On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious

by Douglas E. Harding

As an infant you were like any animal: in that you were for yourself headless and faceless and eyeless, immense, at large, unseparate from your world - without being aware of your blessed condition. Unconsciously, you lived without obstruction from What you are Where you are, from your Source, and relied simply on the Given. What was presented to you really was present - the Moon was no bigger or further off than the hand that clutched at it. Your world really was your world - distance, that most plausible and rapacious of sneak-thieves, hadn’t begun to filch it from you. The obvious really was obvious - the rattle that fell out of sight no longer existed: disappearance meant annihilation. You made no claim to that face in your mirror. It stayed there: it was that baby’s, not yours.