This is very short sections on having no head.
And it's a type of exercise that a member of the London Buddhist Society discovered,
Started using some 30 or 40 years ago.
It's deceptively simple and quite effective in its own way.
Here's just a few paragraphs on it.
Now,
Look at a particular object,
Say a table in front of you,
And gently concentrate on letting the looker,
The watcher,
Dissolve.
Imagine the table is aware of itself,
Is self-existing,
Self-arising,
Self-aware.
A simple exercise from Douglas Harding will help.
While you are looking at the table,
Imagine it and its surrounding are arising right where your head is.
Instead of your head,
Sitting on your shoulders where your head used to be is the table.
You don't even have a head.
Where your head used to be is everything arising in your awareness moment to moment,
And is arising right where your head used to be.
You have no head,
Just the entire universe sitting on your shoulders.
You are not on the side of your face looking at the world out there.
On this side of your face is no you,
Just the whole world arising where your head used to be.
You no longer see the mountain,
You are the mountain.
You no longer see the clouds,
You are the clouds.
You no longer see that table,
You are that table which sees itself.
Chogam Trungpa was once asked what enlightenment felt like,
And he said,
The sky turns into a big blue pancake and falls on your head.
That's it exactly.
No head,
Just blue sky,
Flat where your head used to be.
So,
Move the world out there to in here.
Move the entire world to this side of your face,
And let the experience of the world on this side of your face replace the experience of the looker.
There is just the world arising and setting on your shoulders right where your head used to be.
You don't even have a head,
Just the entire world sitting on your shoulders where your head once was.
There is no distance between out there and in here.
There is just in here,
But in here is now the entire world arising moment to moment,
Right where your head used to be.
There is no in here and out there,
Just the entire world arising where your head once was.
In here,
Your head and the looker are no longer present.
Only the world arising moment to moment on your shoulders where they all used to be.
The world out there is what the inside of your brain feels like.
You can taste the sky,
Drink the Pacific Ocean,
Eat the earth.
You no longer look at the clouds or the sky.
They are in your awareness.
They are in you.
You are one with them.
You no longer look at that building.
That building is in your awareness.
That building is in you.
You are one with it.
You are not really in a room.
The room is in your awareness,
Is in you.
You aren't in the room.
The room is in you.
All of a sudden,
The looker is gone.
Wherever you think,
You feel the looker.
Just notice it's really some object in your awareness,
In you,
One with you.
The entire world and all its objects are arising on this side of your face,
Right where your head and the looker used to be.
The sky turns into a big blue pancake and falls on your head.
The whole world does,
And you literally feel one with everything around you.
Your feeling of the looker and your feeling of the world are one and the same feeling.
They are not two.
And that entire world is sitting on your shoulders,
Exactly where your head used to be.
That's why you can actually taste the sky or pick that mountain up with your fingers and move it around.
This sense of oneness with everything around you is the beginning of the non-dual realm,
Of non-dual reality.
As you stay with this feeling of oneness and explore it in the coming days and months,
It will become deeper and deeper,
Showing you things about reality you never would have dreamed.
At some point,
This oneness may start to become lighter and lighter,
More and more luminous,
Almost radiating an infinite light.
At other times,
This oneness may reveal itself to be pure love,
Connecting every single thing in the universe in this all-encompassing feeling of love and oneness.
You,
Too,
Will be in this radiant field of love,
Feeling you are deeply accepted and totally loved,
Exactly as you are now.
This love is the connecting glue of the entire cosmos,
Holding all things together in its eternal embrace.
At other times,
This oneness may become more and more transparent,
More and more gossamer,
Less and less solid and dense,
Until it may shed density altogether and float as the sheerest emptiness,
Itself nothing but spirit,
And all things in existence,
Nothing but the spirit,
Including everything you judged negatively about yourself,
Nothing but spirit.
There is only spirit,
Only light,
Only love,
Only transparent emptiness.
This oneness may whisper to you among dozens and dozens of other cosmic secrets,
Hidden from those without this oneness and this direct discovery,
But open to each and every one who plunges through the illusions of the dualistic world and into the reality of the ultimate non-dual.
