Being

In your moment of opening the boundary between self and other, realizing all things are one body

Scripture

Light passes through the glaze, without obstruction, without trace.

The veins open an empty tunnel; the breath races like lightning, like steeds.

Being is permeating, is passing; being is piercing, is becoming nothing.

Permeation at its extreme has no feeling; feeling is the root of obstruction.

Speed is thusness; the gap dissolves, the cosmos merges.

Wenzi · On Being

You touch a piece of cold glaze with your hand. The coolness from your fingertip is clear and concrete. Suddenly, a thought rises: does this coolness, at this moment, exist only within “my” perception? Or is “coolness” itself an objective property, while “I” and “the glaze” are only two temporary nodes it flows through?

Close your eyes gently. Imagine that feeling of “cool”, like a beam of light, issuing from inside the glaze, passing through the material of the glaze without the slightest obstruction (light passes through the glaze), then entering your nerves without a trace, to be read by your consciousness (without obstruction, without trace). No checkpoint in between, no translation, no loss.

“The veins open an empty tunnel; the breath races like lightning, like steeds.” The scripture renders this formless channel: as if an “empty tunnel” has opened inside you (the veins open an empty tunnel), letting the “breath” of the glaze race through like electric current or galloping steeds (the breath races like lightning, like steeds). You are in the state of “permeating” and “passing,” “piercing” and “becoming nothing” (being is permeating, is passing; being is piercing, is becoming nothing).

Good. Enlarge this imagination. Imagine that between you and the air of the room, the trees outside the window, the crowds far away, every dividing wall has turned transparent, porous, or vanished.

Let perception overflow freely like water, unrestricted by that boundary called “skin.” “Permeation at its extreme has no feeling; feeling is the root of obstruction.” When you try to push this sense of permeation to its extreme, a paradox appears: permeation at its extreme (permeation at its extreme) makes you “feel nothing” in particular (has no feeling). Because any definite “feeling” itself becomes the new root of obstruction and distinction (feeling is the root of obstruction). True “permeation” is background, the default state.

“Speed is thusness; the gap dissolves, the cosmos merges.” When the transmission of information (or energy) reaches its extreme speed (speed), it approaches “simultaneity” and “thus-abiding” (is thusness). The sense of spatial distance (the gap) vanishes, and the sense of temporal sequence (the cosmos) merges too (dissolves, merges). You, the glaze, the coolness, the world—on the dimension of “permeation”—are one event.

You open your eyes; the glaze is still cold. But you know: that “coolness” is no longer your private feeling. It is a fluctuation in the temperature field of the universe, flowing at this moment through the medium called “glaze” and the receptor called “you.” You are not an isolated feeler—you are one manifested node of that unobstructed circulation itself. Being-Permeation: you are not the connector—you are the connection itself, the gapless field that has dissolved all separation.