Chapter 21: Zai

Anyone who has been to a morning market before dawn has seen it: after four, the streetlamps still on, the stalls going up one by one. The vegetable seller lines up his vegetables, the soy-milk seller lights his stove, the fishmonger tops up the water in his tubs. When it gets light and people come, they say: the morning market’s open.

Where would you go to find that “morning market”? It is not outside any stall. Take away all the stalls, all the people, all the calling out and haggling, and by the road there is only an empty stretch of street. The morning market is just these stalls open, these people coming and going.

This book has spoken of many “places.” I am here, the stone is there, the ant is at the foot of the wall, the river below the mountain, the stars in the sky. Every time of being is in its place, has its edge, has its “not,” touches other beings, always moving.

Having spoken of so many “places,” a thought probably comes up: all right, each is this one, each in its own place, with edges, no getting in, coming to an end, no place seeing everything; but all these “each in its own place” must surely be held somewhere? Like a great courtyard holding all the little yards; like a universe holding all the stars. What holds everything is the true being, the last thing the word “being” has to say.

And there is a closer version: behind every small I there must be a great I? A cosmic mind, a supreme will, a whole that joins all people and all things and arranges everything. The small self is part of it, and in the end all return to it.

This is people’s last and greatest entrusting: giving themselves over to the greatest.

This entrusting takes many shapes.

Someone, in very hard times, looks up at the night sky and feels very small, small as a speck of dust; but thinking that behind all this there is something greater, with everything inside it, the heart is a little eased: small as I am, I am part of it.

Someone who has practiced very deeply says: I finally understand, I and the universe are one body; the small self is only an illusion; the real I is that great I.

Someone believes in nothing, yet he too says: when people die they return to nature, return to that whole. Saying it, he too is a little comforted.

These sayings assume one thing: behind every place there is still a whole. That whole is truer, greater, steadier than every place; every place must in the end be taken back by it, and finds where it belongs only in it.

This room is the hardest of all rooms to take down. It doesn’t say there is someone behind being, nor a ground beneath it; it only says: surely there is a whole. A whole doesn’t sound like something added on; it is just everything added up; not to admit a whole seems like not admitting everything.

When people say “the whole,” what are they saying?

Looking up at the stars at night, people say the universe holds everything. But the universe is changing too: stars being born, stars dying, masses of light spreading out, drawing together; it is said even its size is still growing outward. It does not stand outside the stars as an unmoving great box; it is just the birth and death of these stars, the spreading and gathering of this light. Take away all the stars and light, and no empty box is left.

“The whole” is the same kind of word as “the morning market.” It is very useful: you can say “the morning market’s over” without listing every stall; you can say “the universe is changing” without counting every star. But words like this have never meant one more thing in addition to those stalls, those stars. “The whole” is a gathering way of speaking, gathering every place into one phrase. To take this phrase for something truer than every place is like taking “the morning market” for a great stallholder hiding behind the stalls.

And there is a harder layer. Where is “the whole” said from? No place can see everything; every seeing is somewhere. This moment of saying “the whole” is somewhere too: in a person’s mouth, on an afternoon, on a page of a book. It is a sentence said by one time of being, itself among all places. This moment of saying “the whole” is inside “the whole” too; it can’t stand outside every place to be their master. Taking “the whole” as a general name for everything, like “the morning market,” is a useful way of speaking; to imagine it as the one outside every place, truer and higher than every place, possessing every place, is once again to add one more.

Every place being is already the whole. Above all these places there is no further “whole” standing, holding them.

And that great I?

A great I, if like every small I it is somewhere, has edges, changes, is only one more place, not the one that holds everything. If it is nowhere, has no edges, does not change, holds everything, then it is the same as that unmoving room: change can’t touch it, and whether it is or not makes no difference at all to this world.

That person of deep practice who says “I and the universe are one body”: his feeling at that moment is real: that layer of being cut off is gone. But that is “not cut off,” not “melted into a lump.” He opens his eyes, and the stars in the universe are still one by one, his hand is still his hand, and when hungry he still has to eat. The small self doesn’t need to be taken back into a great self to find where it belongs; nor is the small self an illusion. Every time of being is in its own place, full, one of a kind; they are always close, always touching, never cut off, but have not been gathered up by anyone.

When people die, do they return to nature? The body turns to soil, the soil grows grass; but that is soil, that is grass, each its own being. That person, in the shape of that time, has finished being, and has been. He has not been taken back by a whole; his time is just that time, neither more nor less.

Following “the whole,” people also ask that oldest and greatest question: why is there being rather than nothing at all?

This question sounds like the end of all questions, as if a person had at last stood at the very edge, looked out, and seen a nothing, and being had popped up out of that nothing, for no reason.

