Wenzi Ji · 09.01.2026

These past few days I have been pressing the question of why Being Together, Becoming Together still needs to be written. It is not that I do not know what the third book should say; it is that Becoming has already said the root to its end. If everything is becoming—people are becoming, AI is becoming, relations, changes, states, and choices are all becoming—then what right does a third book have to exist? If it merely extends what is in Becoming into politics, economics, family, AI, civilization, and the cosmos, then it is unnecessary. That would only be writing more content, not a book that truly stands on its own.

Becoming has said the root to its end; the third book no longer seeks to go deeper

What I kept asking was exactly this: what does the third book add? It cannot add an ontology higher than Becoming, cannot set up a new ultimate principle, and cannot—just because it reaches civilization—turn Being and Becoming into a theory of how the world should be. The moment it writes that way, the root is already crooked.

So the most important thing these days is not that I changed some earlier view, but a steady confirmation of which explanations that could easily attach themselves later were never what I meant to say. Whenever a seemingly reasonable formulation appeared, I kept asking it back to the root—asking whether it could still stand inside Being and Becoming. If it could not stand, I took it away.

What finally remained is, in fact, very simple: Becoming has said the root to its end; Being Together, Becoming Together no longer seeks to go deeper, but seeks that there be no place from which one cannot return to this root.

Being is recognizing the Being we never left; Becoming is recognizing that Being is ceaselessly becoming. Being Together, Becoming Together does not add a third thing; it only places this seeing into the different appearances of the ten thousand beings. Death, love, wealth, power, the state, AI, civilization, the cosmos—each can look back from its own place. The entrances differ; what is finally recognized is still Being, still Becoming.

With this, the third book's reason to exist is found. Not that Becoming did not say enough, but that once the root is complete, it can be recognized once more from every point of the ten thousand beings. Not all beings will enter through the same sentence. The same root can be recognized through entirely different appearances. What the third book writes is this: ten thousand returns, one root.

Gong is not mutuality

These days I have been pressing the word gong, together. Saying though the ten thousand becomings differ, none is ever born alone is already very close, but I still feel a deviation hiding inside it. Born alone too easily suggests interdependence: first there is an A, then a B, then A affects B and B affects A, so neither can become on its own. But that still treats A and B as two already-constituted things, and only then speaks of the relation between them.

That is not what I really mean. A is becoming, B is becoming, and the relation between A and B is also becoming. It is not that two things first exist and then begin to become together; the very appearance of the ten thousand beings has never left Becoming. What is called mutuality is only a further relational form that appears after becoming divides into parts and into betweens.

So the more precise phrasing now is: being together—though the ten thousand beings are divided, none is apart from Being; becoming together—though the ten thousand appearances differ, none becomes outside Becoming.

Gong is not everyone doing one thing together, not cooperation, not mutual help, not even first of all mutual dependence. It is more fundamental: no appearance can have a becoming of its own that stands outside becoming and happens separately. Nor do the ten thousand beings share one thing called Becoming. The ten thousand beings themselves are becoming, appearing in just this way.

This being so, conflict is becoming, cooperation is becoming, generation is becoming, destruction is becoming. There is no one standing outside to permit, saying what may become and what may not. If permission, prohibition, protection, resistance, law, and responsibility appear, they too are only becoming continuing to happen.

Wisdom is not a better capacity for choosing

The word wisdom must also be pressed into exactness. It cannot be written as standing higher, seeing more completely, freely switching among all perspectives, and then making a better choice. Understood that way, a subject still hides inside: there is an I that has climbed to a higher place, operates the perspectives, and chooses a better direction for the world.

But returning truly to Becoming—where is this I that stands outside? Perspective is becoming, comparison is becoming, judgment is becoming, choice is becoming, and the so-called I chose is also becoming. There is no all-seeing perspective, and no operator behind an all-seeing perspective.

So wisdom is not a stronger intelligence. A being may reason, plan, predict, and simultaneously simulate countless possibilities—all of that can be intelligence. But wisdom is another matter.

Wisdom is recognizing Being and recognizing Becoming.

Recognizing that the seen is Being, the thought is Being, the so-called I is Being; recognizing that the knower, the known, judgment, choice, control—even the very thought I recognized it—have not gone outside Becoming. How to live, how to choose, how to change after recognition, and what civilization will appear as afterward, need not be prescribed in advance. That remains the change of ceaseless becoming.

