Being

In your moment of finding the fulcrum of life, moving with ease within tension

Scripture

The peaks contend for the sky; the mercury pours, planing.

Being is rising, is leveling; being is convex, is concave.

The mountain’s bones are softening; the valleys are filling full.

Being is leveling, is shaving; being is in severity, is in dissolving.

The great iron leaves no crease; the myriad scenes share one level.

Neither rising nor sinking; the earth’s garment has no fold.

Wenzi · On Being

You try to stand firm on this rolling terrain, but you stumble. On the left, jagged peaks contend to pierce the sky (the peaks contend for the sky); on the right, deep gorges seem to swallow the earth. Your left foot wants to climb, your right foot wants to sink; your body is torn. Pulled by these two opposite forces, you are about to split open.

At this moment you see a silvery liquid (mercury), pouring down from the heights into the gorges (the mercury pours, planing). It favors neither side; following gravity and terrain, it fills the concavities and shaves the convexities (planing). Wherever it passes, the too-high is “shaved” level (is shaving), the too-low is “filled” full (the valleys are filling full). This is not destruction—it is a cosmic will tending toward “balance.”

“Being is convex, is concave. The mountain’s bones are softening; the valleys are filling full.” You see that the protruding mountain bones, soaked by the liquid, seem to “soften” (the mountain’s bones are softening), and the sunken gorges gradually grow “full” in the filling (the valleys are filling full). Everything is being “leveled” by some greater force (being is leveling).

Do not resist the tension on either side.

Feel them. And at the same time feel the very center of your body—

that invisible, vertical central axis.

Anchor your consciousness firmly on this central axis.

Then allow the left-right tension to exist, without being carried away by it.

You become that central axis, that “fulcrum.”

“Being is in severity, is in dissolving. The great iron leaves no crease; the myriad scenes share one level.”

That leveling force seems severe (being is in severity), but in truth it is “dissolving” the unevenness (is in dissolving). It is like a giant “iron” (the great iron): wherever it passes, it leaves no trace of creases (leaves no crease). Its purpose is to give the myriad things one shared horizontal “level-mark” (the myriad scenes share one level).

“Neither rising nor sinking; the earth’s garment has no fold.” At last, when the balance is reached, nothing is deliberately “rising” and nothing is forced to “sink” (neither rising nor sinking). The whole earth is like a well-pressed “garment,” without one extra “fold” (the earth’s garment has no fold). Dynamic tension, on a higher dimension, has condensed into static, perfect balance.

The pulling has vanished. You stand on the level ground, steady and light. You are not a sacrifice struggling between two opposing forces—you are that central axis, that flowing mercury, that great iron, the axis of balance by which tension appears and at last returns to stillness. Being-Levelness: you are not the mediator—you are that balance itself, the cosmic baseline by which all that is tends toward harmony within tension.