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Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: AudiobookHub Recommendation
Chapter 2: The author's ideas were born from a transformative event in his early adulthood.
Chapter 3: His Himalayan experience completely transformed how he understood himself and his own identity.
Chapter 4: You cannot actually see your head.
Chapter 5: You can’t truly see your head in mirrors, photographs, or by any other method; you merely perceive patches of colored shapes therein.
Chapter 6: Just as you can’t see your head, you can’t see your body either.
Chapter 7: Saying we lack heads or bodies is far more reasonable than it first seems to be.
Chapter 8: Outside observers’ testimony cannot refute the assertion that we do not possess bodies in any way.
Chapter 9: A scientific account of consciousness supports the claim we lack physical bodies after all.
Chapter 10: So far as we know, nothing exists beyond our immediate experience itself.
Chapter 11: Nothingness lies at the core of consciousness.
Chapter 12: If nothingness centers consciousness, many long-held assumptions of Western thought can be set aside as fundamentally mistaken.
Chapter 13: Zen Buddhism closely mirrors the author’s experience and ensuing reflections throughout.
Description
On Having No Head (1961) is a one-of-a-kind classic of philosophy, spirituality, and mysticism. Combining empirical observations, mystical experiences, logical arguments, personal introspection, practical exercises, Zen Buddhism, and other Eastern spiritual traditions, its aim is to smash through the dualisms that lie beneath much of Western thought: subject and object, mind and body, self and non-self, internal and external world. In their place, the author contends that we can see ourselves and the world around us in a radically different way.
Who Should Listen
- Students of Western and Eastern philosophy
- People wanting to understand the nature of consciousness
- Anyone interested in Zen Buddhism