Being

In your moment of breathing with the universe, attaining the ultimate shared frequency

Scripture

A thousand pools each imprison a moon; one moon fills each in full.

When the pool shatters the moon shatters; when the pool levels the moon levels.

Being is in oneness, is in mirroring; being is in separation, is in welcoming.

Form and shadow extinguish each other; the two perish into solitude.

Oneness at its extreme; pool and moon both go blind.

Neither mirroring nor receiving; the empty mirror births itself.

Wenzi · On Being

You wander the hills at night and see a thousand pools scattered everywhere. Each pool imprisons a bright moon (a thousand pools each imprison a moon; one moon fills each in full). When the wind rises, the pool-water breaks, and the moon-shadow breaks with it (when the pool shatters the moon shatters). When the wind stops, the pool-water levels, and the moon-shadow returns to fullness (when the pool levels the moon levels). Watching this scene, a question surfaces: are there a thousand moons, or only one?

You walk up to one pool and gaze at the moon in the water. You are “looking” at the moon (being is in mirroring), and the moon is also “mirroring” you. Between you there is “separation” (is in separation), yet you are also “welcoming” each other (is in welcoming).

“Form and shadow extinguish each other; the two perish into solitude.” When you gaze to the extreme, trying to tell which is “form” (the true moon) and which is “shadow” (the moon-shadow), a strange thing happens: the concepts of “form” and “shadow” dissolve and extinguish each other (form and shadow extinguish each other). You and the moon—the “two”—both seem to “perish,” leaving only one lone, pure act of “seeing” itself (the two perish into solitude).

Do not fear this “loss.” Go deeper into it. Give up the distinction of “I am watching the moon.” Let yourself “become” that “seeing.” Then let this “seeing” cast itself at once onto the true moon in the sky and the moon-shadow in the water. Feel that in your “seeing,” they are equal, of one substance—both are manifestations of “light.”

“Oneness at its extreme; pool and moon both go blind.” When you push this “oneness” to its extreme (oneness at its extreme), a deeper realization comes: “pool” and “moon” have both gone “blind” (pool and moon both go blind). They no longer exist as separated “mirrorer” and “mirrored.” The pool has forgotten it is the reflector; the moon has forgotten it is the light-source. They simply co-constitute the one indivisible event of “moon mirrored in pool.”

“Neither mirroring nor receiving; the empty mirror births itself.” So this is not mere “mirroring,” nor mere “receiving” (neither mirroring nor receiving). It is, at the end where relations dissolve, a subject-less, object-less “empty mirror,” born of itself (the empty mirror births itself). You, the moon, the pool—all are momentary patterns on this empty mirror.

You raise your head: a thousand pools, a thousand moons, still in view. But you know: what lets the ten thousand moon-shadows arise and perish is the same undivided moonlight, and the same mindless mirroring. You are not the person watching the moon, nor the pool being mirrored—you are that silent empty mirror itself, which contains all distinctions yet transcends them. Being-Oneness: you are not the resonator—you are the resonance itself, the boundless field that lets the myriad things manifest oneness within difference.