Chapter 1: I Am

How many times a day do I say “I”?

In the morning I wake up, and before my eyes are open the first thing that comes up is: I want to sleep some more. I get up: I’m hungry. Before going out: where are my keys? On the way: I’m going to be late. When I get there someone asks me something, and I say: I don’t think that works. At noon: I’ll just grab something. In the afternoon: I’m a bit tired. At night, lying down: I didn’t get anything done today. By the end of the day I’ve lost count. No other word is spoken so often.

When we talk about other things, we can do without it. It’s raining, it’s getting dark, the water’s boiling, the flowers have fallen: in Chinese these sentences need no stated subject, and nobody feels anything is missing. But the moment we talk about ourselves, “I” has to go first. As if, without “I” at the very front, whatever comes after it could not stand, would not really be ours.

Why?

No need to hurry into explanations. First go back to the moments when those “I”s are spoken, and listen to what is being asked for as they are said.

A meeting. A roomful of people, and when the discussion comes round, someone cuts in before the other person has finished: I think… The point he makes may not matter much; sometimes the person before him has already said it, and he says it again in other words. He knows. And still he has to say it. If he went the whole afternoon without a word, he would walk out of the meeting with a small emptiness: I was in that room as if I had never come. That “I think” is less a statement of opinion than something placed on the table: I am here, I count.

A post on social media. A photo, a line: Today I… Post it, put the phone down, pick it up again a little later for a look. Someone has liked it, and something lights up; nobody has, refresh, still nothing, and something sinks a little. Sometimes you just delete it, as if it had never been posted. That “I” is shouted outward: see me. If no one sees, it is as if, that day, you had not been at all.

A quarrel. By the end, the thing it began over stopped mattering long ago, and what comes out is: I told you so! How many times have I told you! What is wanted now is no longer who is right but for the other to admit: what I say counts, I matter. Whoever gives in first seems to have had a piece of themselves rubbed out.

Back home, you say to your family: I’m hungry. I’m dead tired. Often these are not reports on stomach and legs. If you were hungry, you could find something in the kitchen yourself. Saying it out loud means: pay me some attention. Look at me. Nobody saw me out there today; you look.

There is also the “I” that shrinks back. Someone asks: what’s wrong? You say: I’m fine. Really fine? No. But saying so would show it: show that you can’t cope, that you’re not holding up, that you need someone. That “I’m fine” is the “I” hiding itself, afraid that if it were seen, it would not be taken seriously.

And there are very small “I”s. A group is deciding where to eat, it gets settled, and someone adds quietly: count me in. A table of people is telling a funny story, and someone rushes in: me too! I’ve been there too! Afraid of being left outside.

Look further back, to the very beginning. A child who has just learned to talk; among the first words, often, is: mine! Holding a toy, shouting at anyone who reaches for it: mine! The “I” has only just grown, and its first act is to fence something in and say: this is mine, don’t touch.

These “I”s say different things, and the feelings behind them are not all the same. Some “I think” really does mean the thing matters and has to be said; some “I’m hungry” just means: let’s all eat; some “see me” is a wish to be closer to someone. But in many of these “I”s runs a deep thread, which usually doesn’t show, and which the speaker may not know is there.

It is fear.

Fear of not being seen, as if not being seen were the same as never having been. Fear of not being counted, as if not counted meant superfluous. Fear of being left behind, of being forgotten, of having a piece rubbed out, of having what you hold taken away and nothing left. In the end it is an “I” afraid that it is not.

So it has to keep saying it. Among the hundreds of “I”s in a day, many are not only telling about something; they are stamping a seal on oneself: I am. I am. I am. Like someone walking at night who keeps talking to himself all the way, as if, the moment he stopped, the dark would swallow him.

Where does this fear come from?

It comes from a picture. Nearly everyone carries it, and hardly anyone has ever looked at it: first there is an I, already standing; being is something on that I, like body heat, like a name, belonging to it. Since it is mine, it could be lost; since it could be lost, it must be guarded, confirmed again and again, and others must be got to confirm it too. Once this picture is hung up, a person has a job for life: vouching for their own being.

