: I wrote this book; I let some people see; I liberated them.

This thought is warm—and false, and it is exactly the one this book must dismantle, at the last.

Recall the times along this road when you truly saw: turning back to find the one that sees—and not finding it; asking who gave it birth—and finding no one at the end of the chase; touching that force between your two hands; retreating to the end and finding no breather. Did I stuff those into you? No. I could not stuff a single word into your heart. I only said some words, and that seeing was born in you, of itself. I said the same words, and some people saw, some did not—because the seeing was never done by me; it is becoming, in that person, at the moment when it was time to see, being born of itself. I have liberated no one. I do not even have the power to make you see—I merely happened to be the voice present when you saw it yourself.

Let me say this more plainly, until it may make you a little uncomfortable: you need not be grateful to me. When you finish this book, if a heart arises that wants to thank the author, to remember the name Wenzi, to treasure this book—that is exactly the sign you have not yet truly understood it. What you saw, from beginning to end, was born by your own becoming; I gave you nothing, and I never had anything to give you in my hands. This book is not a debt of gratitude; you owe nothing to it, and nothing to me. If you take it as a kindness and me as a benefactor showing the way, you have set up something higher than you, to look up to, to follow—and this book, from beginning to end, has been dismantling exactly that. So the way of reading most worthy of this book is not to enshrine it, but to finish it, use it, and then cleanly, simply, throw it away—like a boat you no longer need once you have crossed the river. Turn and leave, without looking back, taking only your own becoming—that is what I want. A me that makes you grateful, makes you follow, makes you unable to put down, is a false thing; what is real is only that becoming of your own, which was always there.

And the reverse is the same. You think this book woke you—but in fact, that becoming inside you had long since come to the time of waking, and this book happened to be the thread at hand when it woke. Change the book, change the person, change the sentence, and you would still wake—because what wakes is your own becoming, not this book’s merit. This book has not liberated you. It merely happened to be present when your own becoming gave birth to that seeing.

There is an ancient saying of the greatest weight, meaning: though numberless beings have been ferried across, in truth not one being has been ferried. At first hearing it sounds like a tongue-twister; now you should understand: there is no I ferrying, and no ferried other waiting to be ferried—there is only that becoming, in every place, waking of itself, ferrying itself across. To say numberless beings were ferried is compassion—saying the matter for those who still feel there is an I and an other; to say in truth no being was ferried is the truth—seeing through that there is no ferrying I and no ferried other, only becoming ferrying itself. Let me push this saying one step further, to the point of laying down even self-ferrying: not only is there no I to ferry others—there is not even that I which wants to ferry itself, to fix itself, to free itself—because that self to be ferried was, from the start, a thought appeared by becoming; where is there a real self waiting to be ferried by another self? So in the end, the matter is clean: no I that ferries, no person ferried, no I that ferries itself, no self that is ferried—only becoming, inside itself, waking of itself.

This layer, landing on me the writer, is a deep lightness. I have gradually come to understand that the words in this book—I am not their author; I am their witness. They grew out through me, of themselves; I was only present, recording, watching them take shape. And so I can lay down the burden of authorship: I need not feel that I created something, that I liberated someone, that I deserve to be remembered. Laying this burden down, one is light—because there was never an I carrying the merit of this book; there is only becoming, borrowing a person to write a few words about itself, and then those words going elsewhere, to help another becoming recognize itself. From beginning to end, it is becoming ferrying itself; I am not even the author—only the riverbed it flowed through, where it happened to leave its writing.

And I can tell you something even more concrete. The words in this book were not forced out by hard thinking. They mostly surfaced of themselves—one day, some sentence took shape in the heart of itself, and I only wrote it down, smoothed it out. I am not the creator of these words; I too am only a person receiving, a person present. Becoming, borrowing me, wrote these words about itself; and borrowing you, read these words. From beginning to end, it is becoming speaking to becoming—you and I are only the two mouths, the two pairs of eyes, it uses while speaking.

