05 Feb Koan 57

“What was your original face before your parents were born?”

— Hui-neng (638-713 CE), the Sixth Patriarch of Chan Buddhism in China (predecessor of Zen Buddhism)

My original face before my parents were born was my original face before my parents were born; it was what it was whatever it was. Thinking of it otherwise is an illusion.

The question declares the answer: What was my original face before my parents were born!

Before some thing is a this, that or who, it is unrecognizable and beyond description; a what as in “What is it? What is it!”

“What” implies a pre-conceptional reality.

The “what” is the soul; what every thing is before and after it is in the now.

“Mu!”* My original face before my parents were born was nothing but infinite potentials: the soul.

My original face before my parents were born is my true nature: the indescribable peace from oneness with the unmanifested soul.

*”Mu” means “no” or “nothing” in Japanese, a common response to koans.  “Mu” is a kind of emptiness; not a void, but devoid; like an empty room with the potential to be filled. “Mu” isn’t “no”, it’s challenging the framework of the question.