"What was your Original Face before you were born?"

This is a Zen koan. It has been circling in my head for awhile now. It actually started when i first learned my wife was pregnant and we were going to have a baby. Of all the random things to run through one's head when you learn such news, this certainly took the cake (the other thought that struck right before the deep philosophical one was a more pragmatic and validating one).

I really don't fully understand it. The koan, i mean. As a point of reference, koans are not really meant to be understood anyway. They are meant to trouble the mind of the Zen practitioner to the point of distraction and then break down all logic to arrive, hopefully at some sort of enlightened state of being. Yet, even that is wrong. Koans are paradoxical mind/brain teasers.

This one kept (and keeps) running through my head.

This is why. As i tumbled the fact and reality of the news of a child, my child in my head i truly wondered "what is it going to look like?" Is it going to look like me or my wife? What color hair is it going to have? What color eyes? What about its nose?" All these, and more, thoughts nagged my brain.

My brain kept coming back to this koan.

I had no way of knowing what my child would look like. I didn't even know if it was going to be a boy or a girl at first. I didn't know what i was hoping for either. This was so incredibly new and surprising that i was just trying to grasp its ineffibleness. Which is probably why my brain zappd itself with a koan.

The distinct attack of reality was so unreal to me. Now, mind you, i was greatly relieved. I suspect most guys would be relieved to know that progeny are possible (this was my first thought - although in not so many words). As the reality dust settled, the existential imponderable abstractions got stirred up with this question riding in front. I mean, what was my child going to look like? What were they going to be like? There was no way to actually know.

I'm not certain that this even comes close to the intent of this koan but it has left my cognitions in a jumbled state. Now, currently, my son is almost 9 months old. His face and resemblence is very much like me when i was a child. Actually, he is mix of both my wife and me. Each of us shows up in different light and different occasions on his face. This makes his face his own.

His presence in my life is some way an answer to the koan but, like all answers to koans, it is not really the answer that could be expected. I could not ever have imagined his face as it is now and at the same time, it is exactly the face i was anticipating.

See?

Paradoxical.

Answers to koan are notorious for not making any sense at all. The answer to this one still leaves me in awe.