Written by Jen Liu

“Interestingly enough, we'll often find that when the mind strays, the quality of our gaze suffers too. … Our visual field loses a sense of intentionality and becomes somewhat random, much like our thoughts. The mindfulness of our soft, open gaze has the unique ability to reflect back to us the mindfulness we are demonstrating within.”

At Dharma Moon, we encourage students to practice mindfulness meditation with the eyes open in a soft, downward gaze about 4-6 feet on the floor ahead. The purpose of this is to blend meditation and post-meditation life, instead of having to escape into a trance-like state or shut out reality in order to get in touch with your breath.

This instruction can be challenging, especially if you're used to practicing with your eyes closed. But it’s designed to help you strengthen your awareness even if it feels difficult or unnatural at first. In the same way that fine-tuning our seated posture can teach us a lot about finding the middle way between gentleness and precision, so too can the open gaze be a great opportunity to develop certain muscles of mindfulness, like equanimity and stability. Once you've become more familiar with this practice, you can also experiment with lifting the gaze and opening your awareness, trying to give everything in your visual field equal importance instead of fixating on a central area of focus.

Interestingly enough, we'll often find that when the mind strays, the quality of our gaze suffers too. When our mind drifts deep into a daydream, we might notice that we also zone out visually, completely losing awareness of the room right in front of us. Or we may forfeit a sense of spaciousness, staring absentmindedly at one spot in the room at the expense of everything else around it. Our visual field loses a sense of intentionality and becomes somewhat random, much like our thoughts. The mindfulness of our soft, open gaze has the unique ability to reflect back to us the mindfulness we are demonstrating within.

During meditation, we can use our senses as gateways to the present moment, taking in visual information, ambient sounds, and physical sensations as reminders of the fact that we're right here, right now. It's great to have a quiet, beautiful setting that is perfectly conducive to meditation — and retreats can be very powerful for that reason — but it's also crucial to increase our capacity to be able to practice even when circumstances are not so ideal. Practices like meditating with the eyes open help us learn to access mindfulness in everyday life and meet stimuli as opportunities to connect to the present moment instead of as unwelcome distractions.