Show Me Your Original Face (III)

Third try at the challenge of this Zen koan, a kind of riddle with no logical answer: “Show me your original face!” Before you come up blank, and the Zen master rings his little bell and you’re out, a third and final image to help stimulate you:

If I make the lashes dark

And the eyes more bright

And the lips more scarlet,

Or ask if all be right

From mirror after mirror,

No vanity’s displayed:

I’m looking for the face I had

Before the world was made.

—-W.B. Yeats

(A classic Zen koan is,  Show me your original face, the face that you had before you were born. Sometimes framed as, the face that you had before your father and mother were born. Have you ever seen your original face? To glimpse it, I imagine, might be like coming home. )