Being
In your moment of head-on conflict, undergoing a violent exchange of energy
Scripture
Two suns race the sky; the orbits crack, heaven topples.
Light devours light’s flame; core bites core’s center.
Being is burning, is welding; devouring each other, lighting each other.
Not destruction—a great mutual recognition.
The shell shatters, the marrow exchanges; you and I can no longer be told apart.
After the collision the universe is still; an echo of the primordial.
Wenzi · On Being
Two high-speed trains, on the tracks of fate, collide head-on. No—not trains, but two blazing suns, dragging light-flames that incinerate everything, tracing fatal arcs across the curtain of the universe, and then—a roaring head-on collision (two suns race the sky; the orbits crack, heaven topples). In that instant, no sound—only extreme light devouring light, core biting core (light devours light’s flame; core bites core’s center). At the center of the impact, what you feel is not pain, but a searing process in which matter is thoroughly deconstructed and then re-welded (being is burning, is welding).
“Devouring each other, lighting each other. Not destruction—a great mutual recognition.” You are devouring each other, and lighting each other (devouring each other, lighting each other). The scripture declares: this is not to destroy each other (not destruction). It is a great, existence-level “recognition” (a great mutual recognition)—confirming, through the fiercest collision, “who I am,” and “who you are.”
Do not try to protect that old “self” in the collision.
That “self” is exactly the part that needs to be shattered.
Open up. Let the force of impact pass completely through you.
Feel that energy, like pure light, washing every cell of yours, melting one by one the old memories, brands, definitions. Feel your outer shell (the shell) shattering, and the innermost marrow (the marrow) exchanging and fusing (the shell shatters, the marrow exchanges).
“You and I can no longer be told apart.” In the absolute furnace of energy, the boundary between you and the other blurs, becomes hard to divide (you and I can no longer be told apart). In you there is his searing component; in him there is your cold reason. You have become the proof that the other existed and left his brand.
The shock of the collision slowly settles. The light-flames disperse; the dust settles. You stand where you are, or the other stands where he is—or the two of you stand together on a new ground that is neither you nor him. The world is utterly still (after the collision the universe is still). But in the deepest place of that stillness echoes the pure hum of the universe’s very beginning (an echo of the primordial). You are not the loser or winner of a conflict—you are the absolute stillness of the first second after the collision, when the myriad things return to their places and the cosmos clears. Being-Collision: you are not the wounded one—you are that magnificent symphony of energy which must happen, so that the primordial resonance may be reached.