your original face

Hui-neng (638-713), asked “Without making good or bad in that moment, what is your original face before your parents were born?”

He is asking us what is our original face before any ideas, images, feelings that you have been carrying like so much baggage.

When we look into this question, which means to actually ask yourself “What is your original face before our parents were even born?” we are thrown back on our most primal, pristine self. Just in that moment of asking honestly and deeply.

In that moment’s asking we open a door into one instant of total freedom, uncluttered and unhindered by our mind and personal history.

If we are sincere and ask without expectation, just see–there is nothing to heal, no self which needs improvement, or which could be improved. We return in that instant to our original self.

When you perceive that for one instant, wait a while, and ask again. See how the mind wants to control or own the process. Drop all that.

We begin to see how much we are carrying around. And we also see how one single vertical stroke takes us out of that stuff’s gravitational pull.

In one instant.

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

Karl Renz has a nice answer: “You are that which is prior to any kind of peace or conflict, prior to every sensation, perception, or concept. All this appears and disappears within you. Longing and seeking are also part of these appearances. You don’t need the fulfillment of any kind of seeking in order to be what you already are. For this, nothing has to come and nothing has to go. You yourself are the fulfillment.”