What was my face before I was born.
Cinorjer
Veteran
What was my face before I was born?
I really want to know. It is my koan, my focus of this meditation. And as impossible as it seems; as nonsensical as the question appears to be -- there is an answer. And it's an important answer, to an important question. If you want to follow the path of Zen, you have to penetrate why it's such an important question.
What was my face before I was born?
The Sutras say I have been reborn many times. My Zen Teachers say I have to comprehend what is being reborn to understand the Dharma. The wise Teacher also says the question about my past life face is not theoretical, not philosophy, not a word game. It's a simple question and should have a simple answer. If someone was reborn as me, then that someone had a face. If that previous person is me, reborn, then I should know what I looked like. If not, then how can I say anything was reborn? It's a koan. It's a question that I must answer, impossible as it seems.
What was my face before I was born?
So I settle my mind on my past lives. How far back can I remember? Can I remember my past life? Of course not. I can't remember past my early childhood, even in this incarnation. I have scattered memories of a life growing up in a crowded, small cottage of a house. I don't remember being a baby, of course. I have no idea of what my face looked like then. But the person I am now would not exist if the baby did not feed and burp and poop and cry and laugh. I am not that baby, but that tiny bundle contained the seeds of what I am today. I was that baby, but now I am something else. Sometime between then and now the baby itself gave birth to the man.
What was my face before I was born?
So when can I say that I was born? When the baby appeared from the womb? Certainly. When the baby I was took his first steps and realized that those sounds coming from the big people meant something? Certainly. When my Grandmother died and I first experienced the eternal loss of death? Yes, definitely. When I hit puberty and first experienced the joy of sex? Oh, yes.
What was my face before I was born?
The koan doesn't ask what I looked like before I came from my mother's womb. It asks what my face was before I was born. Pay attention! I have been reborn over and over again in just this one brief lifetime, without realizing it. Only looking back do I see the process happening. For my current self, the illusion of permanence holds solid. The reality of life is that I am constantly being born. It is that simple. It is so simple, it's almost impossible to comprehend.
What was my face before I was born?
Why, it's the face I am looking at right now, in the empty mirror of my mind. Pleased to meet you.
So what was your face, before you were born? How do you answer the koan?
Comments
"Face" can sometimes confuse people. The simple question "What was I before I was conceived? Before my parents were even born?" works too. After all "face" implies a "who" rather than a what; and Who has been asked politely to leave the building!
You are reborn from momet to moment not only between lifes.
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EDIT: Sorry was snatched away before I could finish.
It is the experience right. So how to convey that? I always fall short on this part. I know the answer but cant display that I know. What then?
I think it displays in the way you see people, including yourself. We all have the potential to change in important and fundamental ways. Your actions give birth to who you are going to be the next moment.
There is either no true face or the true face is only the potential for faces.
jmho
Koan answers tend to be pithy and direct.
So personal reactions as opposed to public discourse are different.
There are a lot things to become aware of . . . many of us will be aware that our 'unique' sense of individual consciousness can not be found. There is no face that can be found without ties to biology, identity and other sense arisings, none of which are a real independent self.
You sits. Face your supposed being and . . . nothing . . . all stuff we associate with . . .
Unborn. No face.
"Don't know"!
Cease practice based
On intellectual understanding,
Pursuing words and
Following after speech.
Learn the backward
Step that turns
Your light inward
To illuminate within.
Body and mind of themselves
Will drop away
And your original face will be manifest.
— Dogen
Why does it say face? A face is easily recognizable whereas 'what is my stomach before I was born?' would evidently be a different question. Right? I am intuiting that there couldn't be a face without a vast amount of unrecognizable material that the face must interbe with.. Thus I would say the question is 'what can I recognize as me'. Can we even know our own face here and now?
What was your face before your thinking arose?
Heh. @jeffrey You might be overthinking it. A face is something we recognize as unique to ourselves, that's all. "What did you look like before you were born?"
Koans contain a mind hook, something that catches your attention and distracts you from the important part of the question. Once your mind tires of thrashing around on the hook, then you're able to step back and consider the koan as a whole.
In this case, you start out focusing on the face, on how impossible it is to know what our face looked like in previous lives. And taken at face value, it is. But then the tired, frustrated mind gives up on that, and you realize the important lesson in the koan is understanding what it means to be born. Then the phrase "before you were born" takes on new meaning. Then the koan does have an answer.
