Meditation: eyes open or closed.
People ask me this question a lot.
And the answer really depends on which tradition you're following and then
also what the purpose is that you're meditating for.
So let's talk about this.
Uh.
For those of you who are new to my channel. Welcome. I'm Barbara Heffernan.
It's nice to have you here. And if you enjoy this video and my other material,
please do subscribe to the channel. It helps a lot.
So when I began meditating,
my oldest daughter was six months old and she is now turning 30
this summer. So as of next February,
I have been meditating for 30 years and I began meditating in a Vedic tradition
because I lived in New York city and I did yoga.
And I went to the Integral Yoga Institute.
And once I decided that I really needed to learn to meditate,
I took a course at the Integral Yoga Institute.
So I began in the Vedic tradition,
which includes eyes closed and a lot of chanting.
And it was actually a pretty good way for me to begin meditating.
It was very centering. It was grounding.
The chanting gave my mind something to focus on.
So that's how I began.
And then over time I became more and more attracted to Buddhist philosophy.
And I began to study with a Zen center. And as I moved into Buddhism,
it was much more of a simple focus on the breath meditation.
And some of the places I would sit would have eyes open.
Some of them would have eyes closed.
And when I left New York City and I moved to Chicago and I joined a Korean
Zen center, they would use a technique which involved counting.
So as I switched traditions,
I had to learn to switch my meditation practice.
And that's a very interesting process.
And after a certain amount of time in the Zen traditions,
I then moved into a Tibetan tradition. And in the Tibetan tradition,
you keep your eyes open yet you also learn different techniques.
So you might first start with your eyes focused,
just a couple of inches in front of you. And then over time,
as you become more experienced,
you might raise your gaze a little bit further in front of you and then
almost a medium gaze.
And then eventually something called open sky where you really are open to
everything that's happening.
So Buddhism in particular has been a tradition which relies
on personal teaching of the techniques,
philosophies, traditions,
and it was always very important in Buddhism to have a teacher and have the
traditions and the process and the philosophy passed
down person to person, to person.
So right now we have a world where people are trying to learn meditation on
their own,
either through YouTube videos or apps or
taking courses with, you know,
a huge number of people where it's hard to ask questions. So this is wonderful.
I think it is wonderful that the tool of meditation is being spread, yet,
people are left without guidance for a practice that actually is
very challenging. So it sounds really simple, focus on your breath,
but it's actually very complicated.
And I did a video on that last week on why is meditation so hard?
And I will link that here, but to come back to this question of eyes,
open our eyes closed. Generally, if you're in a particular tradition,
you'll be given very specific instruction.
And if you start that way and you become habituated to meditating in that
method, you might become very attached to it.
So if you switch centers and somebody suggests, Oh, try it this way,
or try it with your eyes open,
you might find you have a lot of resistance to that.
So the thing with Buddhism is to look at the attachment and the resistance,
right? So if we become so attached to no,
I have to meditate with my eyes closed. This is the right way to do it.
Then we're not exploring one of the core tenants of Buddhism,
which is to be aware of our grasping and
aversion, right?
How we are always trying to judge everything and keep with what we like and
push away what we don't like. And we have all of these judgment minds,
like is really, really, really strong.
And there's the concept of wise mind or the observer mind that
exists without that, it's kind of like, Oh, that's interesting.
Someone suggesting I make this small change of how I focus or don't focus my
eyes and all this resistance comes up. It's uncomfortable. I don't like it.
So it can be very interesting to explore how the different
meditation techniques feel.
And if you'd like to explore this on your own,
I would make the suggestion that you decide prior to sitting
how, what you're going to do with your eyes,
because we don't want the vagaries of our mind to take over in the middle of our
meditation sessions. So you sit down,
eyes closed and your thoughts get really discursive and you keep getting lost in
fantasy. And you're like, well, this isn't working so well. I don't like this,
this isn't helping me. I'm going to try my eyes open.
And then you open your eyes for a while and maybe it's like, Oh, well,
that's interesting. And that's interesting. And then you're like, no,
I'm looking at too many things. Now I'm going to close my eyes.
So you don't want to go into a meditation session where you let this judgment
mind and monkey mind take over and change what you're doing.
So prior to meditating, you could say, okay,
I'm going to do a 20 minute set eyes closed. Tomorrow, you could say,
okay, I'm going to do a 20 minutes sit, eyes open, lowered,
gaze, gentle, soft gaze,
and experience it and experience what your
mind wants to tell you about the experience. Right?
But it's fine to experience it. And if you're working with a teacher,
work with the teacher on this. So in my programs right now,
I teach meditation with eyes open and I'm going to share with you why,
but before I do that, what I really want to communicate here is meditate.
Just meditate, eyes closed eyes open.
It's a challenging practice, but it is super, super rewarding.
There is so much research right now about how meditation benefits us,
physically, emotionally, mentally, everything.
It actually changes our brain structure in positive ways.
And I do talk about this in my free webinar,
Rewiring Your Brain for jJoy and Confidence.
And I'm going to link that webinar below this video. If you haven't seen it yet,
I invite you to see it.
I do go through a number of ways to rewire the brain,
but one of them is meditation.
And I provide a bit of the science and background for how we know that that
actually happens. So eyes open, eyes closed.
Really the research that has been done has been done in many different
traditions, Hindu, Vedic, traditions, Buddhist traditions, a number,
it all, it all shows good stuff. So, meditate.
That's really the message here,
but I'm going to share with you why right now I focus,
in my own personal practice, I meditate with my eyes open,
having gone through all these different traditions at the end of the day,
I've realized that for me,
meditation is about being here now.
Being as much here in this moment, as I possibly can.
And that means not blocking anything out.
That means not trying to retreat into my own world. It means being here now,
and we meditate, right for mindfulness.
Meditation is one of the best ways to
develop mindfulness that we can bring throughout our lives.
And we go through our lives with our eyes open.
So that's the reason I meditate with my eyes open.
And that doesn't mean that I don't close my eyes on occasion. Right.
And I also do try to choose before I sit,
which gaze I'm going to use.
But if I'm meditating and all of a sudden my eyes feel very tired,
I might close them for a couple of minutes. It's okay.
It's kind of like we breathe, right? We smell things.
We think thoughts, we come back to the breath.
A breeze passes us. We feel it on our skin. We're here,
we're here. We're human. We're full bodied. There's no perfection.
So I teach meditation with eyes open even to people just learning.
Because I think that having all of our sense gates open is
super important for learning mindfulness. So our noses smell,
our ears hear,
our minds think and our eyes see, right?
It's all about being in the moment.
So I hope this video has been helpful. Let me know,
let me know if you prefer to meditate with your eyes open or closed.
If you've tried both, if you try to stay open on the topic,
I'm interested in knowing how you meditate and what you think.
So let me know. If you liked this video, please do give it a like.
If you think there is somebody who might benefit from this,
please share it with them. And I look forward to seeing you all soon.