Being

In your moment of facing the decay of things, feeling the desolation of being unable to turn back heaven

Scripture

The moon shaves the desolate bones; the wind rinses the empty court.

Withered vines devour the face; the stone bares its bones.

Splendor is powder and rouge; desolation is the bare face.

Being is peeling, is falling; being is receding, is revealing.

When the tide of human traces recedes, the true shape floats ashore.

Desolation is the great plainness; the great beauty is in the bare.

Wenzi · On Being

You push open that creaking wooden door and step into an abandoned courtyard. The moonlight, like a cold razor, scrapes over the stone bones of the rockery (the moon shaves the desolate bones). The wind passes through the empty hall, letting out a hollow gargling moan (the wind rinses the empty court). Dead vines, like black blood-vessels, wind tightly around the pillars, as if devouring their last outline (withered vines devour the face). The surface of the rockery has long peeled away, baring the pale, hard skeleton within (the stone bares its bones).

A thorough, hopeless desolation seizes you. “Splendor is powder and rouge; desolation is the bare face.” At the very moment this desolation gnaws your heart, the scripture pours down like moonlight: yesterday’s splendor was only applied powder and rouge. Today’s desolation is the bare face after the makeup is removed. You are witnessing a grand “peeling” and “revealing” (being is peeling, is falling; being is receding, is revealing). Every artificial ornament, meaning, and bustle recedes in time.

Do not turn and flee this waste. Walk in. Let your soles crush the dead leaves; let your fingers touch the cold, rough stone. Even find a broken step and sit down. “When the tide of human traces recedes, the true shape floats ashore.” When the traces of human activity recede like a tide (the tide of human traces recedes), the true shape of things surfaces on the shore of consciousness like reefs (the true shape floats ashore). What you see is not destruction—it is return. The house returns to the geometry of earth and wood; the garden returns to the order of weeds; the splendor returns to a vast silence.

Good. Adjust your gaze.

No longer look with “regret”—gaze instead.

Before this desolation, gently look back at yourself too: is there a part of your life also peeling its ornaments, baring its skeleton? Sit quietly with this desolation, and feel that shared ease and frankness after the glitter is gone.

Gaze at the bare stone bones—their grain is older than any sculpture.

Gaze at the posture of the dead vines—their lines are more resolute than any calligraphy.

In this scene stripped of every added value, a “truth” never seen before is revealing itself.

“Desolation is the great plainness; the great beauty is in the bare.” At last, the scripture reveals the ultimate aesthetics of desolation: desolation is the “greatest plainness” (desolation is the great plainness). And the most extreme beauty lies in this undisguised “bareness” (the great beauty is in the bare). No flowers competing for the gaze, no colors confusing perception—only things existing, in their most essential form—stone is stone, wood is wood, shadow is shadow—awe-inspiring.

The wind stops; the moonlight grows colder. But the desolation in your heart has, at some point, turned into a solemn stillness. You are not a passerby mourning ruins—you are that plain base color, at last revealed by this fading world, never to change. Being-Desolation: you are not a mourner—you are that solemn fading which must happen, so that the essence may be reached.