Losing My Hair: Alopecia, An Uninvited Teacher

AKA My Incredible Shrinking Hair and Self

My teacher, Rev. Koyo Kubose, shaved his head. His father, Rev. Gyomay Kubose, first shaved Rev. Koyo's head ceremoniously when he gave his son Dharma transmission to become his spiritual or lineage heir in 1998. Rev. Koyo Kubose generally kept his head shaved from that day until the day he passed away, in March 2022. Rev. Koyo Kubose would even joke about how his wife, Adrienne, would occasionally tease him when his hair grew out a bit, saying, “It’s time to shave your head. Your ego is getting too big.”

Transmission to Rev. Sunnan Koyo Kubose | Rev. Koyo Kubose - Lay Ministry Induction, 2010

And that comment hints at the spiritual symbolism of a shaved head in Buddhism. Most people who are even remotely familiar with Buddhism tend to have an image of a bald-headed monk or nun. And, if spotted in an airport or other public place, seeing a bald-headed Buddhist monk or nun in robes wouldn’t cause on onlooker to question why they don’t have hair. It is culturally accepted, even admired.

A shaved head in a woman—until relatively recently, as political statements, artistic expression, and, more currently, as stylish shaved undercuts etc.—generally caused people to glance and look a little longer, wondering why? Why is that woman bald? Do they have cancer? And, only recently (ala "the slap"), has alopecia entered the awareness of the culture as a possible reason for a shaved head on a woman.

In Buddhist and many other spiritual traditions, "tonsure" is the practice of cutting or shaving some or all hair on the scalp as a sign of religious devotion or humility. The term originates from the Latin word tonsura (meaning "clipping" or "shearing") and referred to as a specific practice in medieval Catholicism, which was abandoned in 1972. It is still a traditional practice within some religious orders in Catholicism and is commonly used in the Eastern Orthodox Church for newly baptized members. The complete shaving of one's head, or of shortening the hair, exists as a traditional practice in Islam after completion of the Hajj. It is also practiced by a number of Hindu religious orders and is frequently used for Buddhist novices, monks, and nuns.  

In Buddhism, specifically, tonsure is a part of the rite of pabbajjā (Pāli: “to wander forth”) or in Sanskrit, Pravrajyā, which is ordination of layperson to become a novice monk or nun. Cutting the hair is symbolic. Long hair was a sign of higher caste in India, and Siddharta, before he became the Buddha, cut off his hair as a renouncement of all his worldly goods.

The rules of ordination for monks and nuns are detailed in the Vinaya pitaka, one of the three-part main Buddhist scriptures. These rules are beneficial for monastics by discouraging vanity and keeping monastic life more convenient.

Thubten Chodron wrote about monastic head shaving on her thubtenchodron.org site (https://thubtenchodron.org/2003/03/monastic-habit-bald-head/). She wrote:

Shaving our head symbolizes cutting off confusion, hostility, and attachment—what the Buddha called the “three poisonous attitudes.” These three mental toxins poison our well-being and our relationships with others. Confusion makes us ignorant about the causes of happiness and the causes of suffering. Hostility and anger ruin our relationships with others, especially with those we care about the most. Attachment clings to people, things, places, and ideas with the mistaken notion that they will make us happy. Cutting off these three eliminates the causes of our misery. It also frees us to direct our energy to cultivating equanimity, love, compassion, joy, and wisdom in our hearts….

Photo by Sravasti Abbey

Cutting our hair becomes a way to recall the purpose of our life. In other words, we haven’t become monastics in order to look good, be popular, gain prestige, be rich, or have a lot of possessions…. Our purpose in life is to subdue our afflictive emotions and attitudes and cultivate beneficial ones through practicing the Buddha’s teachings. In addition, to the extent that we are able to, we try to guide others to eliminate the three poisonous attitudes from their minds.

