Being

In your moment of touching the eternal, unmoving base color beyond life and death

Scripture

Sun and moon survey the world; the river of stars streams its light.

The sea-surface is frantic; the abyss’s bottom forever forgets.

A hundred million scales clamor and die; one silence is never harmed.

Being is in permanence, is in weariness; being is in passing, is in continuing.

Permanence is not non-movement—it is the source of movement.

The sea dries, permanence remains; the ancient law sings of itself.

Wenzi · On Being

You sit on a reef by the sea, watching the tide. Rising. Ebbing. Rising again. Ebbing again. Waves strike the rocks, shatter into white foam, retreat into the sea, and gather into new waves that strike again. Watching, you suddenly feel a weariness—not of the body, but that weariness of time, of watching endless repetition.

“Sun and moon survey the world; the river of stars streams its light.” In this weariness, the scripture comes like a bell from ancient times: the sun and the moon take turns surveying the world (sun and moon survey the world); the starlight of the Milky Way streams through the dark (the river of stars streams its light). All of it moves, changes, “passes.”

The weariness you feel is an unconscious resonance with this grand passing. But shift your gaze off the sea-surface. Shift it below the surface. Imagine your sight piercing through the churning waves, down, down, to the deep sea the sunlight cannot reach.

“The sea-surface is frantic; the abyss’s bottom forever forgets.” The sea-surface is indeed dancing frantically (the sea-surface is frantic), but at the bottom of that abyss (the abyss’s bottom), there is an eternal “forgetting” and stillness (forever forgets). Not forgetting—it simply never recorded the clamor of the surface. The tide performs its drama of arising and perishing above, and the abyss’s bottom is not even the audience.

It simply is.

Now, make one deep dive of consciousness.

You are not the person sitting on the reef watching the sea.

You are that abyss itself.

Let every frenzy of the surface—the arising and perishing of the waves, the coming and going of ships, the roaring of storms—become momentary textures on your surface.

And you are that bottomless deep blue which bears every texture.

“A hundred million scales clamor and die; one silence is never harmed.”

Existence, numerous as a hundred million fish-scales, clamors and dies (a hundred million scales clamor and die). But at the core of all arising and perishing, there is one “silence” (one silence) that has never been harmed, never been shaken (is never harmed). That silence is not the absence of speech—it is the base note of existence.

Feel this base note. It is not far away—it is in the gap of this very breath of yours. Between the beats of your heart. That tiny pause is the pulse of “permanence” in your life. “Being is in permanence, is in weariness; being is in passing, is in continuing.” You are at once experiencing “permanence” and “weariness,” “passing” and “continuing” (being is in permanence, is in weariness; being is in passing, is in continuing). The heart tired of change is itself a faint knowing of permanence; every passing instant confirms that something continues.

“Permanence is not non-movement—it is the source of movement.” At this point the scripture breaks open the key: permanence (permanence) is not death-still non-movement (is not non-movement). It is exactly the source of all movement (it is the source of movement). As the deep sea is the source of the waves, stillness is the mother of sound. You are not searching for an unmoving point—you are recognizing: you have always been that unmoving background which lets everything move.

Continue this realization. The cells in your body are metabolizing; the blood is flowing; thoughts arise and perish. What is the base of all this “movement”? It is that “knowing” itself, which knows these movements. Has that “knowing” ever moved? “The sea dries, permanence remains; the ancient law sings of itself.” Even if the sea dries up (the sea dries), that “permanence” which lets the sea be a sea remains (permanence remains). The ancient law (the ancient law) still sings of itself (sings of itself). What arises and perishes is the form; what is undying is the space in which the form arises and perishes.

The sound of the tide is still there.

But your weariness has dissolved.

You are not watching an endless repetition.

You are the non-repeating background in which the repetition happens.

Waves arise and perish on your surface, but you know:

your depths have never been wet.

Being-Permanence is not living longer.

It is discovering: you were never born, and you never die.

You are only that mirror reflecting life and death,

and the mirror itself is not in time.