.

“But, there is, in this shaping of the self, an inevitable alienation. Since the child’s identity as an egobody is formed by a reflection, its constitution takes place through the other. This mediation, however, is only the beginning of a lifelong dependence on the presence of reflections, confirming, approving, rejecting, correcting, taking possession of the invisible spirit.” – Michael David Leven, The Opening of Vision.

By the time we are adults, we take our sense of sight for granted. We’ve put it in a little box on our shoulders, from whence we peek out at the world. I remember a former mentor puzzled about how “the sun’s light reflects off that tree over there, and light strikes the retina, and then it gets sent along the optic nerve, and then…

I was in wonder that he could think that’s how sight works. He didn’t understand that such a view creates separation – you end up looking out from a distant ‘narrow chink.’ I had written an essay during my psychology studies about the brain and vision, so it’s not that I didn’t know the biology. It’s just that, biology is useful when I go to an optometrist, not for experiencing the beauty of the eucalypts. We need to reclaim a deeper vision.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.”

– William Blake, poet.

At five years old, my daughter said to me, reflecting on her present-moment experience as we walked along the street – she looked about her at the trees, the fences, the footpath, and the flowers curling over the fence ahead:

“It’s strange, Dad….”
“Yes?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter.”
“I’m listening, if you want to tell me.”
“Well… things don’t come to you, and you don’t go to things.”

In the Oghatarana Sutta, in the Samyutta Nikāya, a deva asked the Nikāya Buddha, “How did you cross the flood?” And he answered, “By not pushing forward, and not holding back.” Essence of mind is unmoving and unchanging, and yet it’s dynamic. But we ‘grow up’. And what does ‘grown-up’ vision do?

It gazes in a technological fashion, in a particularising mode – in subject-object mode. This is its habitual way, its obsession. Peripheral vision is lost, relegated as unimportant; and resting aimlessly in our sense of sight is considered unusual.

Sitting here writing to you, dear Reader, I look from my hand on the keyboard, my arm disappearing upward, and looking here, I find – here, there is no head. If I don’t grasp at things, I am wide open, one with the world. As Douglas says: ‘Built for love’ – in the way that babies are interactional, with room for everything, no obstruction. The Diamond Sutra says, ‘No hindrance in the mind and therefore no fear.’

It’s important to remember that we are focussing here on the sense of sight. And though we could examine ourselves from the point of view of other sensations (and find them equally empty of a fixed, separate, independent self.) I am confining myself to this one sense, because it’s relevant to understanding Douglas Harding’ ‘method’, his unique ‘skilful means’ (upāya).

Like Bāhiya, when we come home to our sense of sight as-it-is-in-itself, imposing no concept of seer or seen, then vision is marvellously unsupported (in that meaning of marvel that is related to ‘miracle’). Seeing is mysteriously self-existing in its luminosity, and cannot be said to have an origin: no ‘over there,’ nor a ‘here,’ nor an in-between – what IS has no coming or going. Try it. Take a look at who’s seeing, then drop the search. (Hint: Don’t look for a non-dynamic stillness. It’s a stillness which changes.)

Douglas Harding and the community around the world who practice his ‘way’, have come up with many ‘experiments’ that show us the obvious. Over the years I’ve heard of many other ways to invite open awareness, and so I offer here a couple of those invitations, from Buddhist sources, to come home to luminosity.

Paul Reps, in Zen Flesh Zen Bones, transcribed the Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra, calling it Centering. Among its 112 exercises for accessing the non-conceptual ground, the Vijñāna Bhairava gives a number of readily accessible sight-based exercises. For example,

•    #51: ‘In summer when you see the entire sky endlessly clear, enter such clarity.’

•    #88: ‘Eyes still, without winking, at once become absolutely free’;

•    And there are many that apply to other senses or to any sense: #104: Wherever your attention alights, at this very place, experience.

(The Vijñāna Bhairava is an ancient Hindu tantric text, not Buddhist. They are wonderful processes. If you want to explore the powerful Vijñāna Bhairava practices, a really good place to start is Sally Kempton’s Doorways to the Infinite.)

The injunction is to become the seeing. ‘In the seeing, just the seeing.’ The seer, the seen and the seeing are inseparable in a luminous, creative emptiness. There is no difference here, to the Zen teaching that the ‘Three Wheels’ (of experiencer, experienced, and experiencing) are pure and clear.

Seer, seen and seeing mysteriously empty of any mark of identity. We rest in the seeing without any intent – no pushing forward, no holding back – and being intimate with seeing is present naturally.

‘Just step back’, Ch’an master Foyen told his listeners often. That is the effect of looking from the bright centre that has no head – as though one has stepped out of the world and suddenly, paradoxically, become intimate with all things – seen and unseen, at the same time. Foyen expresses the ‘witnessing’ effect of this practice:

‘Just step back, stop mental machinations, and look closely. When suddenly you see, nothing can stop you.’

If you are a ‘sitter’, then while you sit in meditation, as solid as a mountain you can let your gaze rest, with no special intent, in the manner of the Tibetan Dzogchen practitioners – with the eyes of compassion, Avalokiteshvara‘s eyes, as wide as an ocean.

This practice highlights the peripheral vision aspect of ‘headlessness’. Rest in that wakeful peace. It’s especially powerful if you have space before you; like a valley, the sky, or before the ocean from a cliff.

On the subject of peripheral vision: whatever you are doing – especially while walking – in a wondering, loving way, include the peripheral, be whole. Find a hallway, and walk slowly, mindfully down the hallway, as if you had no head. (Maybe now we can understand Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover!)

How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way
Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?

– William Blake, poet.