If you and I both know that we are constantly being born, then if you ask me to show you what I looked like before I was born?
"You already know," would be my answer. After all, you're sitting there looking at me.
And we bow and smile.
When you understand why that answer is true, you begin to penetrate the koan.
We would not be aware of a face before thinking. So we cannot say anything about it.
@Cinorjer, Perhaps I have my own answer just as I have my own face? What is your answer before it is born?
Kia Ora,
What was my face before I was
bornconditioned & commissioned ?Metta Shoshin .
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You're right; your answer will be expressed in whatever way your mind chooses to express your understanding. If you have a Zen Teacher who has given you the koan, then you test your answer against him (or her, now that we have women honored with Dharma Transmission in the West).
The entire purpose of Zen is to cut through words and hopefully gain an intuitive, direct understanding of the Self. That does not mean words are not useful. But I could give you entire pages of words about the philosophy of impermanence and the mind as a continuously generated pattern being reborn second by second, and so on. People would read it, perhaps nod their heads, and go back to arguing about whether or not reincarnation means you were a bug in a previous life. The reality of the empty self is such that it's as irrelevant as arguing over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Have some tea.
But penetrate the koan and you know this.
...Then the phrase "before you were born" takes on new meaning. Then the koan does have an answer.
So is this the "correct" answer to the koan, or your current answer, or one of many possible answers? I'm a little confused because I thought the point about koans was not having a correct answer? If so, then wouldn't the point to be to exhaust conceptual thought, rather than generating intellectual speculation about such possible answers, or exploring your personal interpretation of what "birth" means, and so on?
It is a misconception that koans have no correct answers. They have no logical answer based on conceptual thinking. Yes, they are designed to hook the mind and cause you to exhaust the part of the mind that contains your assumptions and beliefs. But that doesn't mean the purpose of the koan is to drive you out of your mind with frustration until you start babbling nonsense.
Trying to describe koans is almost a koan in itself...a meta-koan? It's more accurate to say koans have one correct answer that can be expressed in countless ways. Each koan has a specific point to make. The koan uses metaphor and a symbolic language to illustrate a Zen point.
Not all schools of Zen use the koans the same way. Some don't use them at all, preferring to cut to the chase and simply ask, "What am I?" Some schools ended up with a set of official, sanctioned koans and responses and it became a sort of ceremonial rite of passage, losing a lot of the effectiveness in my opinion.
IF you "get" the koan, then you know it's the right understanding in the same way you know the grass is green and the sky is blue. You've turned the koan inside out and upside down and scratched your head and it still looks like nonsense. But then you turn it sideways, look at it from a new, fresh angle, and suddenly it becomes clear. And knowing you have to do this doesn't help in the least bit. Your mind still insists on treating the world and the koan as a set of labels you've learned to substitute for the real thing. Frustrating.
I think that may be what people believe when they passed a koan or two.
But is it really the case? Is there a point? Then why disguise it as a koan? I can understand the explanation @Cinorjer gave. But if the explanation is the point; what’s the koan good for?
Some people say that if we solve one koan thoroughly, we solve them all.
I like that idea. A koan could maybe be seen as an explosive device or as a falling domino-stone; it spreads around not-knowing.
When we investigate the koan and when we expand the question; this one answer we can’t find kicks down every presumption that the question was based upon.
“Don’t believe a single thought.” (Ramana)
But is it really the case? Is there a point? Then why disguise it as a koan? I can understand the explanation @Cinorjer gave. But if the explanation is the point; what’s the koan good for?
I like that idea. A koan could maybe be seen as an explosive device or as a falling domino-stone; it spreads around not-knowing.
When we investigate the koan and when we expand the question; this one answer we can’t find kicks down every presumption that the question was based upon.
This koan comes to mind and it's commentary addresses some of these questions IMO.
I think this makes it clear that the explanation is not the point! If it were, then zen would not be something that is "outside the scriptures, not dependent on words and letters".
Now, if you "If you grasp Joshu's answer precisely, there is no Shakyamuni Buddha before you..." I have seen this interpreted as "you fully understand one, you understand them all"
However, I would add that if you understand them all, then you should easily be able to answer them all too. If one can not yet easily answer them all, then one has yet to fully understand the one.
"However, I would add that if you understand them all, then you should easily be able to answer them all too. If one can not yet easily answer them all, then one has yet to fully understand the one."@seeker242
That's beautiful, my friend.
