"It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been, was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing. On the contrary, it was very much occupied."

      If you're serious about becoming enlightened, then this book may not be for you. Better you should read a textbooklike tome on Buddhism and Zen and the dangers of attachment. But for those who like a good (cosmic) joke, especially one that's true, then On Having No Head, Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious, the classic, slim
volume written about forty years ago is a good book to discover and continually rediscover.

     In its first few pages, its author Douglas Harding, who, at the age of 90, still lectures in Europe and England, sets forth his premise, that he has no head. He experienced this peculiar notion one day while walking in the Himalayas, an admittedly imagination - provoking place. Still in the following days, months and years, the notion has stood the test of time and logic.

     Here's what happened. In a moment of stillness, he took a look at himself and what was actually going on around him. This is what he saw (which he illustrates in a simple little drawing): his torso, his legs, his feet - and that's it. Where he had always assumed his head to be, a void. Nothing, and then in a grandly whimsical mind shift, the emptiness atop his shoulders became filled with the 'out there.' Suddenly there was no separation between here and there.

       The moment passed and in the following days, the author tried to make sense of it through language, and found his ideas echoed in many of the writings of the Zen masters. But for me it is Harding's simple little exercises and provocative questions that have had more impact than any other Zen book I have ever read.

       Douglas Harding asks you to look, and see. "Don't believe me, see for yourself," he continually says. "Do your own test. Point your finger at your feet, gradually travelling upwards over your legs, your chest. Then what? Ask yourself what comes next and what you are pointing at. Look up and out with your finger still pointing. What are you pointing at now?" Question: have you ever seen your head? The answer that will come to mind most often is yes, of course, in the mirror. But if a head is a large, sphere - like object with two eyes, a protrusion in the middle, and other assorted features, then what you have seen surely is not that. Certainly what I have seen is a flat image becoming either smaller or bigger as I move about. On the other hand I have seen many heads around me on others. I'm the only one, in fact, without a head.

     I've often read the spiritual babblings on oneness from both east and west, but until I read Harding they never seemed real. (For more information on Harding, see http://www.headless.org).

      Here's an interesting point of view: watching a pair of fingers type away on a keyboard, my own fingers. So where's the head? Point your finger at where you assume your head to be. Are you pointing inward or outward? Do the words, in fact, mean anything?

      What happens when you come face to face with someone? How many faces do you find? Can confrontation take place when there's no head right here?

     It's a lovely moment, these times when you notice that you can't really see your head, and when these moments are there, there's nothing else one needs to ask or determine. We cannot always live from that point of view, as Harding acknowledges - there have to be, in effect, two kinds of selves that mix back and forth. But do those moments of noticing have perhaps any meaning for that other self? Only you will tell.

 

Lori Miles is a freelance writer from Sunnyvale, CA, USA.
She can be reached at 1dmiles@pacbell.net.