Really Seeing
We often hear that the Buddhist path will help us to “see clearly” or even to “see things are they really are.” Looking around, we may wonder what that means. Will I see something different than this table in front of me? Let’s go on a little journey around this idea of learning to see differently.
It begins not with seeing, but with feeling. It is easy to observe that different people have very different responses to similar situations. At the same party, for instance, someone might be delighted with seeing friends, someone else sad about feeling different from the group, and someone else anxious about the social interactions.
We can understand that a party has a wide range of associated responses, but in actuality, people will probably be looking like they are having fun – after all, that is how we are “supposed” to feel. We often limit ourselves by thinking that we need to conform to (1) expected societal responses or (2) our own previous responses.
Can we be happy at a funeral? Sad at a birth? Yes.
I once attended a memorial service for someone I didn’t know (the conditions were such that this was not obtrusive). I was curious to observe that I felt grief. Surely I was somehow tuning in to the dominant emotion there, and also I may have carried some idea that grief was the “right” thing to feel in that situation, so I noticed it when it arose. But if I checked carefully, I also felt some happiness at the celebration of this person’s life. And I also felt some delight simply because I was doing Dharma practice – I was mindful and connected to experience, which is inherently delightful.
Unencumbered by emotional attachment, my responses had a wide range, and I could notice them freely.
Births have a certain poignancy. Yes, there is a beautiful new being emerging into the world, with all the feelings of potential and hope and love and tenderness. And also, this being will surely suffer all the tribulations of a human life, eventually enduring aging, illness, and death. The round of birth and death grinds inexorably on.
If we are not mindful, our response to a situation will tend to resemble our prior responses to similar situations. As soon as we sit down in a work meeting, we feel bored or irritated, mostly because that is what we felt in the previous times. It is not a genuine response to this new time. And anyway, if we did act interested or happy, our colleagues would tease us – they expect us to be our usual sarcastic self. Family members are even better at “enforcing” our usual habits.
Dharma practice asks us to see what is really happening in the body and mind – the full range. But our subtle wish to conform to outside or inside agendas greatly obscures our ability to perceive this full range.
In terms of Dharma teachings, this is sankhāra (volitional mental patterns) conditioning consciousness – two of the steps of dependent arising. Our habits determine what we can be aware of. This is what keeps us looping in the same patterns. We don’t even know what we’re not seeing because it never comes into consciousness. Entranced by your usual anxiousness at the party, you don’t notice that your best friend is looking out for you by giving you a tour of the garden. Caught up in the excitement of the new year celebration, you don’t give attention to your more subtle wish for a time of quiet reflection.
“Seeing clearly” begins with allowing a wider range of responses in our body and mind. It can be as simple as acknowledging that there are multiple feelings happening – not just the “socially expected” ones and not just our usual ones from the past.
This is a path of radical honesty. Maybe you’re tired of your favorite meal. Maybe you enjoy some aspects of cleaning the cat box. Maybe you actually see some degree of validity in your brother-in-law’s political views.
The suttas even suggest something like this. We are asked to look for “the repulsive in the unrepulsive” and “the unrepulsive in the repulsive.” I imagine the Buddha smiling as he suggested this to trainees who were particularly attached.
Once we sense that our own mind is what blocks a freer experience of life, we may get interested in other active practices that retrain perception. The most common suggestion in the early teachings is to train in observing the impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and impersonality of experience. Not in a heavy-handed way, as if we are creating these observations, but simply by allowing them into the range of what we pay attention to.
As we start to look for these three characteristics, they are much easier to see – something like the way when we first enter a marsh, we may hear many frogs but not see them, and then as we scan for frogs, we suddenly start to see them everywhere. The three characteristics are perceptions that lead toward liberation, whereas our habitual or socially conventional ones probably do not.
The later Buddhist traditions have even more options for what to observe. These traditions place greater emphasis on practicing with views. Emptiness of both objects and subject can be explored explicitly, if that is of interest. And in all traditions, one is encouraged to keep the mind in a state of relaxed overall awareness, not allowing it to narrow down onto one viewpoint or to pursue a long thought trail.
Continuity of mindfulness supports this loosening-up of views. We have to catch when our assumption or agenda is slipping in. Hint: It arrives just before we depart from having a simple, open awareness of what is happening. It is gratifying to see a view emerge and not fall into its allure. This can be practiced on the cushion first, then brought into daily life.
The first fruit of such practices is some degree of equanimity and non-identification. When we really allow the mind to experience the full range of its feelings and responses without insisting that they be the usual ones we like to call “me,” we will come to see that everything is in flux. What could possibly be “the real me”? And amid all the highs and lows, ups and downs, why get concerned about a new wave passing through?
This already is quite a relief for the mind. And it gets better – the mind becomes more flexible and creative. It is a hallmark of mature Dharma practice that a person is more amenable to change, more resilient to loss, and more innovative in flowing with life.
Already these qualities partake of some degree of liberation. And full liberation is the final fruit of practicing with seeing and feeling more genuinely.
There is a path, but it a process of seeing better, not going anywhere. It’s stunningly simple: Correct seeing, which includes feeling, leads to fading (of attachment), and then release.
Understanding this, we know that any experience could be liberating. There is nothing that “doesn’t count” as a Dharma gate. Even the simple vision of the table in front of us. And that is indeed a different way of seeing.
