How to Train a Wild Elephant_ And Other Adventures in Mindfulness - Jan Chozen Bays [38]
Final Words: Zen Master Dogen instructed his cooks, “See water as your lifeblood.”
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Look Up!
The Exercise: Several times a day, deliberately look up. Take a few minutes to really look at the ceiling in rooms, at tall buildings, at the tops of trees, at roofs, at hills or mountains, and at the sky. See what new things you notice.
REMINDING YOURSELF
Post little signs with upward-pointing arrows or the words “Look Up.”
DISCOVERIES
Most of the time we only look at a narrow wedge of the world. Because our eyes are in front of our head, our visual awareness is usually limited to what is in front of us, a slice from the ground up to about ten feet. Only when we see or hear something unusual, such as a seven-foot-tall man or a sudden loud noise above us, do we look up. Of course people in some occupations, such as farmers or sailors, often scan the sky since incoming weather is important to them, but these days they may be more likely to look at a weather channel or a radar screen.
Looking up opens our perspective, letting the mind out of its neurotic squirrel cage and allowing it to stretch and flex. When looking up, people notice many things they hadn’t seen before: light fixtures on ceilings, decorative carvings on buildings, treetops tossing in the wind, the shapes and colors of clouds, people looking out of apartment windows or leaning over balconies, birds suddenly wheeling in tight formation.
There are psychological experiments that show how much we miss seeing, even when we are looking directly at something. For example, people don’t notice when someone in a gorilla suit strolls through a basketball game, when faces are switched in a photo of two people, or when a person they are asking directions of is exchanged for another person (when hidden briefly from view by a man walking by carrying a board). We walk around caught up in a dream and three-quarters blind.
DEEPER LESSONS
“Looking” is not equivalent to actually seeing. To see something requires not only vision, but attention. The gorilla in the basketball game is not seen because we have been asked to focus on something else, to count the number of passes one team makes. We can drive to work, with our eyes apparently seeing stoplights, but without any conscious awareness of whether we stopped or not.
We are so preoccupied with the things right in front of us that we miss much of what goes on all around us. Children are more aware than adults, whose anxiety has narrowed their lives to “What do I have to worry is coming toward me?” Looking up expands the size of our life to include many more beings (such as birds) and phenomena (such as rainbows) than before. When our vista is wider, our experience of self expands, too. We aren’t so trapped in the small box we call “me, my world, and my worries.”
Looking up helps us broaden our perspective. How does the lady on the fifth-story balcony or the eagle circling overhead see us? When we can see even a little bit through their eyes, through God’s eyes, the claustrophobic closet of our self-obsessed life opens and we get a tantalizing taste of freedom. Looking up is looking out—out of the small box called “my self.” Won’t you step out?
Final Words: The eyes are an important tool of mindfulness. Open up your field of vision and really look!
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Defining and Defending
The Exercise: Become aware of how you define yourself and defend yourself and your personal territory. For example, do you see yourself as a Liberal or a Conservative? An East Coast person or West Coast person? How do you defend that position? Notice how quickly a mug, parking place, or seat on the subway becomes “mine,” and how you