Reflection 527

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A Precious Gift

The difference between Harding's headless way and Advaita, Vedanta, or Zen Buddhism, and so on, is that instead of trying to conceptualize or understand in theory the "atman" or the "no-mind" or "emptiness", etc., and meditating and cogitating on it for years and years in hopes of somehow grasping it or magically inducing realization, one just simply looks. One by-passes the thought patterns, the cultural conditioning, the religious dogma, and other such verbiage, and one simply sees without preconceived ideas. Drop the rhetoric and simply look for yourself.

I look back over my notes of other teachings from various traditions of self-realization but none of them advocate simply and clearly just seeing, as the headless way does. I think a lot of the old Zen masters and Advaita Vedantists were self-realized but they lacked an efficient method to share this realization with others and were reduced to merely preaching or trying to describe their experience to seekers, most of the time leaving seekers dazed and confused by it all.

And not only does the headless way advocate simply looking, it shows you how and where to look. Ramana couldn't show them how to see. He could only sit there and do it for them in silence or he'd try to explain it to them or he'd give them some enquiry instructions and so on. But he never showed them how to just look in the mirror and see for themselves. Or, how to simply point to it.

Harding has bestowed upon the world a precious gift. D