We often hear that the Buddhist path will help us to “see clearly” or even to “see things are they really are.” Looking around, we may wonder what that means. Will I see something different than this table in front of me? Let’s go on a little journey around this idea of learning to see differently.
It begins not with seeing, but with feeling. It is easy to observe that different people have very different responses to similar situations. At the same party, for instance, someone might be delighted with seeing friends, someone else sad about feeling different from the group, and someone else anxious about the social interactions.
We can understand that a party has a wide range of associated responses, but in actuality, people will probably be looking like they are having fun – after all, that is how we are “supposed” to feel. We often limit ourselves by thinking that we need to conform to (1) expected societal responses or (2) our own previous responses.
Can we be happy at a funeral? Sad at a birth? Yes.
I once attended a memorial service for someone I didn’t know (the conditions were such that this was not obtrusive). I was curious to observe that I felt grief. Surely I was somehow tuning in to the dominant emotion there, and also I may have carried some idea that grief was the “right” thing to feel in that situation, so I noticed it when it arose. But if I checked carefully, I also felt some happiness at the celebration of this person’s life. And I also felt some delight simply because I was doing Dharma practice – I was mindful and connected to experience, which is inherently delightful.
Unencumbered by emotional attachment, my responses had a wide range, and I could notice them freely.
Births have a certain poignancy. Yes, there is a beautiful new being emerging into the world, with all the feelings of potential and hope and love and tenderness. And also, this being will surely suffer all the tribulations of a human life, eventually enduring aging, illness, and death. The round of birth and death grinds inexorably on.
If we are not mindful, our response to a situation will tend to resemble our prior responses to similar situations. As soon as we sit down in a work meeting, we feel bored or irritated, mostly because that is what we felt in the previous times. It is not a genuine response to this new time. And anyway, if we did act interested or happy, our colleagues would tease us – they expect us to be our usual sarcastic self. Family members are even better at “enforcing” our usual habits.
Dharma practice asks us to see what is really happening in the body and mind – the full range. But our subtle wish to conform to outside or inside agendas greatly obscures our ability to perceive this full range.
In terms of Dharma teachings, this is sankhāra (volitional mental patterns) conditioning consciousness – two of the steps of dependent arising. Our habits determine what we can be aware of. This is what keeps us looping in the same patterns. We don’t even know what we’re not seeing because it never comes into consciousness. Entranced by your usual anxiousness at the party, you don’t notice that your best friend is looking out for you by giving you a tour of the garden. Caught up in the excitement of the new year celebration, you don’t give attention to your more subtle wish for a time of quiet reflection.
“Seeing clearly” begins with allowing a wider range of responses in our body and mind. It can be as simple as acknowledging that there are multiple feelings happening – not just the “socially expected” ones and not just our usual ones from the past.
This is a path of radical honesty. Maybe you’re tired of your favorite meal. Maybe you enjoy some aspects of cleaning the cat box. Maybe you actually see some degree of validity in your brother-in-law’s political views.
The suttas even suggest something like this. We are asked to look for “the repulsive in the unrepulsive” and “the unrepulsive in the repulsive.” I imagine the Buddha smiling as he suggested this to trainees who were particularly attached.
Once we sense that our own mind is what blocks a freer experience of life, we may get interested in other active practices that retrain perception. The most common suggestion in the early teachings is to train in observing the impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and impersonality of experience. Not in a heavy-handed way, as if we are creating these observations, but simply by allowing them into the range of what we pay attention to.
As we start to look for these three characteristics, they are much easier to see – something like the way when we first enter a marsh, we may hear many frogs but not see them, and then as we scan for frogs, we suddenly start to see them everywhere. The three characteristics are perceptions that lead toward liberation, whereas our habitual or socially conventional ones probably do not.
The later Buddhist traditions have even more options for what to observe. These traditions place greater emphasis on practicing with views. Emptiness of both objects and subject can be explored explicitly, if that is of interest. And in all traditions, one is encouraged to keep the mind in a state of relaxed overall awareness, not allowing it to narrow down onto one viewpoint or to pursue a long thought trail.
Continuity of mindfulness supports this loosening-up of views. We have to catch when our assumption or agenda is slipping in. Hint: It arrives just before we depart from having a simple, open awareness of what is happening. It is gratifying to see a view emerge and not fall into its allure. This can be practiced on the cushion first, then brought into daily life.
The first fruit of such practices is some degree of equanimity and non-identification. When we really allow the mind to experience the full range of its feelings and responses without insisting that they be the usual ones we like to call “me,” we will come to see that everything is in flux. What could possibly be “the real me”? And amid all the highs and lows, ups and downs, why get concerned about a new wave passing through?
This already is quite a relief for the mind. And it gets better – the mind becomes more flexible and creative. It is a hallmark of mature Dharma practice that a person is more amenable to change, more resilient to loss, and more innovative in flowing with life.
Already these qualities partake of some degree of liberation. And full liberation is the final fruit of practicing with seeing and feeling more genuinely.
There is a path, but it a process of seeing better, not going anywhere. It’s stunningly simple: Correct seeing, which includes feeling, leads to fading (of attachment), and then release.
Understanding this, we know that any experience could be liberating. There is nothing that “doesn’t count” as a Dharma gate. Even the simple vision of the table in front of us. And that is indeed a different way of seeing.