The picture can be put in one sentence: there is someone, existing.

What this book has to say is that sentence turned over.

It is not someone who exists; existence itself is becoming.

First, look back at something small and seldom noticed.

When is “I’m hungry” said? After you are hungry. The stomach goes empty first, in waves, you can’t get on with what you are doing, and only then comes “I’m hungry.” It has never happened that an I first says “I’m going to be hungry,” and hunger then follows the instruction.

“I’m angry”: the heat comes first. A remark stings, the face goes hot first, the chest tightens first, the voice hardens first; by the time you can say “I’m angry,” the anger has already gone round the body several times.

“My mind wandered”: by the time you say it, the wandering is over. While the mind was wandering, there was no “I” standing beside it, watching it wander; it is at the moment of coming back that the sentence gets added.

“I fell asleep”: nobody can say this while asleep. All that night the quilt rose and fell, the breath went in and out, nothing was said, and nothing was broken off.

“I” always arrives late. Things are already going on: the hunger is already hungry, the anger has already risen, the mind has already wandered, the sleep has already been slept; then an “I” follows on, claims it, and says: this is mine.

This has to be said precisely. It is not that “I” does nothing and only follows behind to claim things. When a person plans something, makes up their mind, makes a promise to someone, takes on a consequence, the “I” is not a name added afterward; it is right where the thing is happening, it is this place making up its mind, this place bearing it. What arrives late is another “I”: the owner who believes it was standing there first, that everything is set going by it, and who claims everything as “its.” Hunger is not set going by it, anger is not set going by it; even the moment it makes up its mind is something that many things together, in this place, bring about. The place where things are done is real; the owner standing in front of everything always arrives late.

So the fear is afraid in the wrong place.

What it fears is: if I don’t speak, being is gone; if nobody sees me, I have never been. But being has never waited for “I” to speak first. Hunger doesn’t wait, anger doesn’t wait, the breathing of that night doesn’t wait. The afternoon when you said nothing at the meeting, you sat there, the light from the window moved slowly across the table, the pen in your hand turned back and forth, for a while you were drowsy, for a while you were thinking about dinner: that afternoon was fully there, not a bit less, only no one wrote it down in a notebook. The post nobody liked: the moment it was posted, it was; the patch of light you saw when you took the photo, was; it did not wait for someone to tap it before it became real.

Being does not depend on “I” to vouch for it. Before “I” arrives, it already is.

Then why must a person say “I” first? Is that sound only made of fear?

Not entirely. There is something deeper than fear here, and to see it, three words that are often run together must first be separated: existence, being, I.

“Existence” is a respectable word, common in books: many kinds of birds exist in the world; countless galaxies exist in the universe. To say “exist” is to speak from outside, as if standing to one side ticking off a list: there is this, there is that, so many in all. Someone who has never seen a bird can still say “many kinds of birds exist”; he has only ticked a box on a list.

“Zai” is different. In everyday Chinese, what zai does most often is say “right now, going on”: the water is boiling, the child is doing homework, it is raining outside, I am eating. Put zai in, and the thing becomes the one time it is happening, right now. Zai cannot be said from outside; it can only be said from inside something that is happening.

You can say “the water is boiling”; that is standing by the stove. You can say “the child is doing homework”; that is standing in the doorway watching. These still keep a little distance: the water boils over there, the person watches from here. Only one sentence keeps no distance at all: I am. The place that says “I am” is the very place that is; what speaks and what is spoken of are one and the same occurrence.

The words “existence itself” at the front of this book have to be heard this way. They do not mean the word on the list, counted from outside; they mean the word “existence” returned to its own sense: not a thing that gets counted, but going on.

So everyone has to say “I” first. Not because an I is already standing there and insists on pushing to the front, but because being can only be spoken from inside, and the “inside” from which each person can speak is the place where they say “I.” When being, here, opens its mouth, this is the word it uses.

