Being
In your moment of long suppression, when the energy of existence bursts its dike at last
Scripture
The earthen dam is softening; the wall of water is bulging.
Stagnation at its extreme; the clogged channel is vomiting.
One fine line is cracking, breaking through organ and bowel.
Being is bursting, is nursing; being is collapsing, is flowing.
No disaster, no calamity—ten thousand gorges are crying out.
Wenzi · On Being
You feel the dike melting from inside. Not solid concrete—an earthen dam, soaked too long by the ever-rising water, beginning to soften and dissolve from within (the earthen dam is softening). You can hear the wall of water bulging and groaning behind it (the wall of water is bulging). An energy stagnant to the extreme (stagnation at its extreme), clogged in the channel of your life, has now reached the pass where it must “vomit” itself out (the clogged channel is vomiting).
“One fine line is cracking, breaking through organ and bowel.” The first crack appears—fine, but fatal (one fine line is cracking). It opens from the very core of your existence and tears upward, breaking through the wrapping and concealment of every organ (breaking through organ and bowel). This is not illness; it is an uprising long prepared.
“Being is bursting, is nursing; being is collapsing, is flowing.” You are amid “bursting” and “nursing,” “collapsing” and “flowing” (being is bursting, is nursing; being is collapsing, is flowing). The old structure is collapsing, and at the same time releasing the milk that feeds the newborn; the solid self is crumbling, and at the same time turning into free outpouring.
Do not try to plug that crack.
With all your courage and awareness, embrace this collapse.
In the depths of your heart, unscrew that last valve with your own hand. Say to the long-stored flood: I permit you, through me, to run toward your sea.
Even, in consciousness, give it a gentle push.
“No disaster, no calamity—ten thousand gorges are crying out.”
At the instant you wholly give up resistance—even take part—the scripture reveals the truth: this is not disaster or ordeal (no disaster, no calamity). It is ten thousand valleys, ten thousand gorges, crying through your collapse, roaring their longing to rush, to take shape (ten thousand gorges are crying out). Your suppression had once blocked their throats.
The dike has vanished completely. No terrifying explosion—only a boundless, gentle pouring. The accumulated pain, anger, sorrow, ecstasy—all the energy never lived—turns into a clear, majestic flood, rushing out. You are no longer an individual on the verge of collapse; you are that dike-bursting flood itself, the outlet ten thousand valleys have finally found; the shared song of joy when the frozen myriad things melt, under spring sunlight, into a hundred million streams. Being-Burst: you are not the ruins of destruction—you are that magnificent dike-burst which must happen, so that rivers may be.