I was gonna say my face before I was born was small, red, wet and wrinkly. In reading the OP I felt a lightening in my heart and one of those 'yes!' feelings and appreciate Cinorjer's revelation much more
.
What strikes me is that the answer one comes up with will largely depend on how one understands the question - the interpretations and assumptions involved. Is that partly the point?
No. The question is to be both answered and left alone. But the answer is personal, not 'public'. And may indeed change according to perception at that time; but it is also to remain unanswered, and merely pondered on.....
It is all very well debating such a matter on a forum, and asking questions about the question; but the question still remains unanswered, except by the individual. And need not be answered at all....
But @Cinorjer said that "It is a misconception that koans have no correct answers.", so I was wondering if there is a "correct" answer, and perhaps more importantly if there is a "correct" way of understanding the question.
Or is it just about the process, and if so what's the purpose of the process?
Everyone can come up with a 'correct answer', but I suspect that correct answer will only be correct for that person.
It's not 'just about the process' but the process is just about something and nothing. Rather like the painted circle. It contains everything you ever need to have, to progress to "Emptiness"... yet contains nothing at all. Within, without, it's all the same....
Perhaps it will help if you think of the answer to the question or koan as not requiring you pick from a multiple choice or "true or false" exam, but needs you to give a brief oral essay about the subject for your response? Nobody in the room will have the exact same words spoken (unless you copy what your neighbor did, which happens with koans) but they can all still be right and wrong to some degree or another. Does that make sense?
This is Zen. Transmission outside of scripture. We say there is no one correct response to a koan, because we're not asking you to memorize some speech or a page from a book and recite it back to me. That's what many people think is knowledge. They answer a question by reciting "this is what Buddha said" type answers. There is one right answer that way, because either the sutra says it or it doesn't. What you're being asked is "What is your understanding of the subject", not "what do the sutras say about it". And yes, even your understanding will change as you continue to practice.
I think this principle is best illustrated in the famous poetry contest that a Zen patriarch (Huineng) won. The monks were asked to write a brief poem demonstrating their understanding of the mind. The odds on favorite monk wrote that the mind is like a mirror reflecting reality that you must constantly clean of defilement. Huineng responded that even the mirror is empty, so there is nothing for defilement to cling to.
The head Master liked Huineng's answer best, according to the story, and made the monk his successor. But that didn't mean the first poem was wrong. In fact, that monk went on to found his own school of Chan. And Huineng didn't have his last great Satori or awakening to the Dharma until after he wrote his poem. To top it off, scholars now agree this contest didn't even happen, at least not as recorded, but was invented much later to illustrate the differences between the Northern and Southern schools of Chan.
So do you think one way of cutting through the confusion of what koans are about is to think of them as asking for a brief demonstration or performance on the subject of the koan, instead of asking you for a right answer? So this koan is about the nature of the mind, as are all of them. In this case, it's asking you to ponder our assumptions about what it means to be born and cut through the illusion of permanence so you actually comprehend the ongoing process. As beautifully stated above, all koans are one koan and each is asking "What are you?" in some form or another. This one deals with birth. Another famous one about clinging to a vine on a cliff and eating a strawberry is about death. Other koans present you with a slice of life and ask you to respond.
Birth, life, and death, it's all the same. It's just like this. That's Zen in a nutshell.
For koans, there is always a correct answer. When you go sit down with the zen master and he asks you to give him the correct answer, you can't just say whatever. You have to give him the correct answer or he will tell you to go away and come back with the correct answer and you won't progress to the next koan until you give him the correct answer.
But I'm reminded of what my teacher once said. He said "I could tell you all the answers to all the koans, but that still won't help you answer them". Which means it's not just about the answer but also about understanding the question, understanding the answer and understanding why the correct answer is the correct answer.
Kia Ora,
Trying to eff the ineffable is enough to blow ones (logical) mind, which is precisely what koans are meant to do....
"If there's something that is described in terms of language it leads to contradiction-The only things that exist are those which are ineffable and can be experienced with feelings!"
Now you can't explain why something is ineffable without talking about it...That's a plain contradiction...talking of the ineffable !
Alan Watts once said "I'm in the business of effing the ineffable" and for the most part I think he did quite a good job....
Metta Shoshin .
..
