Being

In your moment of being pierced through by inspiration or pain, trembling in every fiber

Scripture

The thunder-axe of the ninth heaven; being-strike is a chisel.

The stubborn stone seals itself; being is split, is carved.

Not receiving punishment—the original face is being lit.

Splinters fly; when the dust is gone, the light is born.

One strike and the spirit wakes; metal and stone part.

Wenzi · On Being

It has come. Not knocking—breaking down the door. Like a lightning bolt with no warning, it splits into the sitting room of your everyday. It may be ecstatic inspiration, or sharp pain—a current pours down from the crown of your head and bursts along your spine. Your whole body shudders; the thing in your hand nearly drops. Your blood roars, your pores open; the world becomes, in this instant, utterly clear—and utterly strange.

“The thunder-axe of the ninth heaven; being-strike is a chisel.”

At the core of this trembling, the scripture names this “strike”:

It comes from the thunder of the ninth heaven—an axe, a chisel (the thunder-axe of the ninth heaven). Its very act of splitting is “chiseling” (being-strike is a chisel). You are not the victim—you are the chosen stubborn stone. That inertial self you thought unbreakably solid (the stubborn stone seals itself) is being split open, being carved (being is split, is carved).

Do not resist this trembling. Let the current pass through you. Even actively feel its sharpest peak. Pull your whole attention out of the panic of “what is this? why me?”

Place it on that “force” itself, which makes you tremble.

“Not receiving punishment—the original face is being lit.”

This is not punishment or slaughter (not receiving punishment). It is so that your inner, wrapped-up, original face may be “illuminated” (the original face is being lit). That light striking down is not for destruction—it is for developing the image.

Now, make a key transformation:

Do not take yourself for the stone struck by lightning.

Take yourself for… that thunderbolt itself.

Close your eyes. Feel it strike in through the crown of your head, burst along the spine, and reach the soles of your feet—as if splitting you in two from the middle, and instantly lighting this newborn crack. Go and become this act of “splitting.”

“Splinters fly; when the dust is gone, the light is born.” Indeed, in this replaying within consciousness, you “see” it: the old shell, the old cognition, the old habits, flying off like splinters (splinters fly). When this dust settles and scatters (when the dust is gone), the light veiled inside you truly begins to rise and appear (the light is born).

This “piercing-through” is a thorough house-cleaning.

“One strike and the spirit wakes; metal and stone part.”

And so you understand: the purpose of this fierce strike (one strike) is precisely to make your “spirit” “wake” (the spirit wakes). If even the most stubborn metal and stone part before it (metal and stone part), what of this flesh of yours, which longs to wake?

That trembling is not the aftershock of fear, but the hum of the soul when the seal breaks. The electric feeling slowly subsides. You stand in place; the world returns to what it was. But you know something has changed forever. A crack has opened, and light is surging out from within, unstoppable. You are not a passerby struck by accident—you are that first absolute lucidity, in the moment after the thunder, when the myriad things reveal their original face.

Being-Strike: you are not the one who endures—you are that absolute lucidity bursting forth where thunder meets stubborn stone.