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

by Douglas E. Harding

It is God himself who is the arch-unknower! God (or whatever you call him or her who is No-thingness and Source and Awareness and Being) can’t possibly understand how he gave rise to himself, how he pulled himself up by his own bootstraps out of blank non-existence, how he woke himself from that deepest of sleeps, from that long and dreamless night. To understand himself would be to stand under himself in an infinite and futile regression. An absurd and self-defeating contortion! He loves being an absolute mystery to himself - a God who had himself eternally taped would suffer eternal boredom. Nor is this divine ignorance a shortcoming in his nature. Quite the reverse: it’s the reason why he stands forever in rapturous awe of himself, beyond all measure. It’s the reason for his much-more-than-human humility, his trembling in the face of his own unspeakable grandeur, his vertigo as he gazes into his own bottomless depths. (Only we complacent humans are conceited enough to claim Being as our natural right, as much in the bag, and to be taken for granted, as if we had it served up regularly for breakfast!)