The question can be asked, and asked very sincerely. This moment of asking is being. Only a picture is hidden in it, and the picture is worth spreading out first.

In the picture there are two roads: one “something,” one “nothing at all”; set side by side, as if one could choose, and the first was chosen. But how did that road of “nothing at all” come about? The moment people think “nothing at all,” what floats up in their heads is a blackness, or a whiteness, or an empty room; that blackness, that whiteness, that empty room, are all being. The road of “nothing” in the picture was painted by people inside being, with being’s paints.

This is not to say it has been proven that “nothing” is impossible. Being unable to imagine a thing doesn’t mean the thing is impossible; this layer can’t be said to the bottom, and there is no need to pretend it has been. What can be said is something else: people have never met that “nothing.” This question paints “something” and “nothing” as two roads set out side by side long ago, as if one could choose, and one was chosen. But by what right can these two roads be set side by side like this? By what right does “nothing” count as an option set beside “something”? Until this layer is explained, the picture can’t yet be taken for the question itself.

So this question need not be answered first. Answerable or not, being already is; this moment of asking it is being too. Being does not need first to be explained out of a nothing before it stands firm.

Many cities have an old bridge, more than a hundred years old, still in use. When it was built, some drew the plans, some quarried the stone, some stood for months in cold water at the base of the piers; over the next hundred years, some repaired it, some set up stalls on it, some waited for someone at the end of it, some fished beneath it. To say “this bridge” is to say just how these hundred years, these hands, these feet, these stones and this water, place by place, time after time, struck it out. There is no “bridge itself” standing outside these hands and feet and days.

The greater things people speak of—a craft, a language, a country, what people call a civilization—all came about like this too: countless beings, place against place, generation after generation, struck out, built up, worn into shape. It is very large, so large a lifetime can’t see all of it; its laws are real too: a language has its grammar, a city its temperament, and they shape people in turn. But it has not risen above these beings to become a great being that is their master. The day no one speaks the language any more, it too will be no more.

Is being, in the end, one, or many?

To say “one,” to say “many,” is counting; to count, there must be a counter standing to one side, lining up time after time of being in a row and ticking them off one by one. But the counter himself is in this row too, and when he reaches himself, the row has one more time of being: the counting itself. Place overlaps place, places strike out new places, time after time of being rises, and they can’t be lined up in a row, and so no total can be counted. Call it one, and it breaks into every place; call it many, and every place is close against the others, and no sealed-off squares can be told apart.

Nor is “every place” a list that can be finished. The stone in the hand is a place; the small patch of palm it presses on is a place too; the meeting of stone and palm is another place again; a person is a place, the tiny things in his belly are each their own places, his talking with the person beside him is another place. Place overlaps place, place nests in place, places strike out new places, countless, and there is no need to finish counting. “Every place” does not mean a total; it means wherever you go, there it is.

The soy-milk stall leans on the youtiao seller, the youtiao seller leans on the people buying breakfast, the stone leans on the ground, the tree on the soil and rain. Being, leaning on being, is being; there is no need to lean on anything greater. Being place by place, being time after time, is called zai zai.

“Zai zai” does not mean one great being; it means being overlapping being, everywhere.

Then, grasping to the very end, what is left in the hand?

This book has looked for many things: the I standing at the very front, the real I, the ground, the doorway, the lamp always lit, an end point, someone who blesses, a place that sees everything, a final verdict, a whole that holds everything. One by one, none was found.

What is left is not emptiness. What is left is still this moment, happening. It is not what remains only after searching to the end; when the first page of this book was opened, it was there; without this book, it is there too.

Not a thing you could point to and say “this is it”; nor nothing at all. It is this moment: the moment of reading this line, the moment a car goes by outside the window, the moment a thought comes up in the heart and sinks again. Grasp to the end, and it is still happening. There is nowhere to stop and lean back on; nor is there any need.

This moment is different in every place.

For the man waving at the station exit, it is a red coat and a shout of “I’m right here.” For the man holding his phone at two in the morning, it is a finger hovering over a name, the long ringing that no one answers. For the man in the sickbed saying “I’ve become a burden,” it is the leaves moving outside the window, and the eyes that move with them. For the man with the cane, it is the echo where the cane taps down. For the mother who ate no meat for thirty years, it is a charm folded very small. For the father who said “what about the other five marks?”, it is half a sentence swallowed, and the other half not. For the salmon, it is the white water crashing down, and one more leap upward; for the grass in the crack in the wall, it is a summer; for the dewdrop on the hillside, it is an hour or two.

