Concept in Zen Buddhism
The original face is a term in Zen Buddhism, pointing to one's real essence or Buddha-nature, one's 'real face'. [1] [a]
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The original face is a term in Zen Buddhism, pointing to one's real essence or Buddha-nature, one's 'real face'. [1] [a]
The phrase "original face" originates in Huangbo's Chuanhsin fayao (857) and the Hui-sin edition (967) of the Platform Sutra: [2]
When you're not thinking of anything good and anything bad, at that moment, what is your original face? [2]
This question appears in case 23 of the Mumonkan:
CASE 23. ENO'S GOOD AND EVIL
Eno, the sixth patriarch, was pursued by Monk Emyo up to Daiyurei. The patriarch, seeing Emyo coming, laid the robe and the bowl on a rock, and said to him, "This robe represents the faith. Is it to be fought for by force? You may take them now." Emyo went to move the bowl and the robe and yet they were as heavy as mountains. He could not move them. Hesitating and trembling, Emyo asked the patriarch, "I come for the teaching, not for the robe. Please enlighten me!" The patriarch said, "What is primordially Emyo (i.e., your true self), if you do not think this is good nor do you think this is evil?" At that moment Emyo was greatly awakened. His whole body was covered with sweat. Emyo cried, bowed, and said, "Is there or is there not any other (deep) significance (in Zen) than your secret words and teachings a minute ago?" The patriarch answered, "What I have told you is no secret at all. Once you have realized your own true self, the depth (in Zen) rather belongs to you!" Emyo said, "When I was at Obai with the other monks, I never realized what my true self was. Now you have dispersed the clouds of my ignorance to realize it, just like a man capable of discerning warm and cold by tasting water. From now on you are my teacher!" The patriarch said, "We both have Obai for our teacher. Guard your own self!"
Mumon's Comments: We should say that the sixth patriarch was in an emergency. This revelation of his, however, resembles the deed of an overly protective grandmother, who peeled a fresh lichi (a dessert fruit), removed its stone and put it to her grandchild's mouth ready for him to swallow.
You describe it in vain, you picture it to no avail,
Praising it is useless, cease to worry about it at all.
It is your true self, it has nowhere to hide,Even if the universe is annihilated, it is not destroyed. [3]
This koan is transformed in the question
What did your face look like before your parents were born?
According to Victor Hori, the "original face" points to "the nonduality of subject and object": [4]
[T]he phrase "father and mother" alludes to duality. This is obvious to someone versed in the Chinese tradition, where so much philosophical thought is presented in the imagery of paired opposites. The phrase "your original face" alludes to the original nonduality. [5]
Comparable statements are: "Look at the flower and the flower also looks"; "Guest and host interchange". [4]
According to Victor Hori, it is not "pure consciousness", as it is often understood in western thinking, [6] reached by "cleaning the doors of perception": [b]
[A] pure consciousness without concepts, if there could be such a thing, would be a booming, buzzing confusion, a sensory field of flashes of light, unidentifiable sounds, ambiguous shapes, color patches without significance. This is not the consciousness of the enlightened Zen master. [8]
Zen masters have commented on the original face:
"Sweep away thoughts!" means one must do zazen. Once thoughts are quieted, the Original Face appears. Thoughts can be compared to clouds. When clouds vanish, the moon appears. The moon of suchness is the Original Face. Thoughts are also like the fogging of a mirror. When you wipe away all condensation, a mirror reflects clearly. Quiet your thoughts and behold your Original Face before you were born!
— Daito
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
You cannot describe it or draw it,
You cannot praise it enough or perceive it.
No place can be found in which
To put the Original Face;
It will not disappear even
When the universe is destroyed.— Mumon
"What's called one's 'original face' is also none other than the Unborn Buddha Mind. What you have from your parents innately is the Unborn Buddha Mind alone—there's nothing else you've got innately. This is an expression left behind by a master of old in his attempt to make people realize the fact that the Unborn Buddha Mind is none other than one's original face. Even what we call 'father and mother' are names of traces that have already arisen. The man who has conclusively realized the Buddha Mind abides at the source of father and mother, and that's why we speak of [that which exists] 'before father and mother were born.' This 'before they were born' is none other than the Unborn; so the Buddha Mind is the same as your original face. . . ."
