Koan Series II

The cold, bleak weather as of late is outstandingly ideal for moments of musing and pondering. I suspect that the heavens fling open their floodgates of inspiration and shower it upon the earth. So here goes the next koan, those remotely interested would already have heard it. Tell me your interpretations!

What is your face before your ancestors were born?

I think this koan invites us to ponder the delicious possibility that causal sequence does not always entail temporal sequence. In other words, if A causes B, A might not necessarily come before B. This is so characteristic of the logic-subvering nature of koans. Those familiar with Buddhist principles of causality, particularly the twelvefold chain of interdependent causation, will appreciate this to a more thorough extent.

The romantic idea of a primordial existence before physical birth is of course ancient and hardly novel, but this koan introduces an additional familial dimension, as if there is some transcendental force shaping our geneaologies, adding a wilful touch of determinism in an otherwise non-deterministic philosophy. Fragments, memories of a past life seep through the amniotic bag, entangle themselves around the umbilical cord as would streams of colourful graffitti around a pillar. And then comes the crushing, existentialist type of blow -- What is the face of your ancestor? Before you were born? Why, simply, it is thus! Thus! Just like....that! And at once all opposition, all protests, all counterarguments are stunned into eternal silence, and the foetus erupts into a frenzy of complete understanding.