“I” is not false, and not superfluous. It is the sound of being opening its mouth in this place. To say “being opens its mouth” is not to say that someone is speaking through this place; the opening of the mouth is itself one occurrence of being.

Only people hear this sound backwards. Being opens its mouth and says “I,” and they hear it as “I” speaking, as if being belonged to “I.” Once the order is reversed, “I” turns from an answering voice into a possession to be guarded; from “being, here” into “I have to prove that I am.” The weariness a person carries all their life and cannot put down comes from this reversal.

Turned back, is “I” still there? Still there, and as important as ever.

Where does “I” come from? When a child first learns to talk, it does not say “I”; it says its own name: “Baby hungry,” “Baby wants that.” It hears the grown-ups call it that, so it calls itself that. What the grown-ups say to it is “you”: are you hungry? Do you want it? For a while it mixes up “you” and “I,” pats its own chest and says “you want,” and the whole family laughs. It takes a good while to learn: when others say “you” to me, I must say “I.”

The word “I” is learned from one “you” after another. It is not something a child finds first inside itself with the door shut; it grows up beside a dinner table, in the eyes watching it, in calling and answering. So from birth, “I” faces others. It wants to be seen, to be counted, to be called by name; this is not its flaw, this is where it comes from: it was called out between people in the first place.

The fear, then, is not hard to understand. It is not bad; it is this place leaning toward others, wanting to be touched. Only it carries one thing too many: it believes that if it is not touched, it is gone.

Before the child learned to say “I,” was it? It was. It cried when hungry, slept when sleepy, gripped a finger and would not let go, not a bit less than later. Some old people, when very old, slowly forget who they are, cannot call their children by name, can hardly use the word “I.” The “I” they could recognize gradually comes apart. But they sit there, the hands are warm, food goes down a mouthful at a time, sunlight falls on the face, and they narrow their eyes. Being has not come apart with it.

“I” comes and goes, grows clear and grows dim. Being does not come and go with it.

Precisely because “I” comes and goes, the few decades it is here matter so much for this place: only in this stretch can this place speak, be called by name, answer, say sorry, say I love you. Only it is not the owner of being; it is one occurrence of being.

Nor is being an unmoving block laid under “I.”

It is easy to swap in another picture: very well, “I” is not the owner; but behind “I” there must be a deeper, steadier being, never moving, holding everything up, with “I” only a layer floating on top. This paints being as still again.

Look back at those sentences: I’m hungry, I’m angry, my mind wandered, I fell asleep. Nothing there is unmoving: the hunger empties in waves, the anger pushes up, the mind goes wandering, the breath rises and falls. To say “being” is to say these moving things themselves, not some unmoving “being” lying behind them. Take away the hunger, the anger, the rising and falling, and look for a bare “being”: you find nothing, just as you cannot take away the burning and find a flame that is not burning.

Being is going on. The moment it is, it is moving, happening, arising.

So being and becoming are not two. It is not that there is first a being, set down quietly, and later there is becoming to make it move; nor is there a becoming hiding behind, pushing being along. Its becoming is its being: to be is to become; to become is to be. That is what the line at the front of the book, “existence itself is becoming,” is saying.

Then what is the relation between “I” and these things that are happening?

There are two common ideas. In one, “I” is the owner and the things are its: hunger is my hunger, anger is my anger, like things kept in a house belonging to the householder. But we have seen that hunger does not wait for it, anger does not wait for it, it always arrives late; an owner who always arrives late cannot manage its own possessions. In the other, “I” is a spectator, standing to one side, watching these things happen: the hunger over there, me over here watching the hunger. But go looking for this spectator, and what you find is another thing happening: a feeling of “I am watching,” which also comes and goes, thickens when you attend to it, thins when you are distracted. The spectator is on the stage too.

