Being

In your moment of being blinded by prejudice, seeing through the very resistance

Scripture

The eye is veiled by a leaf; the mountain is just beside.

Being veils and blocks; the fog locks the great river.

Seeing yet not seeing; the heart is blind as a wall.

Not that the bright sun is absent—it is hidden by clouds.

In the dark, groping; in doubt, near madness.

The veiling is the showing; the darkness is the light.

Wenzi · On Being

A leaf is stuck to your eye. Not a metaphor. You were gazing at a far mountain when a gust of wind really did blow a dead leaf onto your lashes, between brow and glasses. The world is instantly cut. The mountain is half hidden, only broken edges remain. Annoyed, you blink, turn your head—but the leaf seems rooted, stubbornly lodged between you and the complete view.

“The eye is veiled by a leaf; the mountain is just beside.”

In this comical obstruction, the scripture breaks open the situation:

The eye is veiled by a leaf (the eye is veiled by a leaf). But the mountain—it is right there, never moved (the mountain is just beside). What blocks you from the whole view is not the mountain’s disappearance, but that leaf, so close it fills your sight. Your entire attention has been captured by this leaf.

“Being veils and blocks; the fog locks the great river.” What you feel is the force of “veiling” and “blocking” (being veils and blocks). It is as if thick fog has locked the whole great river—one vast blankness, nothing to push against. Your heart, too, is locked by this invisible “blocking”: restless, struggling, yet unable to push away a fog.

“Seeing yet not seeing; the heart is blind as a wall.” Your eyes are plainly open, yet you “see” not the whole mountain (seeing yet not seeing). This limitation makes your heart like a wall it has built (the heart is blind as a wall). You crash into this wall, demanding why you cannot see. The wall keeps silent.

Good. Stop struggling. Do not try to blow the leaf away, do not curse the fog. Make a reverse movement: move your gaze completely away from the fact that “the mountain is hidden.” Move it onto the leaf itself. Closer. Closer again. Until the leaf’s veins fill your whole field of vision. Look at the withered-yellow network of veins, how they interweave into a net. Look at the serrated edge, how it shows a translucent burnt-brown in the light. Look at that faint damp trace at the stem, how it refracts a weak iridescence.

“Not that the bright sun is absent—it is hidden by clouds.” The scripture whispers at this moment: it is not that the bright sun does not exist (not that the bright sun is absent)—it is only hidden by clouds for now (hidden by clouds). This leaf is your cloud. But does the cloud itself not have its own unique shape, texture, and play of light? When you no longer resist “being veiled” and instead gaze at the “veil” itself, a strange focus is born.

“In the dark, groping; in doubt, near madness.” You are groping in darkness (in the dark, groping), in doubt and near madness (in doubt, near madness). But it is exactly this extreme “groping” that lets your fingertips read the outline of the dark.

“The veiling is the showing; the darkness is the light.”

Suddenly, you understand.

This leaf, this “veiling,” is exactly a pointing (the veiling is the showing). By blocking, it marks out for you a point you have never looked at so carefully—itself. This darkness, this obstacle—when you fully enter it, perceive it—becomes of itself another kind of light (the darkness is the light). The leaf is no longer an obstruction; it becomes the center of your universe at this moment, a tiny world full of astonishing detail.

And so you no longer care whether the mountain is whole.

You and this leaf face each other, quietly.

In its complex, beautiful veins, you see the miniature of a whole forest, the masterpiece of light and decay working together.

The wind, at last, comes and gently carries the leaf away. The far mountain reappears, vast as ever. But you know: what truly made you see was not the reappearing of the mountain itself. It was what the leaf taught you—how to turn one blocking into one deepest gaze.

Being-Obstruction: you are not a prisoner held back—you are that focused light which, through the crack beside a dead leaf, learned to gaze again.

The leaf is not an obstacle, and you are not the one blocked. You are the leaf, are the mountain, are the knowing that knows “being blocked”—are the complete event of “seeing,” made of these three together. No one blocks anyone; there is only existence, touching itself with itself.