Every place is different; no two places have the same shape, and no place is another’s draft. Yet every place is the same thing: what happens this time does not happen a bit of it on behalf of some other real me. The one holding the phone: that spell of wanting is him, the hesitation of hovering, not daring to press, is him, the face in the faint cold light of the screen is him too; the one in the sickbed: the pain is him, the eyes moving with the leaves are him too. In no place is there an extra someone standing alongside, finding fault with this time, waiting to swap it for another.

In all its thousands of changes, no change ever leaves it. Not because something unchanging hides beneath these changes, like a thread strung through beads; underneath there is no thread. It is that every change is exactly its own changing moment, and can’t leave itself. People think the old saying “ten thousand changes never leave the source” means that through all the changing an original shape always waits behind; in fact, through all the changing, every moment is already the original shape, and there is no need to go back.

So it can only be one-to-one. A little short, and there is a crack; with a crack, there is someone standing on the far side of it; with that someone, there is picking, comparing, “this time doesn’t count,” pushing and pushing back, meaning sought outside, a road one can’t go back along, a heaven and a person. Chapter by chapter, this book has looked for the one standing on the far side of the crack, and not once found him. Without him, there is only this: whatever it shows as, it is wholly that. When you feel bad, you are this spell of feeling bad; when you are happy, you are this spell of happiness; when someone calls to you and you turn your head, you are that turning.

Last, one name remains.

As small children, many have squatted by the road, picked up a stone, and asked a grown-up: what’s this? The grown-up said: a stone. That afternoon the child received something wonderful. From then on he could talk about this stone without carrying it with him; could remember it, read about it in books, group it with ten thousand other stones. A name is a great gift people have received.

Names have a drawback too. Once the child has the word “stone,” the next time he sees a stone he often gives it only a glance, says “stone” to himself, and walks on. The weight of the one in his hand, its coldness, that ridge, are covered by a word.

Having said “being” so many times, it is time to ask about it: “being,” zai, is a name too.

It is more dangerous than “stone.” “Being” does not name a thing, yet people easily take it for one, and the highest one at that: a final thing, found at last. So some will say: “I have realized being.” “I am being.” Some write zai on paper, hang it on the wall, and sit facing it a while every day. The character becomes a new idol. People have fought many quarrels over the highest name: call it this, call it that, and whoever calls it wrongly is an outsider. Whatever people call it, the stone is rained on all the same, the tree grows toward the light all the same, and the two who quarrel still have to eat, sleep, grow old. However fiercely names are fought over, being has not put in a single word.

If “being” is taken as a thing to be asked after, searched for, grasped, then the “being” grasped in the hand is, in every place, illusory. What is illusory is not being; what is illusory is the being grasped into a thing.

So this name can be set down. A name can rest.

The name “I” can be set down too. This book started from “I”; “I” is the voice being speaks in this place called a person; it is real and important. But it is only a voice, not an idol, not a sign that must be held up all the time.

Names fall away of themselves. A very old man can’t call his children by name, can’t name the bird on the windowsill, can hardly use the word “I” any more; he holds someone’s hand, the hand is warm, he watches the sparrows hop and smiles. Name after name falls from him, and not a bit of being falls. Before there were names, all things already were: the mountain didn’t wait to be called a mountain before rising high; the river didn’t wait to be called a river before flowing down. Before people, the mountains had been high for tens of millions of years, and some creatures crawled, swam, flew on this planet, and were then all gone, leaving not a single name. The greater part of this world has been while there were no names.

“A name can rest” can also be bent. Setting down names does not mean setting down the distinctions the names point to. Set down the word “being,” and the stone still has its weight, people still can’t get into others, true words still differ from false ones, the weight of this place still falls on this place. If, hearing “a name can rest,” one thinks one may from now on stop distinguishing, stop discerning, that everything is the same, that is the misunderstanding of hearing “being does not judge” as “there is no right and wrong,” invited back in through another door. What rests is the grasping at names, not the real things the names point to.

Silence can be gripped too. Some take “it can’t be said” for a higher way of saying, and the moment they open their mouths they say “this can’t be put into words,” saying more than anyone; some take keeping quiet for a look of practice, sitting there with “I am being silent” written on their faces. That too is an idol, only in a different material. Speaking is being, not speaking is being too; neither speaking nor not speaking need be used to prove anything.

The word “being” set down is used all the same. Tomorrow you will still type “you there?” on your phone, still say “I’m in a meeting,” “the keys are on the table.” It is back among those most unremarkable sentences, saying for them: it is happening. Not enshrined, doing its work.

This book is the same.

It is not a new doctrine for people to grip; not a new method for people to practice; not a new authority for people to obey from now on. What this book speaks of has not stood outside it, waiting for it to speak; this book is only one time of that.

When I wrote it, being; typing it character by character, deleting, typing again, being. These times you have read it, being. It is closed, put on a shelf, gathers dust, is found by someone in a few years, or never opened again by anyone: all being.

