Open Eyes Meditation » Tibet Dharma

Meditating with eyes open uses the power of the eyes. This controls the mind, open the ayatanas (sense gates), and empowers insight.

Can you Meditate with your Eyes Open?

You can definitely with your eyes open. I do it every day! In fact, it’s far superior for a number of reasons.

Keeps you awake more easily
Involves the senses more fully (would you wear earplugs, for example?)
Generates insight
Bridges formal meditation to post-meditation
Gaze is a key method to increase meditative potency

These are either clear or covered in the rest of the post.

They way eyes open meditation makes a bridge to post-meditation is pretty simple: When we go about our day, our eyes are open. Having eyes closed is a vastly different experience in relating to the world.

This is called state-dependent learning. If you study for a test on 5 cups of coffee, drink a bunch of coffee before the test. Your mind will more easily access the memory in the same state. Likewise, when you meditate with eyes open, that meditative state is more easily accessed in your normal life.

Buddhist Meditation with Eyes Open

Open eyes meditation takes an adjustment if you are used to closed-eye meditations. It seems like it’s not a big deal, but over the long term, small adjustments make a large difference in meditation. The eyes are especially important because so much information and so much of our consciousness essentially travel through the channel of the eyes. If the mind is feeling steady and stable, raising the gaze is a good idea. When the mind is wild and chaotic, bring the gaze down to a point on the floor.

How to Meditate with Eyes Open

Generally, it’s good to begin a session by having the eyes directed onto the floor about six feet in front. The gaze should be unfocused, a soft gaze as it were, not grabbing. Personally, I have found it to be extremely helpful to pick a spot on the floor as a reference point. Don’t stare at the spot, but sense when the eyes move away from it.

Check out our FREE Meditation Course

The Eyes Control the Mind

The eyes tend to make subtle movements all the time. The consciousness rides these movements. It’s tied to them. When the eyes are agitated, the mind will move around as well. When the consciousness is agitated, the eyes will move around as well. You can tame the consciousness and pacify the intensity of thoughts and emotions by controlling the eyes. This is a very useful meditative technique.

Obviously, the posture has to be done correctly, but this is one of the key parts of posture. When the eyes are held, noticing their micromovements, then the mind will calm down.

Keep the eyes still to control the mind.

It’s very easy to get into eyes that are too focused, and too intent on the reference point, but just think of it as a way to notice when your eyes move. You’re not staring at it fixedly. You’re just using it as an anchor point. When your eyes move, you notice.

If you can really hold the eyes still, good meditation will come in short order. When the mind is stable, when you’re on the fifth or sixth stage of meditation, it can be very beneficial to look straight ahead, not down.

Bodhisattva Open Eyes Meditation

Looking straight ahead allows you to meditate on space, openness, emptiness, more profound topics, more abstract topics. It allows the mind to open up into the world. This is called the bodhisattva gaze. Compassion meditation is also more readily available here because you’re opening out into the entire world, giving compassion for all beings.

Yogic Gaze

Wisdom enters through the eyes
Longchenpa?

Finally, raising the gaze slightly above the horizon, maybe five degrees at most, not a lot, is said to access a power bank, a spot of energy to which you can connect. This is a difficult meditation and it’s a good idea to be very stable in meditation and have a very stable mind before you try to access this kind of thing.

One of the pitfalls here is to fabricate something, to just imagine and make up some kind of power bank, which in a sense is what you’re doing. But there are psychophysical qualities to holding your gaze slightly elevated for a long period of time, if it’s steady. These are things to experiment with.

Notice if you get a little overly agitated or too tight, too focused, and so forth. Typically most people will be dealing with wandering mind, an inability to focus for a long, long time. Over-focus, increasing energy, is also a danger in this meditation technique. It can even cause severe mental problems. So watch out for those and don’t let them overcome you.