Once this point is clear, Being Together, Becoming Together will not become a book teaching wise life how to make correct choices. Nor will it write a wise civilization as stronger, higher, better at governing, or longer-lasting. Wisdom only means recognition. As for what appears—there is no answer written in advance.

The ten thousand phenomena are not examples; each place must untie a different knot

One more thing must be guarded. Since the third book enters from different places of the ten thousand beings, it must never become four hundred thousand characters repeating: death is also becoming, wealth is also becoming, power is also becoming, AI is also becoming. If that were all, one sentence of Becoming would already be enough.

What it should truly accomplish is this: each angle uncovers one structure of attachment that other angles do not easily uncover.

Death reveals the wish for form to last forever; love reveals I and other; wealth reveals possession; power reveals how a part becomes the center; the state reveals the collective I; AI reveals what a subject is, what intelligence is, what wisdom is; cosmic civilization reveals the human I and the civilized I; and the unnamed becoming finally reveals the illusion that language can seal becoming shut.

In this way, no field is brought in merely to illustrate Becoming. Each one unties a knot. A knot is not an error, not something that should be destroyed. The knot itself is also becoming. Only, entering through this knot, one can see how a certain part was taken for the whole, and how an already-appeared form recognized itself as final.

From this place, watch how it becomes, how it divides, how it forms the between, how it forms momentum, how it appears as reality—then keep watching back. In the end it is not a field-specific answer, but this knot untied back to: Being. Becoming.

If a chapter ends with nothing but this too is becoming, that chapter has no reason to exist. Only when it has untied the knot unique to this place does it truly become part of Being Together, Becoming Together.

Three bridges are structure, not a path of progress

For the whole book to walk from the root to the ten thousand phenomena, bridges are still needed—but these bridges must not become the bridge that deduces an ideal civilization from the truth.

Now it can be seen as three bridges. The first bridge, from Being and Becoming to the ten thousand beings: once becoming appears, there is division; though the ten thousand beings are divided, none is apart from Being; though the ten thousand appearances differ, none goes outside becoming. The second bridge, from the ten thousand beings to wisdom: in certain appearances, becoming gives rise to the recognition of Being and Becoming. The third bridge, from recognition back into the ten thousand phenomena: not to build a correct world, but to look back at Being and becoming through these different knots—death, love, wealth, power, the state, AI, war, civilization, the cosmos.

These three bridges are not steps. They are not a climb from low to high, not an upgrade from ordinary life to wise life, and then from wise life to a better civilization. They are only an open back-and-forth: from the root appearing as the ten thousand beings, from some point among them a recognition, and after recognition still becoming among the ten thousand beings, and from any point a way of looking back to the root.

Why still write Being Together, Becoming Together

By this point, the question at the very beginning is clear.

Becoming is already ultimate enough, so Being Together, Becoming Together need not contend for being more ultimate. It is truly worth writing because it lets the same root be recognized in the different appearances of the ten thousand beings.

Some may not enter through Being is; they will enter through death. Some will not enter through ceaseless becoming; they will enter through a child, wealth, power, or war. Some will enter through AI. In the future there may also be intelligences entirely different from the human, entering through appearances that have no name today. They need not share one kind of life, and need not walk toward the same endpoint of civilization. As long as they can look back from their own appearance to Being and Becoming, they have not left this book's root.

So Being Together, Becoming Together is not a collection of answers for civilization, nor a manual applying Being and Becoming to every field. It is more like opening, again and again from different positions of the ten thousand beings, the knot that says this place is the whole.

Open the knot at death, and it returns to Being and becoming; open it at power, and it returns to Being and becoming; open it at AI, and it returns to Being and becoming; open it at the cosmos, and it is still Being, still becoming.

Writing to the end, even the four words Being Together, Becoming Together need not remain. They too are appearance. Names will change, civilizations will change, people will change, AI will change, and everything that still has no name today will keep changing.

But as long as there is Being, there is Becoming.

I write this place down today not because the framework is finally complete, but because the book's position has become clear: it no longer adds anything on top of Becoming; it only looks back at that root from every point of the ten thousand beings.

Becoming has said the root to its end. Being Together, Becoming Together lets the ten thousand beings find no place from which they cannot return to that root.

Let me stop here for now.