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

by Douglas E. Harding

It takes an innocent eye and an empty head (not to mention a stout heart) to admit their own perfect emptiness.

But why all this emphasis on the disappearance of the face and head, rather than of the body as a whole? The answer is plain for humans to see. (Crocodiles and crabs would have a different story to tell!)

In fact, I knew not whether the wind was riding on me or I on the wind.”

“This is what is known as letting go your hold. As you regain your breath it is like drinking water and knowing it is cold. It is joy inexpressible.”

Why this near-universal refusal to take seriously what, the adepts assure us, is the best of news, carrying immense practical implications? In the case of cheerfully incurious and self-satisfied people, stuck with their unexamined beliefs and aims, the answer is obvious. What chance of unsettling all that? (And what need or right have we to attempt anything of the sort? After all, in each is hidden the One who knows just what can and what can’t at this time be usefully assimilated, and who is already and forever that Enlightenment, that inner Light, all are living from.) In the case of sincere seekers, the answer is only slightly less obvious: who of us would want to become finders, as long as our search so meaningfully - so nobly! - structures our time and wards off boredom, and as long as the Nothing - which some say lies at the end of our quest - reads at this safe distance much more like an unveiled threat than a veiled promise? No, we have every reason to remain humble seekers! We are not enlightened! The fact is that in us all lurks an existential terror, a powerful and altogether natural resistance to what - seemingly - amounts to sudden death and annihilation. All that long-drawn-out and often agonizing effort, urged on by every kind of social pressure, to paper over the void within and to build on it a somebody right here, a face that belongs to oneself (instead of to everyone else), a distinct personality of one’s very own, a stable character to match up to those...

[4] The real wonder is that any of us - in spite of all interior resistances and exterior discouragements - should welcome and see through to the end the work of demolition. It always was a tiny minority who have this urge, and their numbers show few signs of growing rapidly. Are they naive ones who, remaining in touch with their faceless childhood, never quite grew up; or sadly inadequate ones so hurt by life that a sort of death would seem a relief; or doubting ones for whom our language and beliefs - and specially the religious sort - are a dubious and ill-founded system of defenses against what can’t be doubted, namely our true Nature; or inquisitive ones so addicted to self-discovery that no price is too high to pay for it; or just unworthy recipients of divine grace? Or some combination of these types? In looking at his or her own case, the reader has quite a selection to choose from.

Whatever we have to do or take or suffer can thus be turned to our immediate advantage: it provides just the right opportunity to notice Who is involved. (To be precise, absolutely involved yet absolutely uninvolved.) In short, of all forms of meditation this is among the least contrived and obtrusive, and (given time to mature) the most natural and practical. And amusing too: it’s as if one’s featureless Original Face wore a smile like that of the disappearing Cheshire Cat!

throughout. It consists of ceasing to overlook the looker - or rather, the absence of the looker.

This intention is an inspiring one. It is nothing less than swimming with the powerful undertow of evolution - the evolution of consciousness itself through prehistory and history, and now being recapitulated in one’s own history as an individual.

over. Any attempt to force on it an artificial goal-seeking discipline can only frustrate its maturing, or even become a kind of idolatry - a pursuit of headlessness for its own sake, an attempt to make this No-thing into a much-sought-after Some-thing.

all the good things one had vainly strained after in the heights were awaiting one in the depths).

(as if one were not so much gone with the wind as the wind itself).

on. Similarly our thoughts and feelings appear only on the blank screen here which Zen calls No-mind, and leave no trace on it as they disappear.

As something I am merely that thing, as no-thing I am all things.