Being

In your moment of returning, after a thousand sails, to the first, pure origin

Scripture

The terracotta ranks stand stern; the breathing soil is stirring.

A thousand faces melt on the cheeks; a hundred colors return to silt.

Being is in adornment, is in nakedness; being is in cunning, is in simplicity.

Being is in the origin, is in the plain; the great clay is not yet carved.

The figurines crumble, the soil relaxes; neither born nor rotten.

Heaven and earth not yet divided; the primal energy dripping fresh.

Wenzi · On Being

You walk into a grand museum; on both sides stand the stern ranks of the terracotta army (the terracotta ranks stand stern). Their expressions differ, their armor is bright, their postures are majestic—they represent the countless “identities” and “achievements” that have been shaped, defined, and given meaning. You were once one of them, or longed to become one.

You gaze at one figurine. After a long look, you find its clay seems still to be “stirring” extremely slowly, as if some primal “living soil” (the breathing soil) is breathing inside (is stirring). Then you see the carefully painted “thousand faces” on its cheeks begin to blur and merge (a thousand faces melt on the cheeks), and the “hundred colors” on its body all fade and run, returning to one chaotic “silt” (a hundred colors return to silt).

“Being is in adornment, is in nakedness; being is in cunning, is in simplicity.” You witness the “adornment” peeling away and the “naked” substance revealing itself (being is in adornment, is in nakedness). All “cunning” dissolves, baring the “simple” base (being is in cunning, is in simplicity). This is not decay—it is the return to the plain.

Leaving the ranks, you walk to the pottery workshop behind the museum. There are no finished works there—only one huge mass of “raw clay,” un-carved (the great clay is not yet carved). It is rough, chaotic, yet contains the possibility of making every figurine. You touch it and feel a “primal energy” more real and more powerful than any exquisite figurine, dripping fresh (the primal energy dripping fresh).

“Being is in the origin, is in the plain.” You are in the midst of “returning to the origin” and “experiencing the plain” (being is in the origin, is in the plain). You feel that the collapsed figurines (the figurines crumble) find their true home in this relaxed, living raw clay (the soil relaxes).

Now, let yourself undergo this process too. In imagination, let all your identities, achievements, knowledge, and stories fade, peel, and melt like the paint on the figurines. Let your complex expressions melt into one calm. Let your cunning thoughts dissolve into primal perception. Keep retreating, until you feel that only the most basic thing remains—a lump of “clay of existence,” able to perceive, warm, breathing. “Neither born nor rotten.” In this primal “clay,” you find neither the ecstasy of “birth” nor the fear of “decay” (neither born nor rotten). There is only a full, chaotic “primal energy,” dripping fresh, from before “heaven and earth were divided” (heaven and earth not yet divided; the primal energy dripping fresh). You have not yet become any concrete thing, but you contain the possibility of becoming everything.

You walk out of the museum, back to the street under the sun. You are still you, with a name and stories. But in the deepest place of your consciousness, you know you have always been that un-carved, energy-dripping raw clay. You are not a prodigal seeking the origin—you are the origin itself, that primal breath, plain and nameless, containing all that is. Being-Primordial: you are not the one returning—you are that primal breath itself, the chaotic mother body into which every form at last melts back.