There is a third view, more honest and harder to refute: there is no owner and no spectator; “I” is simply this person, this body, these years of memory, these attachments and dealings, all changing together. This is not wrong. It does not sneak a soul back in, nor set up an unchanging owner. But follow it one question further: when this body, these memories, these attachments are happening, must there also be someone to collect them and stamp them before they count as “mine”? No. The moment hunger happens, it is already this place’s hunger; the moment an old memory comes back, that remembering is already this place’s remembering; nothing has to wait for someone arriving later to claim it before it counts. “I am just this person” is right; only this person is not a thing that additionally owns these happenings; he is these happenings themselves, many of them, changing together.

So “not two” does not mean that only one thing is left at this moment. While hungry, this place is also breathing, also thinking of something else, also hearing a car go by outside. It means that none of these many things happening together happens on behalf of another “I,” and none has someone standing between it and itself, waiting to come and collect it. When you are hungry, hunger is you; the breathing going on at the same time is also you; the one thinking of the child is also you. One-to-one means that between this occurrence and itself there is no one; it does not mean that a person is reduced to one thing at this moment.

Both the owner and the spectator leave a gap: one between owner and possessions, one between spectator and play. Where there is a gap, there is work to do: the owner must guard, afraid of losing the possessions; the spectator must keep away, afraid the play will spill onto him. A large part of a lifetime’s weariness goes into guarding this gap. But go looking for the one on the far side of the gap, and he has never once been found; however complex a person is imagined to be, however many layers and sides, there is no need to keep this gap.

One more thing needs to be said at the same time: that there is no one pushing everything from outside does not mean that things do not push one another. A pill changes the body, a sentence changes a thought, one pain makes you more careful next time. These pushes are all real; only they are all inside what is happening, one thing touching another, with no hand reaching in from outside. Outside, there is no one who sets everything going; inside, one thing pulls on another, and the pulling has never stopped.

Everything this book goes on to discuss—feeling bad, wanting, deserving, fearing death, praying for blessing—comes down to this one thing: wherever a person leaves a gap, an extra layer is laid on there; and on the far side of that gap, no one has ever once been found.

Being does not have only one look either.

Some being changes very fast: a thought, a flare of anger, a cloud. Some changes very slowly: a tree, a stone, a mountain, so slowly a person cannot see it move in a lifetime. Some seems not to change at all: that star in the sky, which people have seen in the same place for thousands of years. And some changes until it is gone: a shower of rain, an answering call, a person. What changes is being; changing fast is being; changing slowly is being; seeming not to change is being; and what changes until it is gone has already been, that once. Changing or not, it is being.

“I” is like this too. Some “I”s shout loudly, some shrink back, some have not yet learned to talk, some have forgotten how; some things say “I” all their lives, some never do: the cat in the corner, the tree outside the window, this glass of water on the table. Being that says “I” is; being that doesn’t say “I” is; being that shouts to be seen is; and what no one sees, is too.

So far the talk has been about people, about the “I” said hundreds of times a day. But being is not only where “I” is said.

At this moment, most of what is in the world has never said the word “I.”

The water on the stove is boiling. Nobody told it “boil,” and it did not say “I am boiling.” The flame licks the bottom of the kettle, the bottom gets hot, tiny bubbles appear first, climbing the side in strings; then the bubbles grow bigger and bigger, bubbling against the lid. The water has boiled. It just boiled.

Outside the window it is getting dark. No one switches off the lights of the sky, and there is no “sky” saying “I am going to get dark.” The light withdraws little by little: first from the roof across the way, then from the shadow of the tree downstairs, finally from the whole street. It has got dark.

The tree downstairs does not stop at night either. In the soil its roots edge a little further toward the water; in the dark its leaves slowly send away what they stored in the day; under the bark a very thin ring of new wood grows, that night, an invisible bit thicker. All its life it has never said “I,” and all its life there has not been one moment it was not.

