Your Original Face

There’s a Zen koan that goes something like this, “Quick, giving no thought to good or evil, what was your original face … before your parents were born? The Zen student, upon receiving a koan from the Zen master, must answer.

Try it for yourself, quick! Giving no thought to good or evil, what was your original face … before your parents were born?

What did you notice? When I am faced with this koan, the first thing I notice is that I cannot be quick in responding. The koan succeeds in knocking me off my usual center. My original face? What does that mean? Before my parents were born? When was that? How long before my parents were born? I must fail. Immediately. I’ve already taken too long to respond. The master is delighted!

Zen koans are designed to interrupt our usual way of understanding our existence because Zen masters realized that “our usual way” is really no way to live an enriched, not to mention, a spiritual life. In fact, my usual way of understanding my existence is not “my” way at all. I have inherited a set of understandings that are completely unoriginal to me and have nothing to do with my experience of the world. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, on its face … it’s an efficient way of learning (that which another wants me to learn.) For example, if my mother doesn’t want me to burn my hand, she will teach me not to touch fire. It’s a lesson worth learning and if we can learn it without suffering the pain of experience, why not?

Why not? Quick, giving no thought to good or evil … why not learn from another’s warning to keep your hand out of the fire? This is not a koan. You can come up with a pretty good answer in very short order but notice that this question arose from the original koan which challenged the ordinary, your cultural norm.

Quick! What is the value of challenging your cultural norm?

Contemplative disciplines from around the world, from Buddhism to Christianity offer an answer to that question. And they don’t want you to take their word for it. They point out that personal experience is the greatest of all teachers. They offer, in fact, that the absence of personal experience removes us from living our own reality in the moment. Instead, we become habituated to a reality that is taught to us, often by well-meaning others. Sadly, though, this habit of accepting another’s reality as our own makes us vulnerable to manipulations by those who do not have our best interest in mind. Not to mention, it’s just not fun.

Quick, giving no thought to good or evil, what is the outcome of habitually accepting reality as defined by another?

~ Namaste ~