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

by Douglas E. Harding

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...