The American poet Philip Whalen has written a poem, Metaphysical Insomnia Jazz Mumonkan xxix, inspired by the Original Face-koan: [10]
Of
Course I could go to sleep right here
With all the lights on & the radio going(April is behind the refrigerator)
Far from the wicked city
Far from the virtuous town
I met my fragile Kitty
In her greeny silken gownfairly near the summit of Nanga Parbat & back again, the wind
flapping the prayer-flags"IT IS THE WIND MOVING."
"IT IS THE FLAG MOVING."Hypnotized by the windshield swipes, Mr. Harold Wood:
"Back & forth; back & forth."We walked beside the moony lake
Eating dried apricots
Lemons bananas & bright wedding cake
& benefits forgot"IT IS THE MIND MOVING."
& now I'm in my bed alone
Keith Kumasen has commented on this poem. [11]
The American Buddhist musician Stuart Davis has recorded a song called "Original Face". The chorus goes:
There's a light bulb in everyone
Bright enough to swallow the sun,
Every mask will be erased,There is just the original face.
A kōan is a story, dialogue, question, or statement from Chinese Chan Buddhist lore, supplemented with commentaries, that is used in Zen Buddhist practice in different ways. The main goal of kōan practice in Zen is to achieve kenshō, to see or observe one's buddha-nature.
Kenshō is an East Asian Buddhist term from the Chan / Zen tradition which means "seeing" or "perceiving" "nature" or "essence", or 'true face'. It is usually translated as "seeing one's [true] nature," with "nature" referring to buddha-nature, ultimate reality, the Dharmadhatu. The term appears in one of the classic slogans which define Chan Buddhism: to see oneʼs own nature and accomplish Buddhahood (見性成佛).
The Gateless Barrier, sometimes translated as The Gateless Gate, is a collection of 48 Chan (Zen) koans compiled in the early 13th century by the Chinese Zen master Wumen Huikai during the Song dynasty. The title has a double meaning and can also be understood as Wumen's Barrier; the compiler's name, which literally means "No Gate", is the same as the title's first two characters. Wumen's preface indicates that the volume was published in 1228. Each koan is accompanied by a commentary and verse by Wumen. A classic edition includes a 49th case composed by Anwan in 1246. Wuliang Zongshou also supplemented the volume with a verse of four stanzas composed in 1230 about the three checkpoints of Zen master Huanglong. These three checkpoints of Huanglong should not be confused with Doushuai's Three Checkpoints found in Case 47.
Nondualism includes a number of philosophical and spiritual traditions that emphasize the absence of fundamental duality or separation in existence. This viewpoint questions the boundaries conventionally imposed between self and other, mind and body, observer and observed, and other dichotomies that shape our perception of reality. As a field of study, nondualism delves into the concept of nonduality and the state of nondual awareness, encompassing a diverse array of interpretations, not limited to a particular cultural or religious context; instead, nondualism emerges as a central teaching across various belief systems, inviting individuals to examine reality beyond the confines of dualistic thinking.
In Buddhist philosophy and soteriology, Buddha-nature is the innate potential for all sentient beings to become a Buddha or the fact that all sentient beings already have a pure Buddha-essence within themselves. "Buddha-nature" is the common English translation for several related Mahāyāna Buddhist terms, most notably tathāgatagarbha and buddhadhātu, but also sugatagarbha, and buddhagarbha. Tathāgatagarbha can mean "the womb" or "embryo" (garbha) of the "thus-gone one" (tathāgata), and can also mean "containing a tathāgata". Buddhadhātu can mean "buddha-element", "buddha-realm", or "buddha-substrate".
Hakuin Ekaku was one of the most influential figures in Japanese Zen Buddhism, who regarded bodhicitta, working for the benefit of others, as the ultimate concern of Zen-training. While never having received formal dharma transmission, he is regarded as the reviver of the Japanese Rinzai school from a period of stagnation, focusing on rigorous training methods integrating meditation and koan practice.
