Being

In your moment of transcending the bonds of time, living in the eternal present

Scripture

The morning dew is not yet dried; the sea has already turned to fields.

The fetal stirring is not yet stilled; the grave-grass is already green.

Neither before nor after; beginning and end link mouths.

Being is in eternity, is in the loop; being is in the now, is in the round.

Going out and entering share one pivot; nothing passes, nothing dwells.

What is ancient, what is coming? The wall of now is carved forever.

Wenzi · On Being

You open a family album and run your finger over your great-grandfather’s stiff collar, your father’s youthful brows, your own childhood smile missing a front tooth… Suddenly, your finger stops at a yellowed baby photograph—who is that? You, or your child? A vertigo of time seizes you.

These faces, these lives—they exist in this album at the same time. Your great-grandfather’s severity, your childhood innocence, your child’s tenderness—between the turnings of your finger, they seem to breathe at once.

“The morning dew is not yet dried; the sea has already turned to fields.” The scripture sounds like one long sigh: the morning dew has not yet been dried by the sun (the morning dew is not yet dried), while the sea it belongs to has long since turned into mulberry fields (the sea has already turned to fields). The fastest-passing and the slowest-changing overlap in this moment of perception. The photo under your finger is at once the dew and the sea.

Now, do an experiment. Close the album. But do not close that feeling of “simultaneity.” Bring this feeling into your present breath. Inhale—feel that what you breathe in is not only this moment’s air, but the air your great-grandfather breathed, your father breathed, your child will breathe… all of it.

Exhale—feel that what you breathe out is the same thread of breath, passing through every layer of time. “The fetal stirring is not yet stilled; the grave-grass is already green.” A still more startling image is pointed out by the scripture: the heartbeat of the fetus in the womb has not yet calmed (the fetal stirring is not yet stilled), while the grass on his grave is already flourishing (the grave-grass is already green). Birth and death, starting point and endpoint, are not two points on a line, but adjacent arcs on one ring. You perceive at once the pulse of the fetal stirring and the swaying of the grass.

Good. Sink deeper into this ring. You are not a point on the timeline, reviewing the past or worrying about the future. You are the ring itself. Past, present, and future are different arcs on your circumference, and you are the wholeness containing every arc.

“Neither before nor after; beginning and end link mouths.” And so you understand: there is no absolute “before,” nor absolute “after” (neither before nor after). Beginning and end, like the snake biting its own tail, join mouth to mouth (beginning and end link mouths). The birth of your child is another continuation of your great-grandfather’s death; every breath of yours is the echo of ancient algae’s breathing.

“Being is in eternity, is in the loop; being is in the now, is in the round.” You are in the midst of “eternity” and “cycling,” “the now” and “the round” (being is in eternity, is in the loop; being is in the now, is in the round). Eternity is not infinitely long time—it is the ring-structure of time seen through; the now is not one slice of the timeline, but the one true point of contact where the whole ring of time is tangent to you.

Feel this “point of contact.”

It is nowhere else.

It is this very moment, as you read these words.

It is inside this one beat of your heart.

Within this one beat are contained all heartbeats—past, future, others’, the universe’s—their every pulse.

“Going out and entering share one pivot; nothing passes, nothing dwells.” In-breath and out-breath share one pivot (going out and entering share one pivot). Nothing truly passes away (nothing passes), and nothing truly dwells (nothing dwells). There is only the surging of waves, and you are the whole ocean. The feeling of passing away is a wave thinking itself only a wave; the moment you know yourself as the ocean, you hold at once the birth and death of all waves.

“What is ancient, what is coming? The wall of now is carved forever.” So what is ancient? What is future? (What is ancient, what is coming?) All of them are carved for eternity upon this wall called the present (the wall of now is carved forever). The now is a stele engraved with every texture of time. Standing before the stele, you are not reading one of its lines—you are the silence of the whole stele, and the eye that reads every word.

The album lies quietly on the table.

The vertigo of time settles into a deep stillness.

You are not a traveler drifting through time,

you are the riverbed through which time flows.

That which rushes on unceasingly has never left you;

and you have never left this eternal now.

Being-Eternity is not living longer,

it is discovering: you were never in time.

It is time that flows within you.

And this very moment is the eternal instant in which its whole mystery reveals itself.