Thubten Chodron goes on to explain how hair is an object of attachment for most of us. I don’t think I need to explain this. It sometimes seems people revolve around their attachment to their own hair and to others’ hair. “Bad hair day” is an almost ubiquitous meme. We fuss over our hair, trying to get it to look a certain way. We talk about our hair. Mine and yours. If we have blonde hair, we wish we would have black. If we have brown hair, we want blonde hair. People dye their hair all the time now and in every color of the rainbow. People with straight hair, curl it; people with curly hair, straighten. And this goes for men, women, genderqueer, and non-binary.

And, of course, those going or gone grey cover it to make themselves feel like they aren’t aging. And balding people frantically work to ensure the bald spot is covered with comb-overs and the ever-present baseball hats. They try lotions, topical and oral medicine, injections in the head and buy wigs, toppers, extensions, and caps with hair attached. The vanity seems off the charts when it comes to hair and the amount of time and money spent is substantial.

No matter what our hair looks like or changes to, we are never satisfied. Hair seems one of the most prominent marks of our self. We seem uniquely attached to our hair as self.

In the article by Thubten Chodron, she writes:

Trying to always look good is futile. Our society idolizes youth, yet no one is becoming younger. It’s rather ridiculous that the media and advertising exalt what no one is becoming. We’re all aging. Wrinkles are in the process of arriving, hair is turning gray or it will soon enough. So I’ve given up trying to look good. In fact, I don’t want people to like me because I look good. I’d rather have deep and stable friendships with people who look for inner beauty—what a person has in his or her heart. Thus we monastics are committed to developing our inner beauty because that won’t fade with age. Inner beauty—a kind heart that cherishes others for who they are—will draw others to us, be a base of true friendship, and enable us to be of benefit to others.

But what does this have to do with non-monastics and younger people, in general? Chodron answers:

Am I hinting that everyone should shave their head? No! You can still work to cultivate equanimity, love, compassion, joy, and wisdom without shaving your head. But understanding the underlying symbolism of a shaved head—that it is not our outer appearances that matter but our inner beauty—will help you to let go of useless attachments in order to find true, lasting happiness.

In episode #70, Disappearing? Transcending?, of my podcast, Everyday Buddhism: Making Everyday Better, I talk about exactly what Thubten Chodron wrote: "The ridiculousness that media and advertising exalt what no one is becoming."

I wrote:

I’ve felt that feeling of being invisible. The feeling that a certain part of life is over….

The good news—and there is good news—about seeming to disappear is that it reveals the absolute truth of things as they are, not as we wish they would be. The truth that we’re not as solid and relevant as we seem—especially to ourselves. But we constantly fool ourselves into thinking otherwise. That’s the condition of ignorance in Buddhist terms. It doesn’t refer to being stupid, just deluded. It’s a belief in the illusion of our solidity as a self and the solidity of all other people and things.

My change in perceiving what seems to be my new disappearing self is a shift to an understanding (sometimes only momentary) of the disappearing nature I always was. And it brings a peace and freedom that is rarely available in other ways.

When I released that episode at the end of April, I was about 4 months into my hair loss from autoimmune alopecia, but I don't think I noticed how much my hair loss may have contributed to my feeling of disappearing. At the time, I was doing all the things I talked about before as I began to bald… Comb-overs … special powders, baseball caps. All quite exhausting really.

It was during March and April that my hair loss began to accelerate again. It first started in late December - early January, then paused and seemed to start growing back, then in April it was on a steady downward trend.

And about two weeks ago, I began to make peace with the fact that I was losing so much hair there wasn't much of a point in trying to hide it. This was a process of working to accept things as they are, called Arugamama, from Morita Therapy in Japanese Psychology.

In arugamama, the practice is to let whatever discomfort we’re feeling kill us. Not literally, of course, but in the sense that we have no more resistance to it. This sense of “killing us” comes from a Zen koan by Dongshan who posed a problem for a student, which was, “how can we avoid cold and heat?” The student answered with a question, “where is there a place like that?” Dongshan replied:

When it is cold, let it be so cold that it kills you.

When it is hot, let it be so hot that it kills you.

If we are killed, there is no resistance and no effort to be otherwise. Pema Chodron puts it this way, from her book, The Wisdom of No Escape:

Resistance is the fundamental operating mechanism of what we call ego—resisting life causes suffering.

