Let’s take a break from No-Head Zen. I’ll bring it back later, if I live long enough. The point is to be oneself with confidence, to give up inauthenticity.
Complaining, hating, self-pity, guilt, wanting to be seen, leaning in too strongly in a conversation – all those energy-wasting activities – look into them and you find they’re fabrications, the results of ego’s shaping factors. They are a band of thieves, stealing precious energy. It’s like intentionally kicking your bare toes against a table leg, living inside such false self-assertion. Real confidence comes from non-fabrication.
Those two Zen practitioners, whom I told you about, who mocked Douglas’ way, weren’t they, too, inflicting wounds on their toes, with their ‘real Zen’? Here’s Thich Nhat Hanh, commenting on the Ch’an master Linji:
“Master Linji said that when we meet the ghost Buddha, we should cut off his head. Whether we’re looking inside or outside ourselves, we need to cut off the head of whatever we meet, and abandon the views and ideas we have about things, including our ideas about Buddhism and Buddhist teachings. Buddhist teachings are not exalted words and scriptures existing outside us, sitting on a high shelf in the temple, but are medicine for our ills. Buddhist teachings are skillful means to cure our ignorance, craving, anger, as well as our habit of seeking things outside and not having confidence in ourselves.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh. Nothing to Do, Nowhere to Go: Reflections on the Teachings of Zen Master Lin Chi
That’s a good way of looking at headlessness, isn’t it? Linji:
“My friends, try and apply my insight. Sit still and cut off the heads of every retribution and transformation body of the Buddha. See that all bodhisattvas in the ten bodhisattva stages, all the fully awakened and wonderful awakened ones are just like shackles coming to imprison you. Arahants and self-enlightened ones are like the latrine pit. Awakening (bodhi) and nirvana are tethering posts for mules.”
– Translated by Thich Nhat Hanh. Nothing to Do, Nowhere to Go: Reflections on the Teachings of Zen Master Lin Chi
Linjji says, in more practical terms:
“Put on your robe as a free person. When it is necessary to walk, walk. When it is necessary to sit, sit. Do not for a moment yearn for Buddhahood.”
Kindly, and with self-compassion, of course. We’d be just as inauthentic if we emulate Linji’s ‘beat ’em, berate ’em’ style. Leave that in the Tang dynasty. Once a Zen student, blinded by his conceit, grabbed me by the collar and shouted a Zen challenge in my face. Living in the head is painful dukkha. When we lack mindfulness, and act from unawareness, ironically, we are not respecting who we really are. If we can’t treat people well – can’t respect others – we haven’t got the point yet, and it doesn’t matter how many ‘koans’ we’ve ‘passed.’ I was a slow learner myself, in this matter of treating others well.
Can I share the etymology of ‘respect’? It’s related to the Latin ‘spectāre,’ which means to ‘look.’ We get ‘spectacles’ and ‘spectator’ and so on, from the same root. Can we really look, and see the beauty of the other? Most of us want to be seen, but can we see?
The Vijñāna Bhairava Tantra suggests, ‘See as if for the first time a beauteous person or an ordinary object.’