In the corner of the wall, a nest of ants is moving a grain of rice. A few in front pull, a few behind push; they meet a crack, go round it, line up again. They held no meeting, nobody said “I think,” and nobody refreshed to see whether they had been seen.

These things share one look: they are all moving of themselves. No hand pushes from behind, no voice leads from in front, and nobody stands at the door saying “approved.” The water boiling is the boiling itself; getting dark is the dark itself; the tree growing is the growing itself; the ants moving rice is the moving itself. The moving and what moves are not two; it is not that something is first set there and then someone comes to make it move. Being, the moment it is, is moving, arising, happening; that is simply how it is.

In a person, too, most things are like this. The heart beats without being ordered, food breaks down in the stomach without being arranged, a wound heals without permission, hair grows without consent. People think they have been driving all along; in fact most of what goes on in the body has always been moving of itself. “I” is the small place, within this great field of things moving of themselves, that can speak.

So when this book speaks of “being,” it is not someone on the human side expressing views about a thing called “existence.” People cannot stand outside existence; no such grandstand can be found. The moment of speaking is itself one occurrence of being, happening in the same place as the water boiling, the dark falling, the ants moving rice. It is not a person speaking about existence; it is existence, here, speaking itself. As before: there is no bigger someone hiding behind, using a human mouth to talk; speaking is itself one occurrence of being, as the water boiling is. The human voice, the human words, the human “I” all belong to this occurrence.

The water boiling needs no one to say “I have boiled” on its behalf. But in a person, when being opens its mouth, the word it uses is “I.”

There is one more thing to make clear right at the start.

“I” will keep appearing in this book: I’m hungry, do I deserve it, I want, when I’m gone. Who is this “I”?

When it is written, it is the writer; when it is read, it is the reader. The “I” in this book is not the author’s own “I”; it is the one word shared by everyone who opens their mouth and says “I.” When you read “I’m afraid of being forgotten,” that voice comes from you; when I write “I’m afraid of being forgotten,” that voice comes from me. The same word, in two places, each saying its own, and saying the same thing. Neither is above the other, neither has come to teach the other; each is a place that fears, shouts, and wants to be seen in the same way.

The moment of writing this line is being; the moment of reading this line is being too. What this book speaks of does not stand outside the book, waiting for the book to explain it. It does not wait for the book to be finished, nor for anyone to understand it.

This book has three volumes and twenty-one chapters, with a before and an after. That is the before and after of speaking, not of walking. It is not that reading further brings you closer to being; open any chapter, and what it speaks of is already the whole. Nor are the three volumes three steps: Zai Is Zai, Zai Is Not Zai, Zai Zai Zai speak of three sides of the same being, and every occurrence of being is all three at once: it waits for nothing, it carries its “not,” it overlaps with every other place. While reading the first page, it is; while reading the last page, it is; without reading a single page, it is too; reading a few more pages does not add a bit to it.

Now the question at the beginning can be answered.

Why must a person say “I” first before feeling that they are?

Half of it is that being can only open its mouth from inside, and “I” is that inside in each place. This sound is real, and not in the least superfluous.

The other half is that people hear this sound backwards, believing that “I” owns being, and so they fear losing it, and so they shout again and again, and ask again and again to be confirmed. The remark rushed out at the meeting, the post refreshed over and over, the final “I told you so” of a quarrel: all are this fear stamping a seal for “I.”

Turned over, things look different. Being does not depend on “I” standing in front holding it up, nor on others tapping it before it counts. The call that is shouted is; the call that no one answers is too; the day you are seen is; the day no one sees you is too. “I” will still speak, still shout, still want to be seen; all this is good; it is how this place leans toward others. Only being has never depended on these voices to prove that it has not disappeared.

It is not someone who exists; existence itself is becoming. In this place, it has become a person who can say “I,” who fears, who shouts, who wants to be looked at once.

Tomorrow morning, waking up, the first thing that comes up will still be: I want to sleep some more. Then sleep five minutes more. That sentence is being speaking, and so are those five minutes.