The Original Face

"What face did you have before your parents were born?"

This Zen koan is also called The Original Face. The meaning is that when you become awake, or enlightened, you meet your true self -- the empty self -- free of the baggage of years, of habits, and of unmet expectations. Gazing into the Original Face, the impossible is possible. Your parents become as your children, and you lose your name.

There are legends of Zen masters awakening to the Original Face. One sees it after looking at peach blossoms; another after hearing the splash of a frog jumping into a pond. A monk-in-training who eventually becomes known as the Second Patriarch, Shen-kuang ("Huike" in Japanese), sees it after cutting off his arm while standing in the snow. Whether blithe or excruciating, the way to the Original Face almost always involves experiencing spontaneity in nature.

Poet William Stafford writes,

"Sometimes in the open you look up
where birds go by, or just nothing,
and wait. A dim feeling comes
you were like this once, there was air,
and quiet; it was by a lake, or
maybe a river you were alert
as an otter and were suddenly born
like the evening star into wide
still worlds like this one you have found
again, for a moment, in the open."

--from "Atavism"

Being "suddenly born like the evening star" glimpses the moment as it is understood in Zen, which is not unlike the opening lines of William Blake's poem, "Infant Joy":

"I have no name; I am but two days old."

An important message of the koan is that everyone has an Original Face, but that there is no "right way" to discover it. Just because one person found it in the peach blossoms doesn't mean you will find it there. In fact, if you try to find it, you won't.

How do you know when you have seen the Original Face? Zen teaches that you will know on a deeper level than you know most things -- that is something you have to trust.