"The Headless Way" session for One Mindful Breath
Agenda
- What’s on top? (your name, and what’s top of mind for you)
- Brief Introduction and Background
- A series of short experiments, with breaks for discussion
- A closing meditation
Introduction
I’m sharing something that I have found helpful. That’s helped me access something I found to difficult otherwise. There’s something there. Something worth exploring.
This will be perhaps a bit different to other sessions. You will be doing most of the work, not me. It’s going to be more practical, and less theory. There’ll be more questions than answers. For best results, try and sit with the question, the “I don’t know” more than look for an answer.
The Headless Way has quite a lot to unpack. In this sessions we’ll just cover a small part. An introduction to Having No Head.
I have no head, and neither do you. I haven’t gone mad (yet). But I do have some hypotheses for us to test. Such as:
- what things are depends on the range of the observer;
- what you are for yourself is profoundly different to what you are for others;
- at zero distance you are not a thing, you are space for the world.
Background
This session is based on the work of Douglas Harding. He was an English philosopher and most excellent weirdo. He wrote many books, including On Having No Head - Douglas Harding. Zen and the rediscovery of the obvious. The byline is something like “Simple techniques to experience the nonduality of consciousness.”
I found it via a meditation and mindfulness app called Waking Up by Sam Harris. In it, Richard Lang (a student of Douglas Harding’s) has a series of sessions called The Headless Way. It’s a paid app, but you can use this link for a free month of Waking Up. This will let you check out the app, and Richard Lang’s sessions if you’d like. There’s also lots more on headless.org, the official website of The Headless Way.
Is anyone already familiar with the term nondual? The word means something like “not-two”. That’s weird, right? Why not just say “Oneness” or “Singleness” or Monism? Well, something like: there’s not really a separation between subject and object. It’s weird to experience and even weirder to try and put into words.
If you really want to bake your noodle, you could consider that we usually need nonduality and duality, but in an asymmetric way. Subject and object are distinct, but not separate. But we’ll keep things practical in this session. Experiments to see who you really are, from your subjective point of view.
Approach
I’d like to request that you approach this with two things in mind.
1. What do you actually experience?
Be careful not to dismiss what you find because it doesn’t match your existing model, what you think it should be. Challenge your assumptions using your direct experience.
- Not what you know. What you experience, before labelling it or judging it.
- Not what it means. Just what is is, just what is given.
- Not what others say. What you find when you check for yourself.
2. A relaxed, low effort, approach
Bring to mind an image of the Buddha. Does he look like he’s at the gym doing brain day? Or does he look relaxed?
Or think about falling asleep. You can’t fall asleep by trying harder to fall asleep. You can have to let go, let it happen.
What we’re looking for is seen in the first instant or not at all.
- Immediate, not prolonged;
- Close, not far away;
- Easy, not difficult.
Pointing Experiment
Okay, let’s get weird.
Why pointing? It helps direct our attention. It’s hard to point and look at something and not pay attention to it.
Pointing gets you looking, rather than thinking about it.
- Point at an object in front of you. Look along your finger at it.
- Notice what colour it is.
- Notice what shape it is.
- You can see it’s an object, a thing.
- Point at your shoe.
- Notice what colour it is.
- Notice what shape it is.
- Notice that it’s an object, a thing.
- Point at your torso.
- Notice what colour it is.
- Notice what shape it is.
- Notice how it’s moving as you breathe.
- Notice that it’s an object, a thing.
- Like the object, like your shoe, it’s part of the content of your awareness.
- Hold your hand out at eye level and point at the place you are looking out from.
- What do you see in that direction?
- Do you see any colours?
- Do you see any shape?
- Do you see an object, a thing?
- Do you see your head?
- Do you see your face?
- If you find yourself thinking about it, just… leave the thought alone for a moment, and come back to what you’re experiencing.
- If you find yourself thinking “yeah, but…” or even “interesting, and…” just… let it go. Relax a bit more. Come back to what you’re experiencing.
- Remember: what do you actually experience?
- Not what you know. What you experience, before labelling it or judging it.
- Not what it means. Just what is is, just what is given.
- Not what others say. What you find when you check for yourself.
- Remember: relaxed, low effort.
- Immediate, not prolonged;
- Close, not far away;
- Easy, not difficult.
It’s difficult to talk about. Adding more words can make it less clear.
