本來面目, original face, is what Huineng asks the monk Ming to show, the face before good and evil. Blyth prints “the Original Self,” dissolving the concrete face into a capitalized Western Self, one page after quoting the correct phrase himself.
The confrontation
The dictionary's band
Attested band verbatim from the dictionary entry 本來面目
- original face
- original countenance
Blyth knew better
Blyth knew better
your original face before you were born
Zen and Zen Classics, Volume 4: Mumonkan, p. 171
On the facing page Blyth reproduces Suzuki's “your original face before you were born,” the attested reading in plain English, and prints “Original Self” on page 170 regardless. The concrete face is dissolved into the Western Self one page after he has transcribed the correct phrase.
The literal reading
Huineng, pursued for the robe, tells the monk Ming: not thinking good, not thinking evil, at this very moment, what is your 本來面目? The compound is a face: 面 the face, 目 the eye or countenance, 本來 original, from the first. The band admits original face and original countenance. It is a bodily image, the look one had before the split into good and evil, not a noun for a metaphysical entity.
The alteration
Blyth substantivizes the face into “the Original Self,” capitalized. A particular countenance becomes an abstract Self, the same Western reification that runs through his handling of 主人公 and the reflexive-person terms. The image asks you to show a face; the translation hands you a metaphysical possession instead. The move is small on the page and large in effect: “original face” invites a gesture, “the Original Self” invites a doctrine, and the koan's whole force is that there is a face and nothing behind it to name.