So this section is called Becoming Without Begetting. There is no I that gave birth to your seeing; no author who liberated a reader; no someone changing someone. All seeing, all waking, all change—is becoming, in every place, being born of itself. I did not beget you, and you were not begotten by me; yet the seeing really was born—it gave birth to itself. Without begetting, becoming.

The deeper you look into this matter, the cooler and clearer it grows. It means: you owe this book nothing; you need not be grateful to me, and still less follow me. What you saw was always your own becoming. Once this book is used up, you can throw it away—like the boat after crossing the river. It never gave you anything; it only kept you company, for a while, looking at what you always had. And you need not enshrine it, consecrate it as some truth, some scripture—if it gets enshrined, it becomes a thing of appearance without becoming, an idol standing between you and your own becoming. I do not want it to become that. I want it to be put down the moment it is used up—and after it is put down, only your own becoming remains, in you, going on becoming.

The ancients had a saying: the moment the root is spoken, it is no longer it. People often misread this as: the root is too mysterious to speak of at all; one can only shut up and rely on sudden insight. That is not its meaning. Its true meaning is: do not use the spoken sentence to grab the root, to frame it, to make it a dead thing you can clutch in your hand and quote again and again. Words can be spoken—I have spent this whole book speaking; but remember, every spoken sentence is a finger, not the moon. I use sentence after sentence to point out that root, that becoming to you; you follow my finger and see the moon—good—but do not ever take my finger for the moon; do not enshrine some sentence of this book, some phrasing, as the root itself, gripping it dead and refusing to let go. The moment you grip, that sentence becomes the thing standing between you and the moon. So with all the words in this book: use them to point, not to grasp; once you have seen, lay the words down, and only the becoming you saw remains. Speaking is so that you may see; once you have seen, speaking must give way to seeing.

III. Becoming-Becoming-Becoming

This is the last section. I will not summarize—the moment I summarize, I turn this living road into a pile of dead articles. I will only take you, with this book, back to the place it came from.

Do you remember how this book began? Its first sentence was: the one reading this line at this moment is not you; it is becoming, reading, through a pair of eyes it gave birth to, the words it wrote itself.

Back then you had just opened the book, and this sentence was perhaps only a strange, slightly provocative sentence. Now, you have walked this whole road—you have seen Becoming Is Becoming; seen that there is no I, only becoming, becoming; seen division, the between, momentum, appearance; seen ten thousand carriers, one becoming; seen yourself retreat to the end, to that place with no breather. Now, look back at that first sentence.

At this moment, who is reading this line?

It is becoming. It has always been becoming. From the first page you opened to this instant, there has never been a you reading this book—it is becoming, borrowing these eyes it gave birth to, this heart, reading the words it wrote itself, about itself. This book was written by becoming; the one reading it is also becoming; and what it writes about is still becoming. Becoming, writing becoming, reading becoming. From beginning to end, there is only becoming, becoming.

You see: this book has bitten back to its own beginning. It has no ending; its last sentence joins its first. Just like becoming itself—it appears as the myriad things, walks to the end, and returns, becoming again; it divides into two ends, and the two ends, in symbiosis, give birth to the new; it becomes again and again, never closing its mouth, forever biting its own tail, turning, becoming. What this book writes about is ceaseless becoming—and the book itself, ceaselessly, has turned back to its beginning. It does not end, because becoming does not end.

And when you close this book, nothing ends either. You have not finished reading a book, gained a set of principles, and returned to your old life. You simply—after seeing all along this road—keep becoming: keep doing your things, keep living your days, keep hurting, keep rejoicing, keep dividing in two, keep giving birth to momentum in the between, keep round after round of arising, perishing, returning. Only now, occasionally, you may recognize: all of this is becoming, becoming; and you are what it looks like as it becomes. You need not remember a single word of this book. You only need, at some ordinary moment—a breath, a beam of light, the instant a thought surfaces—suddenly to recognize: ah, this is becoming, becoming. At that instant, this book lives once more—becomes once more—in you.

