On Having No Head by Douglas E. Harding

I recently subscribed to the website Waking Up to aid me in my mindfulness meditation practice—let me emphasize the word ‘practice.’ This book is mentioned several times as a classic work published in 1961 by the mystic-philosopher Douglas Harding. The book is a primer (a short 123 pages) on how to realize one’s true nature through the practice of the “headless way.” Harding relates his firsthand experience and insights with a light touch—simple but not simplistic. For me, a person who is always in her head and lost in thought, the book’s message is difficult to grasp—especially when both grasping and aversion are always named as barriers to discovering the “no-self.” Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading about the author’s first experience of headlessness and the significance that the experience held for him. I sensed his desire to want to pass the possibility of headlessness on to others. While the context of the book is very Zen, the author draws on parallel mystical traditions which all point toward the same paradoxes inherent in Zen Buddhism. Here’s Harding’s description of his first experience of headlessness.

‘Reason and imagination and all mental chatter died down… I forgot my name, my humanness, my thingness, all that could be called me or mine. Past and future dropped away… Lighter than air, clearer than glass, altogether released from myself, I was nowhere around.’