Interpretation
The "original face" points to "the nonduality of subject and object":
he phrase "father and mother" alludes to duality. This is obvious to someone versed in the Chinese tradition, where so much philosophical thought is presented in the imagery of paired opposites. The phrase "your original face" alludes to the original nonduality.Comparable statements are: "Look at the flower and the flower also looks"; "Guest and host interchange".
It is not "pure consciousness", as it is often understood in western thinking, reached by "cleaning the doors of perception":
pure consciousness without concepts, if there could be such a thing, would be a booming, buzzing confusion, a sensory field of flashes of light, unidentifiable sounds, ambiguous shapes, color patches without significance. This is not the consiousness of the enlightened Zen master.Read more about this topic: Original Face