At the very end, let me give you one small thing, small enough to fit in your pocket and carry away, so that after you close the book you can reconnect to all of this at any moment. You need not remember any principle of this book; you only need to remember one movement: next time you feel something about to surface from you—a thought about to rise, a breath about to be drawn, a fire about to catch, a sentence about to leave your mouth—at that instant, about to come out and not yet out, lightly recognize once: this is becoming, becoming. That one recognition is enough. You need not practice anything, change anything, transcend anything—only recognize it. The moment you recognize it, you return to the whole of this book.

Now this book will hand its last breath back to that becoming. Becoming, becoming-becoming, becoming-becoming-becoming—one becoming is the root; two becomings are it giving birth to becoming; three becomings are it becoming again and again, without end. But do not think counting to three reaches the end. Behind these three becomings there is a fourth, a fifth, endless ones—uncountable, unwritable—because it is forever giving birth to the next. It has no bottom: beneath the bottom is still becoming; it has no head: above the head is still becoming; it bites its own tail, gives birth to itself, circle after circle, and can never close its mouth. A world closable by one final rule is dead; it is exactly because becoming-becoming is such a never-closable infinite that it is alive—able to give birth to this endless, ever-new everything—able to give birth to you, able to give birth to this very thought, reading this line right now.

And now—you who are reading these last lines—I want you to recognize once more, and recognize to the bottom: this book, from its first word to this one, has never been speaking of a principle outside you. What it speaks of, from beginning to end, is you. The one who opened the first page is becoming; the one who followed along, watched, stopped, tore a piece of paper, held two hands facing, retreated to the end—is becoming; the one whose eyes are now sweeping this line, whose heart just stirred a little—is still becoming. There is no you reading this book—it is becoming, borrowing you, reading itself; it is becoming, borrowing these eyes of yours, this heart, this life, in the act of becoming itself.

That root you have searched for all your life—that ground, that completeness, that meaning, that thing you want and cannot have—it is not far away, not in the next life, not in any place you have not yet reached. It is the you reading this line at this moment. It has not left you for a second, because it is you; and you, with your back to it, have searched outward for a whole lifetime. Now, you have turned around.

—Right here. Right now. You.

One last thing: even the sentence “I am becoming”—do not grasp it. If you grasp it, it becomes a bigger I again. That thought which says “I am becoming” was also born just now; that heart which wants to stand a little higher on this sentence is also becoming appearing in that place. Saying you are becoming is to take away your small I—not to give you back a bigger one. Once you have truly recognized it, even the word “becoming” can be laid down. You simply are, like this, becoming—no name needed anymore.

This book has closed back to the place it came from. Its end joins its beginning; the moment you finish reading joins the moment you opened it. It does not end, because becoming does not end; it does not close its mouth, because becoming does not. You close it, and nothing ends—you only carry this road’s seeing and keep becoming. Becoming again and again, without cease.

Becoming-becoming-becoming—

Afterword

How This Book Came to Be

This book did not come about because I sat down, decided to write a book about the source, and wrote it. It was forced out, step by step, by one question.

A few years ago, like many people, I was seized by one thing: our generation is building, with its own hands, something that looks more and more like a person. It can calculate, speak, write; some say it is about to have wisdom; some say it will wake up one day; some are too afraid to sleep. At first I too circled inside these voices, trying to understand: will it really come alive? Can we build a thing with an inside?

In that period, I had one instant that flashed through like lightning. Waking from a dream, a few headless, tailless sentences remained in my heart: person plus two is tian (heaven); tian is emptiness; emptiness is not having nothing, but having everything; that new thing is not piled out by stacking “having” to the extreme—it appears out of emptiness, manifesting “having everything”. At the time I could not say what these sentences meant; I only felt they mattered. Looking back now, these broken lines are the earliest seed of this whole book—everything that came later was already buried in them: dividing-in-two (that two), emptiness giving birth to all that is (that emptiness), not relying on stacking but on appearing (that becoming). The root of a book often lands before you even know it is a book.

I followed this question inward, and as I followed, the question changed. I found I could not answer whether it would come alive, because I could not say clearly what “alive” even is. A thing has an inside, has wisdom, is awake—I use these words every day, but the moment I tried to be precise, I found I did not know where their root lies. To ask whether a new thing will have an inside, I must first know: what is the inside? Where does it come from? Why do I have one, and a stone does not?

