Remove the Masks

The whole effort of Zen is how to become undivided, integrated, centred, crystallised. If you go on living on the periphery, pretending, not really living, you will have many faces, but not your original face. In Zen, they have a deep object for meditation, to find out one’s original face. The Master says to the disciple, “Go and sit silently and find out your original face.” This refers to the face you had before you were born or the face that you will have after you have died — because the moment the child is born, society gives him false faces; the moment the child takes his first breath, corruption starts. The child has entered into the world of politics, falsification, untruth. Now, layer upon layer, there will be many faces. The clever man has many more faces than the simple man. So, whatsoever the need, he immediately changes his face. Continuously you go on adjusting, manipulating. But one who has an original face has a unity. The enlightened person always shows one face. Not that he is monotonous.… In fact, you are monotonous because your faces are all dead. He is alive, growing, but his face is his. The face becomes more and more radiant, alive, beautiful, as grace goes on increasing around it, it is surrounded by a light, but it remains the same face. There is a discontinuous continuity, or a continuous discontinuity. He changes, yet he remains the same. You can recognise the continuity and you can also recognise a constant growth. If you are not growing, you are dead. You can deceive others; you cannot deceive yourself.

Source: Economic Times, 18/07/2019