Ego death is a "complete loss of subjective self-identity". The term is used in various intertwined contexts, with related meanings. The 19th-century philosopher and psychologist William James uses the synonymous term "self-surrender", and Jungian psychology uses the synonymous term psychic death, referring to a fundamental transformation of the psyche. In death and rebirth mythology, ego death is a phase of self-surrender and transition, as described later by Joseph Campbell in his research on the mythology of the Hero's Journey. It is a recurrent theme in world mythology and is also used as a metaphor in some strands of contemporary western thinking.
Bankei Yōtaku was a Japanese Rinzai Zen master, and the abbot of the Ryōmon-ji and Nyohō-ji. He was a major Zen figure of the Edo period and is best known for his emphasis on a minimalist sudden method of Zen which simply relies on the unborn Buddha mind. He became well known in Japan for his public talks in colloquial Japanese which were popular among laypersons.
The wild fox kōan, also known as "Pai-chang's fox" and "Hyakujō and a Fox", is an influential kōan story in the Zen tradition dating back as early as 1036, when it appeared in the Chinese biographical history T'ien-sheng kuang-teng lu. It was also in The Gateless Gate, a 13th-century collection of 48 kōans compiled by the Chinese monk Wumen, as case two.
Wisdom without a teacher, sometimes also called "self-enlightened and self-certified" (Jp: jigo-jishō, is a term used in Zen Buddhism to refer to the experience of a Zen practitioner reaching enlightenment or kensho without the aid of a master or teacher.
The "Five Ranks" is a poem consisting of five stanzas describing the stages of realization in the practice of Zen Buddhism. It expresses the interplay of absolute and relative truth and the fundamental non-dualism of Buddhist teaching.
Heze Shenhui was a Chinese Buddhist monk of the so-called "Southern School" of Zen, who "claimed to have studied under Huineng."
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones is a 1957 publication by Paul Reps combining four separate texts on nondual practice:
Zen is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty as the Chan School or the Buddha-mind school, and later developed into various sub-schools and branches. Zen was influenced by Taoism, especially Neo-Daoist thought, and developed as a distinguished school of Chinese Buddhism. From China, Chán spread south to Vietnam and became Vietnamese Thiền, northeast to Korea to become Seon Buddhism, and east to Japan, becoming Japanese Zen.
Though Zen is said to be based on a "special transmission outside scriptures" which "did not stand upon words", the Zen-tradition has a rich doctrinal and textual background. It has been influenced by sutras such as the Lankavatara Sutra, the Vimalakirti Sutra, the Avatamsaka Sutra, and the Lotus Sutra.
Hua Tou is part of a form of Buddhist meditation known as Gongfu 工夫 common in the teachings of Chan Buddhism, Korean Seon and Rinzai Zen. Hua Tou can be translated as 'word head', 'head of speech' or 'point beyond which speech exhausts itself'. A Hua Tou can be a short phrase that is used as a subject of meditation to focus the mind.
Xuefeng Yicun was a Chinese Chan-master who was influential during the Tang dynasty. The Yunmen school and Fayan school originated with descendants of his lineage.
Zen has a rich doctrinal background, despite the traditional Zen narrative which states that it is a "special transmission outside scriptures" which "did not stand upon words."
The Zen tradition is maintained and transferred by a high degree of institutionalisation, despite the emphasis on individual experience and the iconoclastic picture of Zen.
Modern scientific research on the history of Zen discerns three main narratives concerning Zen, its history and its teachings: Traditional Zen Narrative (TZN), Buddhist Modernism (BM), Historical and Cultural Criticism (HCC). An external narrative is Nondualism, which claims Zen to be a token of a universal nondualist essence of religions.
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| Influential Sutras | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Teachings | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Practice | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Persons |
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| Japanese Zen |
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| Korean Seon |
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| Vietnamese Thiền |
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| USA Zen |
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| European Zen |
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| Hierarchy and titles |
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| Temples |
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| Zen literature |
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| Cultural influence | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Related schools | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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