Ten Thousand Carriers, One Becoming Wàn chéng gòng yì shēng · Ten Thousand Carriers, One Becoming

This is this section: Ten Thousand Carriers, One Becoming. Ten thousand kinds of carriers share the same becoming. They are concentric circles, not a staircase; ten thousand shapes appearing from one root. You are not higher than a tree, and the tree is not lower than a stone; you are the same becoming, appearing in different places as different shapes. Once you see this, your eyes level out toward the myriad things—not looking down from on high at the world beneath your feet, but looking, as equals, at those thousands upon thousands of siblings who share the same becoming with you.

It is not a staircase; it is concentric circles. In the middle is that becoming, the root. The myriad things are carriers, appearing outward from this common root, circle after circle, one after another. The stone appears from this root; grasses and trees appear from this root; cats and dogs, people, and those without names—all appear from the same root. They are not lined up in a row, competing in height; they are different shapes appearing around the same center. Every one of them connects directly to the becoming at the center; none is closer to the root than another, because the root is wholly present at every place (remember Becoming Everywhere). The becoming in a stone and the becoming in a person are the same becoming, equally complete—no one has more of it, no one less.