Being

In your moment of being sunk in emotional bonds that can neither be cut nor untangled

Scripture

The vine at first clings to the tree; being is tangling, is leaning.

Gradually it tightens, deepens; being is strangling, is gripping muscle.

The tree’s bones are creaking; the vine’s body is hissing.

Not the taking of a life—the devouring of each other.

Being is strangling, is embracing; the tighter, the closer.

The tangle ends as fate ordains; corpses stand into a forest.

Wenzi · On Being

You feel an invisible vine coiled around your neck. It did not tighten all at once—one day, resting against a tree, a tender vine quietly climbed onto your shoulder and neck. At first it was leaning, decoration. As the days passed, it grew, wound, from shoulder and neck to chest, gradually entering the texture of the muscle. When you breathe, you can feel the vine faintly pulsing with your pulse, sharing one frequency with you. It does not want to kill you; it only wants to become part of you.

“The vine at first clings to the tree; being is tangling, is leaning.” The scripture whispers at the place where you and the vine grow together: the vine at first merely clings to the tree (the vine at first clings to the tree)—this is tangling, and also leaning (being is tangling, is leaning). That tender entanglement once gave you the warmth of being needed, of being filled.

But things have changed. The vine keeps growing, binding deeper. You can hear the faint creak of your own bones under the pressure (the tree’s bones are creaking), and hear the vine’s fibers hissing in their tautness (the vine’s body is hissing). Every heartbeat seems to power this slow strangling.

“Gradually it tightens, deepens; being is strangling, is gripping muscle.” It gradually tightens and deepens (gradually it tightens, deepens), turning from tangling to strangling, embedding into your muscle (being is strangling, is gripping muscle). You feel suffocated, yet do not know whom to blame. This vine was once the attachment you watered with your own hands.

Good. Stop pulling.

Stop the violent thoughts of “cutting” or “untying.”

Now, make a withdrawal of consciousness: imagine yourself floating one step out of this tangled body, like a third person, quietly watching the picture of “tree” and “vine” strangling each other.

Sink your awareness completely into the feeling of being wound, being bound tight. Feel the vine’s texture; feel every inch of pressure where it touches your skin. Even feel the very quality of that “suffocation.” “Not the taking of a life—the devouring of each other.” At this point the scripture reveals a chilling, profound truth: this is not the simple taking of a life (not the taking of a life). It is a mutual devouring, a mutual becoming of nourishment (the devouring of each other). You are consuming the vine’s clinging; the vine is digesting your independence. In the strangling, you conduct the most intimate and most cruel exchange of energy.

“Being is strangling, is embracing; the tighter, the closer.” And so you understand: strangling and embracing are, at this moment, one thing (being is strangling, is embracing). The tighter it binds, the deeper the entanglement, and the more your intimacy, in a twisted way, increases (the tighter, the closer). This relationship has long passed beyond love and hate; it has become a symbiosis of fate.

“The tangle ends as fate ordains; corpses stand into a forest.” At last, when the tangle reaches the end ordained by fate (the tangle ends as fate ordains), you will see a scene: tree and vine will both lose their independent forms; they stand together, becoming a still sculpture-forest of mutual support (corpses stand into a forest). Not death—an eternal freeze-frame of two made one.

Breathing grows difficult, but a strange calm descends.

You are no longer you; the vine is no longer the vine.

You are that symbiotic forest, fated to stand together into a landscape,

completing, in the tangle, the final shaping of each other.

Being-Tangle: you are not a prisoner—you are that ancient totem itself, of vine and tree entwined, bone and blood sharing one grain.