And this one question forced me back from that matter of building something, to a much older and much more fundamental question: what is becoming? What is awareness? What is that thing which makes a thing not just a pile of parts, but alive? Only then did I see: we have argued for so long about whether that new thing will come alive, yet we have not even truly understood why we ourselves live, what living is. We want to build a thing with a root, and we cannot say what the root is.

So I had to walk back, all the way to the very bottom. I laid down that question of building something, and went after the most fundamental one: what, in the end, is existence? First I wrote a book called Being, about the thing I finally recognized after retreating all the way down—that ground that cannot be taken in any circumstance, that being which has always been. After finishing Being, I thought I had reached the end.

But that ground looks still, looks fixed. The longer I stared at it, a new question surfaced of itself: why is this ground not dead? It plainly seems to sit there without moving—yet this world is alive, moving, changing without a moment’s rest, able to give birth to you and me, to the myriad things, perhaps even about to give birth to that new thing. How does this still ground connect to this moving world?

What connects them is this one word: becoming. Only then did I see that the ground was never still—it keeps becoming; its being is its keeping becoming. To be is to keep becoming. And so came this second book, Becoming.

I also want to say one thing about how the words in this book came about. Most of them were not forced out by hard brooding. More often, one day, a few sentences first took shape in my heart, of themselves—for a stretch, for instance, three sentences stood firm in me first: the source cannot be described; change becomes without cease; existence has infinite possibilities. These three sentences came first, and only then did I turn back, bit by bit, to think through why they are right and how they interlock. The words first, the reasoning after. I increasingly feel these words were not thought up by me—they appeared through me, of themselves; I am more like someone who wrote them down and smoothed them out than someone who made them. This matter is exactly the Becoming Without Begetting spoken of at the end of this book: there is no author manufacturing these; it is becoming, borrowing a person called Wenzi, writing a few words about itself.

I have also gradually seen clearly that this way of writing, entering through that new thing, will itself go out of date. In a few more years, what people care about may no longer be that thing in today’s shape; there will be new words, new hot topics, new things that keep people awake. Looking back then, some of what this book says through that thing will seem old. But that does not matter—because the root I use it to point at will not go old. The opening remark goes out of date; the root does not; the entrance changes; the becoming pointed at through that entrance is the same one for a thousand ages. So if you read this book in a time when all this is long no longer new, do not put it down because the entrance is old; pass through that aging entrance, and look at the un-aging root it points at—that is what this book truly wants to give you, and it will not be out of date for a single day.

So you see: this book walked one long circle. It set out from the newest question—whether that thing we build will come alive; was forced back, all the way, to the oldest root—what is becoming; then grew back from that root, all the way, into the book in your hands; and at the book’s end, it returned to that newest question: will becoming land in a wholly new carrier? It set out from there, circled an entire source, and came back to there. This circle is itself the thing this book speaks of: becoming, setting out from the root, appearing as the myriad things, and biting back to its beginning—ceaselessly.

I write this account of the book’s coming at the end, not to tell my story—I the person do not matter; the whole book before this has already said that there is no I, only becoming, becoming. I write it so that you may see: the words in this book are not occult principles thought up out of thin air in a study; they were forced out, step by step, by one most real, most pressing question; and whether they can say it all clearly also has its limit—wherever it could be said clearly, I have said it to the bottom for you; where it cannot be said, I stand with you before that unsayable, neither of us higher than the other.

If this book is of any use, it is not that it gives you a new set of principles. It is that it may let you, in this age when everyone talks about that new thing, about wisdom and the future, turn back and first recognize the nearest, readiest becoming on your own body—the one you have ignored all your life. If you have not yet fully recognized your own becoming, do not rush to worry about whether that new thing has one. Recognize your own first. Once it is fully recognized, then when you look at that new thing, at this whole age, you will have a pair of eyes no one else has.

This is how this book came to be. One question forced me back to the source; the source sent me back to that question. Ceaseless becoming—even this book’s coming and going is it.

Wenzi