My teacher, Rev. Koyo frequently quotes his father, Rev. Gyomay Kubose, saying, “acceptance is transcendence”—with the emphasis on “is.” And for me, that has been a major key to reducing suffering during many times in my life. Holding on to what I think I might be losing keeps me suffering like a shimmering ghost that is unable to let go of life. Actively accepting the naturalness of this disappearance kills me completely if I can relax into my disappearing hair … and, maybe, the disappearing self.

But in my fighting that active acceptance, I ordered a short wig that was styled like the way I wear my hair and then I decided, when I woke up last Saturday, to shave my head.

I have been reading stories, on alopecia support forums, of many women who when they shaved their heads, the dreaded loss of hair became a powerful, life-changing act, as soon as they took control over it by shaving their head. Honestly, I sort of didn't believe them, thinking it was rationalization and self-soothing.

Yet, I was surprised to find out, that after a brief few hours of grief and loss on Saturday night, my baldness shifted into a new feeling of freedom. Not just the freedom of worrying about going bald, because, indeed, I was. The other shoe dropped. And not just a freedom of constantly messing with my hair to cover bald spots, or looking at how much hair was on my pillowcase or in the shower drain … But a definite sense of spiritual freedom.

We are currently studying the Diamond Sutra in our Everyday Buddhism Sangha, and in our reading from the translation and commentary by Red Pine, he writes:

If you can just get free of the four perceptions (self, being, life, soul) and cultivate all auspicious dharmas, you will realize enlightenment. If you don't get free of the four perceptions, even though you cultivate all auspicious dharmas, your thoughts of a self or a being striving to realize liberation will increase, instead.

I don't know about you but thinking I could actually even catch a glimpse of freeing myself of self seemed completely impossible. That was until this past week. OK, I know you're thinking I'm full of it now. Shaving your head is not like some magic, enlightenment-producing act. And yet…

It wasn’t magic but it IS a practice of letting the self, the ego go a bit. So much about our "self", as Thubten Chodron pointed out, is tied up in our appearance. And so much of our appearance is based on our hair. For women especially, but men are not immune as evident by all the comb-overs, baseball-cap wearing (of which I am also guilty), and commercials for hair loss products.

In my case, of course, it was not a voluntary commitment to monastic life or a political, artistic, or fashion statement. Although, I did think a lot about a spiritual rebirth and a letting of another unnecessary attachment go prior to, during, and right after shaving my head. I thought about my teacher, Rev. Koyo Kobose, and how, soon after his death I lost most of my hair. I wondered if his playful beingness found its way into my mind and emotions, giving me the strength to shave it all off and the seeming ease in which I accepted my new baldness.

Yet, would I have given up my hair voluntarily? I can absolutely say I wouldn't have.

But now that it's gone, I have no regrets. It feels like a commitment to that disappearing act I talked about in my “Disappearing? Transcending” podcast episode. In that episode I talked about how I had to keep realigning myself to the words of the sutras. With my hair gone, I AM that disappearing.

So much so, it seems, that even though my wife, and the friends and neighbors who have seen me in the wig, talked about how much they love it … how it makes me look younger … the feeling of absolute authenticity overcomes me in my baldness.

I've talked before, in my book and podcasts about how the word for "renunciation" in Tibetan means "authentic becoming." This is exactly what it feels like to me. A true renunciation, which as the phrase states, is a "becoming." It's not like, "Hallelujah! I've arrived at freedom from self!" Nope. I haven't arrived. But this is helping me get there. And it will take some time because, as Red Pine wrote in his commentary on the Diamond Sutra:

Just as [Mount] Sumeru is the greatest object in any world, the self is the greatest conception of any mind.

So, this overcoming the self business is a huge mountain to climb. The biggest of any. But alopecia became an uninvited teacher, training me in the climb, in an authentic becoming, in a true renunciation. Not a going away from the world but being a truer me while in it.

Wendy Shinyo Haylett, July 2022