Meditation on Sight & Seeing

This was for a Mindful Aware meditation class on [[October 1st, 2020]] at 9am.
I also taught this for MIT’s [[Mindfulness and Leadership]] group on 12/7.
Welcome. Today we are continuing our exploration of the six senses, the six sense consciousnesses, the subconscious and the unconscious from the Buddhist point of view. The technical term for the six senses and six sense consciousnesses are the "12 ayatanas". If you add in the six objects that each of the 12 ayatanas perceive you get the "18 dhatus". If anyone is interested, I'm basing this approach on Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's presentation in "The Path of Individual Liberation" starting on page 273.

The Six Senses in Buddhist Thought

For those of you who haven't been here for the previous explorations of the senses, we are going one by one through each of the senses, feeling, smelling, tasting, hearing, seeing and thinking, to examine them in a little more isolation than we can do in our daily life. The reason why I mention the technical names for these categories is not so much because I think it's important that everyone know the vocabulary (although that's nice) but to demonstrate how incredibly deeply Buddhist meditators in India, China, Mongolia and Tibet looked into the lived experience of human beings.
And that's what we are doing too. We are setting aside a little part of our daily routine to look into our experience. In this thread on the senses, we are dialing our attention into each one in turn to examine how our experience comes together in this thing we call life.
As Chogyam Trungpa says "The popular idea of meditation is that of trying to attain a higher state of consciousness. You try to clean up the eight consciousnesses into an absolute consciousness... But that approach seems to be a problem. Relating intelligently with the technique of meditation does not have to be a project of sticking out your neck and looking beyond where you are. You are not trying to avoid or transcend anything. Instead you could remain in the state of what you are." (Page 279)

Guided Practice: Three Stages of Seeing

Today we're going to look into sight and seeing. The eye ball and the part of the mind that apprehends, processes and makes sense of what the eye balls see.
9:10 Take seat. Posture. Close your eyes. Gong. Motivation: Give yourself some love for getting yourself here. Think of someone who you hope this time could benefit. Three deep belly breaths to draw your awareness down into the feeling body. Now a few on your own. Then let your breathing return to normal.
9:15 Open your eyes and pick an object in the room to rest them on. Look at that thing. It doesn't matter what it is. Study it with your eyes. You don't have to think about it. It doesn't matter for the moment where it came from, who gave it to you, etc. Just look at that object in your life as it is itself. When ideas come up about the object, or when you get distracted by thoughts of other things, gently bring your awareness back to your object. You are giving yourself a couple of minutes to look at something in your life. Give yourself that gift completely.
9:20 Now close your eyes for a moment. Reset your eyeballs and eye consciousness. Open your eyes again gently, but this time with a soft focus. Maybe shift your gaze up or down slightly so your object isn't dominating your field of vision. And instead of focusing completely on one thing, take it all in. Allow yourself to experience your entire field of vision. Your gaze is soft and expansive. What is that like? Can you relax a little more and just see the world you live in? Can you see it as it is?
9:25 With your eyes still open, shift your attention just a bit so you are "seeing" the space between the objects in your life. This is not as much about your eyeballs obviously as your eye consciousness and your mind. But we spend so much time devouring things and their labels visually. Let's acknowledge, experience, see the space between the objects in our lives. The distance, the openness, the not-solid. Rest your mind on that.
9:28 Now drop the technique. Give your body a little shake or jiggle. Close your eyes if you like and just relax. Like dropping back into an armchair at the end of a long day. Just rest.
9:29 Gong. Dedication of merit.

The Six Senses in Buddhist Thought

For those of you who haven't been here for the previous explorations of the senses, we are going one by one through each of the senses, feeling, smelling, tasting, hearing, seeing and thinking, to examine them in a little more isolation than we can do in our daily life. The reason why I mention the technical names for these categories is not so much because I think it's important that everyone know the vocabulary (although that's nice) but to demonstrate how incredibly deeply Buddhist meditators in India, China, Mongolia and Tibet looked into the lived experience of human beings.

And that's what we are doing too. We are setting aside a little part of our daily routine to look into our experience. In this thread on the senses, we are dialing our attention into each one in turn to examine how our experience comes together in this thing we call life.

As Chogyam Trungpa says "The popular idea of meditation is that of trying to attain a higher state of consciousness. You try to clean up the eight consciousnesses into an absolute consciousness... But that approach seems to be a problem. Relating intelligently with the technique of meditation does not have to be a project of sticking out your neck and looking beyond where you are. You are not trying to avoid or transcend anything. Instead you could remain in the state of what you are." (Page 279)

Guided Practice: Three Stages of Seeing

Today we're going to look into sight and seeing. The eye ball and the part of the mind that apprehends, processes and makes sense of what the eye balls see.

9:10 Take seat. Posture. Close your eyes. Gong. Motivation: Give yourself some love for getting yourself here. Think of someone who you hope this time could benefit. Three deep belly breaths to draw your awareness down into the feeling body. Now a few on your own. Then let your breathing return to normal.

9:15 Open your eyes and pick an object in the room to rest them on. Look at that thing. It doesn't matter what it is. Study it with your eyes. You don't have to think about it. It doesn't matter for the moment where it came from, who gave it to you, etc. Just look at that object in your life as it is itself. When ideas come up about the object, or when you get distracted by thoughts of other things, gently bring your awareness back to your object. You are giving yourself a couple of minutes to look at something in your life. Give yourself that gift completely.

9:20 Now close your eyes for a moment. Reset your eyeballs and eye consciousness. Open your eyes again gently, but this time with a soft focus. Maybe shift your gaze up or down slightly so your object isn't dominating your field of vision. And instead of focusing completely on one thing, take it all in. Allow yourself to experience your entire field of vision. Your gaze is soft and expansive. What is that like? Can you relax a little more and just see the world you live in? Can you see it as it is?

9:25 With your eyes still open, shift your attention just a bit so you are "seeing" the space between the objects in your life. This is not as much about your eyeballs obviously as your eye consciousness and your mind. But we spend so much time devouring things and their labels visually. Let's acknowledge, experience, see the space between the objects in our lives. The distance, the openness, the not-solid. Rest your mind on that.

9:28 Now drop the technique. Give your body a little shake or jiggle. Close your eyes if you like and just relax. Like dropping back into an armchair at the end of a long day. Just rest.

9:29 Gong. Dedication of merit.