"Without thinking of good or evil, show me your original face before your mother and father were born." - Zen Koan
How can we understand this Zen koan and find our fundamental I-AMness? The koan is meant to be understood directly rather than metaphorically, which makes it even more challenging. You cannot retreat into your imagination to visualize what it might mean. Nor can you think of an arrow of time going back into the past and imagine what you could have been like without a body. The meaning of the koan is to be found right here in every moment of lived experience. That's what we are going to explore in this post.
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| Embracing the whole of experience. |
Think back fifteen minutes and visualize what you experienced then. Did any objects in your experience carry over unchanged from that moment to this present moment? Most people respond affirmatively to this question and point to their body as an example. They say that it has not changed over those fifteen minutes and was obviously in their experience then as it is now. This reveals their level of interpretation and understanding.
To get to the answer of the koan, we must make a shift in the entire framework of how this question is interpreted. When giving the above answer, a person has unconsciously consulted a mental idea that seemed to fit the question. But the question is about objects in experience, not about ideas of objects. There exist two distinct things: the experience of having a body and the idea of a body. When you say you experience the body, it is actually made up of individual moments of experience (for example, sensations, sights, sounds, and emotions). And the idea of the body also changes and is updated with every new experience, though this is usually overlooked.
Additionally, the mind unconsciously fixes on objects in space rather than seeing their changing nature in consciousness. We see objects as relatively unchanging and fixed in space and time. That's not what our experience is actually like. Those are ideas added to the experience of objects. In truth, what we call objects exists outside of space and time. Everything happens in the timeless place we call here and now. Objects are therefore recurring patterns of experiences moving through conscious experience, which is timeless and without any location.
That is the level of understanding from which we need to read the initial koan. What is actually always present (including fifteen minutes ago) is your fundamental I-AMness. It is possible for everyone to feel into this and does not require any special abilities. But do not be discouraged if you do not fully see it for now. Most people need considerable exposure to proper meditation training to grasp this deeply and for the insight to be transformative. But try to really get this though. When you rest completely in that I-AMness it is so remarkable, you won't forget the moment you first realised it. It's like a crystal-clear infinite silence that enables everything else to arise. Nonetheless, let's explore further, intellectually, what your fundamental I-AMness is.
What was present in every moment of your past experience, had you looked for it, is the sense that you are having the experience. Going back five years or fifty years or five hundred years, that is the one constant that remains the same and is your original face. It does not need any experience to define itself. It exists before any objects come into existence. That, of course, needs to be verified by you in your own experience. And that is what meditative techniques are for.
It is not difficult to understand intellectually, but do not be fooled into thinking this understanding alone will have a significant impact on your life. It may, however, give you motivation for practice. Meditation practice can transform I-AMness from an abstract idea into a lived experience.
This fundamental I-AMness that we're exploring isn't just an abstract philosophical concept - it's the ground of all experience, the space in which all phenomena arise and dissolve. Through dedicated meditation practice, we can learn to rest more consistently in this timeless awareness, while still fully participating in the temporal world of form. This integration of the absolute (timeless awareness) and relative (manifest experience) is not the end of the spiritual journey, but rather its true beginning.
As we deepen our recognition of this fundamental nature, we may find that it transforms not just our individual experience, but our relationship with all of existence. The boundaries between self and other, inside and outside, begin to soften, revealing a more inclusive and compassionate way of being in the world. This is the practical significance of discovering your 'original face' - it's not just about personal enlightenment, but about manifesting that understanding in service of all beings.