Rinzai said that there is a true person, entering and leaving through the gates of our face.
We often have the experience of our karma as being a kind of mask, stuck to our face, us mute behind it. And with the thoughts experienced when sitting, similarly it’s a kind of mask or screen. It’s as if our craziness and our normality hovers in front of us, like a fog, like a mask. The temptation is to wish it to be something different. To become the face of compassion. The face of Buddha.
If we think in this way we are still entirely within our karma. But if we can drop our aversion, then there is the possibility of illumination. Sometimes the mask, sometimes the face.