Break
Any question, comments, thoughts, feelings about that?
Some common objections:
- I can’t see my head, but I can touch it.
- Do you experience touching your head? Do you see your hand touching your head, from your first-person perspective, at zero distance? Put aside what you know, attend to what is actually given.
- I can see my nose, and that’s attached to my head.
- Close one eye and look at your nose. It goes for the ceiling to the floor! Can you see it attached to your face? From more than zero distance, it’s different.
Drawing experiment
Okay, let’s get more weird.
We’re going to do some drawing. No artistic skill is required here. You just need to pay careful attention to what you see. Toddler fridge art levels of skill are more than enough for this experiment. You don’t need to show anyone your drawing (unless you want to). We’ll only spend two minutes on it, so it’s no really possible to do a “good” job of it.
- Grab a piece of paper and a pen.
- Close one eye.
- Draw what you see. Not what you think is there, but what you actually see.
- Start with the edges. Don’t worry about the middle too much.
Self-Portrait by Ernst Mach (1886), on The Public Domain Review. Ernst Mach was an Austrian physicist and philosopher and illustrates his ideas about self-perception.
Layers experiment
Okay, let’s watch something weird.
We’re going to watch a short clip from Powers of Ten and the Relative Size of Things in the Universe by Charles and Ray Eames. The whole Powers of Ten video is 9 minutes long and is worth a watch.
There’s a chap having a snooze on a picnic blanket. Let’s call him Picnic Guy. We’re going to zoom in, not quite to zero distance.
Watch from 05:52 on the video until about 08:15, when the view ticks over to 10-14. That’s about two and a half minutes.
Notice how every layer is necessary. Picnic Guy can’t exist without any of those other layers. Notice how layers depend on each other. Notice which layers you can (and can’t directly experience).
But… what’s at zero distance? We can’t say. Only Picnic Guy can, from his own perspective. Just as we can only describe our own experience at zero distance.
Break
Any question, comments, thoughts, feelings about that?
Measuring Experiment
I’m going to ring the bell three times.
- Listen for the edges of the sound, the start and finish. If you’ve found the boundary what’s past it?
- First bell ring.
- Now pay attention to the size of sounds. How big is it? Compare to what?
- Second bell ring.
- Now pay attention to the distance. How far away is the sound? Not the bowl itself, but your experience of the sound. Where can you measure from?
- Third bell ring.
- From before the first bell ring until now, did your field of hearing change? Did it move?
- Now pay attention to the arising and passing away one sounds. Where do they come from? Where do they go? Not the thing making the noise, but the sound itself.
- Now listen to all the sounds that you can. Inside the room or the building you’re in. Maybe some sounds outside.
Break
Any question, comments, thoughts, feelings about that?
Closing meditation
- We’re going to start with eyes open.
- Get into a comfortable posture.
- Make your gaze soft, relaxed. Keep it wide, and open.
- Try and see everything at once. One space of colour and shadow.
- Try and take in your peripheral vision too.
- Gently look for what’s looking.
- Not protracted, brief.
- Then leave your mind open.
- Look briefly, then stop looking. Sit with the question rather than try and find the answer.
- Just glance, glimpse, peek, then stop, relax, rest.
- Is there something to find?
- Now close your eyes, keeping your attention on your vision.
- Notice how it’s not completely dark. There’s some shade, colour, shimmering. With your eyes closed, look around, notice the changes.
- Again, gently look for what’s looking.
- Keeping your attention alert but relaxed, now gently open your eyes
- Did your field of vision change?
- The contents of the field changed, but did your field of vision itself change?
- Did opening your eyes make any essential difference to what you are?
- Now focus on one object.
- As you stare at it, briefly look for yourself. In a flash. See if anything changes in the feeling of subject-object.
- Brief as a finger snap.
- If you’re getting frustrated, notice the frustration as a thought, as a feeling.
- Look, briefly, for the centre of that experience.
- Look for who’s looking.
- For the final few minutes of the session, close your eyes. Leave your mind wide open, without making any effort at all.
Closing
Does anyone feel like, perhaps, from their first-person perspective, they don’t have a head?
As a reminder: we did the Pointing Experiment, the Drawing experiment, the Layers experiment, the Measuring Experiment. I’ve collected some links to some of the things referred to here, and a write-up of this session at bit.ly/ombthw.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Added 2023-09-17.