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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. He wasn't answering this exact question.
But the
original question is very broad. Everyone is asking it all the
time, in their own way.
"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."
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