Being
In your moment of dissolving the small self, flowing into the vast sea of existence
Scripture
A thousand rivers bear names; the sea, silent, is swallowing.
Sweet rivers, sour streams; the salty silence holds them in one lap.
Being is in confluence, is in forgetting; being is in difference, is in dissolving.
Neither river nor sea; being is in difference, is in oneness.
Confluence at its extreme; the sea forgets its receiving.
The river forgets its name; the great silence covers like a quilt.
Wenzi · On Being
You stand at the estuary of a great river. Behind you, a thousand named rivers flow (a thousand rivers bear names): the Yellow River surging, the Yangtze vast, the brooks clear and shallow… each carrying its own memory—the chill of the plateau, the sweetness of the forest, the sourness of the factories, the bitterness of the farmland (sweet rivers, sour streams). They clamor, compete, and tell their own stories.
You look ahead: the boundless, silent sea (the sea, silent, is swallowing). It does not speak; it only opens its arms and receives all. The salty seawater (the salty silence) draws the ten thousand flavors into one lap, turning them into one deep saltiness (holds them in one lap).
“Being is in confluence, is in forgetting; being is in difference, is in dissolving.” You are in the midst of “confluence” and “forgetting,” “difference” and “dissolving” (being is in confluence, is in forgetting; being is in difference, is in dissolving). The identity of the river dissolves here; the unique flavors neutralize here. You are not that river about to disappear—you are the “flowing in” happening now.
Now, take one long, deep breath. As you inhale, imagine you breathe in the memories, colors, and flavors of all the rivers. As you exhale, imagine you slowly breathe all this into that silent sea. Let yourself become that blurred, transitional boundary of the estuary. “Neither river nor sea; being is in difference, is in oneness.” Gradually, you find you are neither that named “river” nor that nameless “sea” (neither river nor sea). You are at once in “difference” and in “oneness” (being is in difference, is in oneness). You are the process where difference disappears, the site where oneness reveals itself.
“Confluence at its extreme; the sea forgets its receiving.” When the confluence reaches its extreme (confluence at its extreme), a deeper stillness descends: even the sea has “forgotten” that it is “receiving” (the sea forgets its receiving). The concepts of receiver and received both dissolve. No giving, no receiving—only the undivided “existence.”
“The river forgets its name; the great silence covers like a quilt.” At the same time, the river has thoroughly “forgotten” its own name (the river forgets its name). The clamor rests; all sounds fall silent. A “great silence,” like a warm quilt, covers everything (the great silence covers like a quilt). The mind of distinction is extinguished; only the stillness of the same-body great compassion—the great Being—remains.
You stand on the bank—or are no longer on the bank.
At the meeting of river and sea, one vast blank.
You know: the endless clamor and the unique flavors
will in the end all return to this wordless salty silence.
You are not the river flowing into the sea—
you are that confluence itself, that deep and warm
infinite silence covering all that is.
Being-Confluence: you are not the dissolving one—you are that boundless salty silence, the nameless vastness which every rushing river must at last arrive at.