Just Seeing

Unmindful seeing

Letting the eyes close

Sometimes in meditation you may find that it seems quite natural to allow the eyes to close. When I begin to sit, when I seek to be aware of all the sounds around me, or of my own breathing, I find it helps to have my eyes closed. Cutting out seeing seems to help all our other senses become more acute. I hear more clearly any sounds, I feel more strongly the sensations within my body.

Letting the eyes open

At other times you may find it equally natural to allow the eyes to open. Once the mind has begun to quieten, and awareness of your other senses has developed, then you may find it natural to open the eyes and to connect with other aspects of your environment. When you get to Step 6 you'll probably relax more. After the busy body-scan exercise, all you need do now is to remain fully mindful and enjoy the well-being that has developed.

How the eyes may keep us in a state of distraction

Yet it's the eyes that often keep us in a state of "un-mindfulness". Too easily they zoom in and lock our attention on just one aspect of our environment, leading us to ignore everything else our senses might be aware of. Too often they keep us in a state of distraction, flitting from one thing to another, sparking off one thought or memory after another.

How our eyes work

There is something very different about how our eyes work compared with most of our other senses. Our ears, for example, hear sounds all the way around us. Wherever the sound may be coming from, we hear it, without turning our head or anything else. We smell any odour that comes to our noses without knowing where it's coming from. We feel the temperature, and unless sunlight is falling on us or a fire is burning to one side of us, the temperature is a constant, all around.

Peripheral and foveal vision

Our eyes however work in a very precise way. You probably know there are two parts to how our eyes see. We have a general, overall, so-called "peripheral vision". And we have a small, sharp, central area of "foveal vision". In the wider, peripheral, area we see colours, shapes and movement, but what we see is unfocussed.

When something catches our attention we then turn our eyes, or our whole head, to look directly at it with our sharply-focussed central vision. Our eyes are constantly moving, darting from one thing to another. As they do so they build up a complete image of where we are and we don't realise that most of the view is out of focus if we keep the eyes still. Try it.

You could say that what we see is driven by constant distractions. All the time we look towards whatever catches our attention. When our ancestors were hunter-gatherers, this greatly helped them find sources of food, and avoid being eaten themselves.

Mindfulness: being fully present

When we meditate we take a rather different view of life. We seek to fully inhabit this moment of time wherever we may be. Mindfulness involves connecting with the whole of what our senses are detecting—the whole of our environment, along with our whole body, heart and mind.

We can easily lose this all-embracing mindful experience when our eyes light upon a single detail in what they're seeing. We pay attention to that one detail, which may spark off our thoughts. And then those thoughts all too easily take us away from the present, and away from the rest of our experience.

Mindful seeing

This raises the question. Can we incorporate one of our most important senses, the sense of vision, into a fully mindful experience of the hear-and-now of this moment? I believe we can, though when I tell you how I do it, you may have reservations. It may seem a rather strange and unnatural way of seeing. Try it though. I think you'll find it leaves all your other senses unimpaired. It leaves you able to fully inhabit this place and this moment. And it reduces the number of distractions that can otherwise happen when we have our eyes open.

This is a training

Remember though that this is an exercise, a training practice. It trains us to see the big picture of life, and to see all within that big picture with dispassion. When we're trained, when we've experienced the liberation to which these steps are leading us, we'll be able to view the whole of life and everything within it with the same dispassion, whether we see in the way we do it in this exercise, or whether we just look normally at whatever we encounter in life.

Keeping the eyes unfocussed and unmoving

How then do we do train to Just See? We do it by keeping the eyes unfocussed and unmoving, and so seeing the whole scene ahead of us with our peripheral vision only. That vision extends for just over 180 degrees. Sitting here I see the door to my left, the fireplace to my right, the chandelier hanging from the ceiling and the carpet on the floor. Try it now if you can, and see what you can see.

Try it, and practise it

At first, you may find you're focussing on one part of the scene or another. It may take a bit of practice to keep the whole scene in view and unfocussed. Our eyes have been moving and focussing for a lifetime and it may not be easy to change the way they work. But try it, practise it, do it for a while as you meditate, then close your eyes again when it become too difficult or when you start to get distracted by what you see.

One tip that may help you to stop staring at whatever is straight ahead of you, is to bring your awareness to both sides of the view at the same time. That may be a first step towards bringing awareness to the whole of the scene.

A bonus

Perhaps it's my practice with this way of Just Seeing that means I do well when the optician tests my peripheral vision. When he shows me faint flickering lights in various part of my field of view, and gets me to press a button each time I see one, I always score highly!

Learning to see with dispassion

Like the exercise on Just Hearing, when we develop this comprehensive way of seeing all, it helps us to see with dispassion. Our reactivity is not energised. It isn't fed with either pleasant or unpleasant things, with interesting or uninteresting things. We see all, with dispassion (or equanimity). We can be fully in this place and in this moment, and we can be here in a non-reactive way.

Exercise: Just Seeing, summary

• When you feel ready to let your eyes open, then do so. Can you keep your eyes unfocussed and unmoving, and yet not keep staring at that central point straight ahead?
• It may help to see what can be seen at the extremities of your vision, then bring awareness to both sides of your view at the same time.
• Then, making sure you're still seeing both sides, relax and try to be aware of the whole visual field. At the same time maintain Just Hearing, awareness of breathing, and your whole-body awareness. Doing all aspects of this simultaneously will help you maintain a relaxed visual awareness without having to look at anything in particular.
• If or when you find this is too difficult for now, let your eyes close again and stay with the non-visual aspects of your mindfulness. Try again later, or on another occasion.
• Incorporate Just Seeing into your Anapana practice whenever you like, but don't feel that you have to use it all the time. Do what feels right to you. Open or close your eyes whenever you wish. Either way, stay fully mindful, fully aware of your whole experience.

And, finally...

The point of an exercise is to learn something, to train ourselves. The point of Just Seeing is to train ourselves to see the whole picture, and to accept everything within it with dispassion. Seeing with our peripheral vision is a strategy towards that end. When we've trained ourselves, and have experienced the liberation of Steps 9 to 12, then we'll be able to bring our attention to all the individual parts of life, and of this moment, with the same dispassion, whether our eyes are focussed or unfocussed, whether we're just hearing, or listening to something particular.