I sat today with eyes open, perhaps only for a change of practice, to see what might eventuate.  My method of sensory deprivation—headphones in which I hear Tibetan bowls chiming, eyes closed—has always been a cheat, a defiance of instruction, but it has long felt necessary to any sort of understanding.  My cushion today rested on an ancient Oriental carpet, badly worn, with intricate patterns of indigo and scarlet.  As instructed by Yasutani-Roshi via Philip Kapleau* and others, I lowered my gaze more or less along the line of my nose, on a small dark area within the design.  The impressions this led to were certainly striking.  The dark patch faded as I gazed at it, sometimes becoming indistinguishable from surrounding pale areas.  At times the woven threads became sharply distinguishable, at times entirely indistinct.  Designs on the periphery of my vision seemed at times almost to be inhaling and exhaling with me, their area expanding and contracting, or their horizontality rising and falling.  I might blink and the dark specificity of the area at which I gazed would return, as if blinking had restored conscious awareness.  Or perhaps these rhythmic changes in my perception of it were no more than consciousness pulsing in and out, or even less—no more than the moisture of my eyeballs drying and restored with a blink.

Meanwhile, meditating with eyes open had some effect on my internal and spiritual experience.  It seemed easier to recede from consciousness; the rising and falling thoughts were less frequent but mattered very little.  I contemplated the hara, which has had little place in my meditation lately, and that extended the reach of my breath in both directions, inhaling and exhaling.  I came to a new understanding, or decision: that the desirable relation to one’s own body, that part of one which will die, is non-attachment.  Again it needs saying, by me and to me if to no one else, that this is not the same as detachment; rather, non-attachment, I begin to see, is compatible with charity, kindness, compassion, even love.  One feels compassion for that part of oneself and others which is so fragile and temporary.

For now I must say that I have no idea if keeping my eyes open led to these experiences in any direct way, or merely coincided with them.  But I will try this way again.

21 December, 2023.

* See Kapleau, The Three Pillars of Zen, for example p. 37.