A pile of amorphous goo?
or "Nothing, yet everything, since there was and still is no shape or form"
I don't even know how I look like at this moment! When I look into a mirror, I only see what others see, a reflection, a mask. There many more things inside that I can never ever see. So who is the real me?
Kia Ora,
"There was a young [wo]man who said though, it would seem that I know that I know, what I would like to see is the "I" that knows me, when I know that I know that I know !"
Metta Shoshin .
..
It's a common complaint. It probably drove half the people in my meditation classes to come in and sit on a cushion, to judge by what they said when I'd begin by asking them why they came and what they hope to get out of it.
People need to "find themselves" so they can "do my own thing" and such. Your coworkers look at you and see another worker toiling away at a function. Your boss looks at you and sees another worker. Your spouse looks at you and sees a husband or wife. Your parents look at you and see the child. Your children look at you and see a parent. And you play the roles as called upon.
But where is the real you in all this?
@pegembara you described a good starting point. It's called the "don't know mind".
@SpinyNorman said:
One of the purposes at least to me, is to get the mind to see through seeming paradox. Stuff like emptiness and form being one in the same, the nature of the two truths, existing, non-existing, neither nor both... It can all seem counter-intuitive and contradictory to many of us.
The koan (imho) is not a temporarily disturbance in my otherwise orderly world. It’s not a puzzle that is solved and then - big thanks to my teacher – my understanding of the world is restored and I live happily ever after. It’s just that I have improved now and I’m ahead of the rest.
I prefer the idea that we’re heading for what is “The End of Your World” – which is the title of one of Adyashanti’s books.
Koan practice dissolves the fixed ideas in our head - all of them; it opens up our hearts and our hara (our centre of energy and intuition). It may do many other things; but the orderly world we thought we knew will not be restored.
Some words I would take from @ourself and @zenff are paradox, heart and intuition.
Many of us, myself included have a tendency to a logical, mind orientated dharma. It makes sense. As we practice focus and attentive awareness the ability to hold counter intuitive or apparently impossible paradoxical understanding becomes apparent. In essence we have to understand intuitively or with the heart. This is a new form of processing. It is a bit like dissonance in jazz or in controversial art forms. :wave: .
So would you say the purpose of koan practice is ultimately to develop insight into anatta and sunyata?
I would say that's true.
But the practice includes heavy meditation. Remember koan work is always paired with meditation.
I think I'd find it hard to concentrate on the meditation if I was puzzling over a koan.
It's no fun, believe me. You are told to fix your mind on the koan, but it's exhausting after a while. And frustrating. And the biggest roadblock is being afraid to tackle one because it seems impossible and we're afraid of failing. Part of it is the fault of the Zen schools themselves, who want to hype up the difficulty and unique nature of the koans and how special the advanced Zen Master is for mastering this strange thing.
So our stress levels get in the way. Have you ever taken a test where you completely blew the answer, but soon as you turned in the paper and left the room, the answer came flooding into your mind? You knew the answer all along. It's a similar process.
First you approach the koan as an enemy to be conquered through will power. Then eventually the koan becomes as familiar as an old friend. Finally you embrace the koan as a great gift given to you by the Dharma. And then you and the koan become one. Your great doubt becomes confidence.
And telling you this doesn't change the fact that you have to follow the process. You know the answer. When you can tell the Master "This is my answer" instead of asking "Is this the correct answer?" then the koan has done its job.
That pic Lobster posted looks EXACTLY LIKE ME! BEFORE I WAS BORN!!! Damn, I knew if I joined this group I'd get some answers.
The answer to this Koan really does stare you right in the face, and you can't help but miss it. Why?
What you have to realise is this, and it's so simple as to be stupid: If you are trying to see one face of an infinitely faceted, faceted thing you appear to be missing the points and the edges. So what gives those points and edges points and edges? Well that's what you are looking at but as it is so familiar it doesn't stand out, and you just see what's there, it's what's there - NO!
Hmmm.... Lets take another look shall we as I'm not sure I saw it right? What am I trying to look at again? Me! Oh Yeah that's right - I'm Me trying to see Me. But how do I see the me seeing me who is doing the seeing.
Perhaps if I sit down and look at what I am for a moment....
Hmm this is trickier than I thought. I'm going to reductio ad infinitum and eating my tail again.
What was that Messrs Dirty knife, fork and Mrs. plate, you want to be clean again. O.K. but I've got to come and look at this Koan again - there must be an answer!