Being

In your moment of exhausted energy, when your force scatters outward without limit

Scripture

Warmth seeps into the cold night; heat flees toward the cold.

Sand leaks through the fingers; the grip holds nothing.

The more you want to keep it, the faster it goes; being is scattering, is thinning.

Scattered into the void, the void is my remains.

Dust turns to traces of light; the traces weave the curtain of heaven.

Wenzi · On Being

You sit under the lamp late at night, wanting to catch a thread of thought, or finish some small task. But your body feels like a pot of boiling water: the lid is closed, yet heat hisses out through countless invisible seams. You feel the warmth (warmth) seeping irreversibly into the surrounding cold night (seeps into the cold night), and the heat of life (heat) fleeing toward the icy void (flees toward the cold). You want to hold something—like gripping a handful of sand, but the sand leaks through your fingers, and the palm holds nothing (sand leaks through the fingers; the grip holds nothing).

“The more you want to keep it, the faster it goes; being is scattering, is thinning.” The more you want to keep it, the faster it disperses (the more you want to keep it, the faster it goes). You are in a state of “scattering” and “thinning” (being is scattering, is thinning). Energy is not being taken from you—it flows toward the void of itself, evenly, as if the purpose of your existence were this quiet dissipation.

Do not fight this dispersal. That is pouring oil on fire. Instead, do something more thorough: stop every attempt to “grasp.” Open all your senses, all your pores, all your mental defenses. Allow this “scattering” to happen. Even, in consciousness, gently push it. Imagine that each exhale turns the accumulated weariness and stray thoughts inside you into faint light, sent into the boundless night sky.

Imagine yourself a mass of luminous mist, gently dissolving into the darkness.

“Scattered into the void, the void is my remains.”

When you no longer resist but take part in this dispersal, the scripture confirms an astonishing transformation: that “void” which seems to swallow you (scattered into the void) is exactly your “body” after diffusion (the void is my remains). You are not vanishing—you are changing your form of existence, from shaped condensation to formless pervasion. Your boundary is disappearing, but your “being” has not diminished; it has simply become boundless.

“Dust turns to traces of light; the traces weave the curtain of heaven.” Continue this awareness: those motes of energy (dust) that “scatter” out of you have not been annihilated. They have turned into traces of light (turn to traces of light), and these traces of light are weaving the curtain that covers the heavens (the traces weave the curtain of heaven). Every unconscious expenditure of yours adds a hidden, dazzling grain to the curtain of the universe.

The feeling of being drained is still there, but no longer accompanied by anxiety. You feel a light, pervading sense of existence. You are not a lone lamp about to burn out—you are that transparent being which scatters itself to connect with all that is, and keeps its lucid awareness within the infinite. Being-Dispersal: you are not the exhausted one—you are that dance of light-dust, gladly performed so that you may merge into the infinite.