Having finished it, you can forget it, forget this word too. No need to work at forgetting, because being has never needed anyone to remember it in order to be. Used up, it can be set down; set down, nothing is lost.

Someone outside the door calls your name.

Inside, you answer: zai. Here.

In this one word, everything is.

It comes out of this body of yours, carrying a little of that afternoon’s drowsiness, the voice a bit hoarse. No one behind is holding it; you answer, and that is being answering. When you answer, you may be thinking of something else. It waits for no one’s approval: answering red in the face when ill at ease is being; answering, steeling yourself, when unsure is being; answering, muffled, when you feel bad is being. It doesn’t wait to be recognized: whether the one outside heard clearly or not, you have already answered.

It lands in an occasion: this door, this afternoon, this person outside calling you. It can only be this word from your place; no one else can answer for you. It leans toward the door, reaches the ear of the one outside, reaches his edge, can’t get in, and so shows itself to his hearing; a call and an answer, two times of being, rising together at this moment.

Perhaps one day the one who called you is no more, and in an empty room you answer without thinking, and only then remember no one called. That word is being too; that word is the being of not-being.

Is this word “zai” a name? No. What can be set down is the “being” enshrined, grasped into a thing; the word you answer with points at nothing; it only answers. Names are for calling things; an answer is the place that was called, sounding of itself. This book has written thousands of zai, most of them used as a name, as they had to be; in the word you answer with, zai returns to its most ordinary shape.

One word holds all of this. One word, too, holds nothing; it was never a box. It is only an answer, a moving.

You already are, and so am I, and so is everyone, and so are the stone at the foot of the wall and the bird outside the window. No need to strive, no need to practice, no need to wait, no need for anyone’s blessing, nor was it fitted on afterward by anyone; before people thought of it, it already was; if people never thought of it all their lives, it would be all the same. This ben, “already,” is not a substance hidden underneath, not a final ground; it means just what “self” means: not coming from elsewhere; it is itself where it comes from, moving by itself.

“Always being” is the easiest thing to mishear. Misheard, it becomes something forever unchanging, forever unbroken, hidden behind all change, and that unmoving room is built again. Every time of being is this time, and will finish being; the candle will burn down, you and I will one day not be. “Always being” does not say any thing will not end; it says: whenever there is a moment, that moment is being, with no need of something that spans all of time, itself unchanging, to vouch for it.

The few words people often use can then be said precisely. Being everywhere does not mean a great being, like a net, covering every place; it means that wherever you go, that place is being: the stone at the foot of the wall is, the bird outside the window is, this moment of reading this line is. Being at every time does not mean it never began and will never stop, vouching for all of time; it means that whenever there is a moment, that moment is being: the moment of feeling bad is, the night of sleep is too. Being in everything does not mean there is one thing that is everything and holds everything; it means that whatever it is, being, it is being, and nothing that is has been left outside being. None of the three speaks of a greater it hiding behind every place, every time, everything; every place, every time, everything, each is it.

Zai zai zai. Being overlapping being, everywhere; no greater being holds them, no place is more being, and even the name “being” can be set down.

Ten thousand changes, and none leaves the source. The source is being, and being is each change.

So in the end it is still that one sentence:

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

There is no someone who first stands and then goes on to be; no ground that first lies there and is then set moving by becoming; nor a greatest being that holds all this. Existence itself is rising, in every place, time after time.

In you, it has become this one you: you read this line, being; you finish, close the book, go to pour a glass of water, being; tomorrow you forget all of this, go to work as usual, quarrel as usual, love someone as usual, grow old as usual, being; one day you are no more, and downstairs people are still walking, trees still growing, a stone still being rained on, being.

This book started from “I.” “I” is the voice being speaks in this place called a person; people start from here because it is the nearest place to them. But from the first page there was no door; nor is any page nearer being than the others. It is not that “I” has been taken apart; it is that “I” never needed to stand at the very front. It is not that there is a me, and then a portion of being added; it is being, here, showing itself as me, as my hands, my rice, the person beside me I can’t get into, the empty seat at my dinner table, the word I answer with. In all its thousands of changes, it has never once left itself.

When you have closed the book, there is nothing you need to do. Perhaps go and pour that glass of water: the water comes from the spout, falls into the glass, and the glass slowly warms; perhaps stand a while and hear someone downstairs calling a child in for dinner; perhaps think nothing and go to sleep. These things were happening before this book was opened, and go on happening after it is closed. These words have not added a layer on top of them, nor taken anything from beneath them. If, having finished, these ordinary things look not a bit changed, that is just right: they were never lacking anything.

No one is leading you anywhere. You have always been right here.

Zai.