What do you think?
Rate this book
Eyes Wide Open: Buddhist Instructions on Merging Body and Vision
Meditation practices to awaken the body and create a mind like a mirror, to literally see things as they are
• Draws on the story of the monk Shenxiu to create a meditation practice for profound relaxation, inclusion and connection to the world around us, and realization of our essential nature
• Explains how our attitudes, beliefs, and bodily tensions distort our perceptions and lead to our sense of separation from the world outside our bodies
• Details techniques of vision, such as sky gazing, eye gazing, and mirror gazing, that lead to an ecstatic mindfulness
Right behind your eyes, you are there. You can feel yourself there, looking. So intimate is your connection with your looking that when you say, “I’m looking,” you’re implying that how you look and what you see are a direct reflection of who you are in this moment. Your attitudes and beliefs reflect what you see, and the way you live in your body can color your perceptions as well.
This splitting in two of experience--an inside-the-body world and an outside-the-body world--creates in many of us a sense of isolation and loneliness, a feeling of disconnection from the larger world at which we look. But the visual field is equally capable of reflecting a sense of connection and inclusion, an invitation to merge with the larger universe rather than confirming how irrevocably separated we are.
Drawing on the story of the seventh-century Chinese monk Shenxiu, Will Johnson offers meditation exercises to create a mind like a mirror, cleansing it of obscuring layers of worry and emotion to literally see things as they are, not just how we perceive them to be. He explains how to awaken your body to the sensations we learn to ignore when we lose ourselves in thought and tense ourselves in ways that stifle the body’s vibrancy. He offers meditative techniques to silence the projections of the mind and enter into a condition of ecstatic mindfulness. He details gazing practices, such as sky gazing, eye gazing, and mirror gazing, to cleanse our vision and remove whatever is distorting our perceptions.
Through this new kind of seeing, divisions between your inner and outer world start to drop away. You begin to experience an intimate connectivity to the world you look out onto. By cleansing the mirror of the mind, we can come out of the dreams of who we think we are and awaken into our true, essential nature.
• Draws on the story of the monk Shenxiu to create a meditation practice for profound relaxation, inclusion and connection to the world around us, and realization of our essential nature
• Explains how our attitudes, beliefs, and bodily tensions distort our perceptions and lead to our sense of separation from the world outside our bodies
• Details techniques of vision, such as sky gazing, eye gazing, and mirror gazing, that lead to an ecstatic mindfulness
Right behind your eyes, you are there. You can feel yourself there, looking. So intimate is your connection with your looking that when you say, “I’m looking,” you’re implying that how you look and what you see are a direct reflection of who you are in this moment. Your attitudes and beliefs reflect what you see, and the way you live in your body can color your perceptions as well.
This splitting in two of experience--an inside-the-body world and an outside-the-body world--creates in many of us a sense of isolation and loneliness, a feeling of disconnection from the larger world at which we look. But the visual field is equally capable of reflecting a sense of connection and inclusion, an invitation to merge with the larger universe rather than confirming how irrevocably separated we are.
Drawing on the story of the seventh-century Chinese monk Shenxiu, Will Johnson offers meditation exercises to create a mind like a mirror, cleansing it of obscuring layers of worry and emotion to literally see things as they are, not just how we perceive them to be. He explains how to awaken your body to the sensations we learn to ignore when we lose ourselves in thought and tense ourselves in ways that stifle the body’s vibrancy. He offers meditative techniques to silence the projections of the mind and enter into a condition of ecstatic mindfulness. He details gazing practices, such as sky gazing, eye gazing, and mirror gazing, to cleanse our vision and remove whatever is distorting our perceptions.
Through this new kind of seeing, divisions between your inner and outer world start to drop away. You begin to experience an intimate connectivity to the world you look out onto. By cleansing the mirror of the mind, we can come out of the dreams of who we think we are and awaken into our true, essential nature.
- GenresMeditation
98 pages, Paperback
First published April 25, 2016
10 people are currently reading
24 people want to read
About the author
Will Johnson
66 books19 followersWill Johnson received his B.A., magna cum laude, in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University in 1968. After graduation, he worked for several years as an art critic in New York before moving to the west coast of North America where he began actively exploring gazing, moving, and sitting meditations. He became a Buddhist practitioner in 1972 and was trained as a Rolfer™ in 1976. He began the formal sharing of the practices of Embodiment Training in 1995.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 5, 2016
Will Johnson's approach to meditation instruction places the body, or soma, at the core of the practice. Too often, meditation teachers treat posture as an almost insignificant aside. Will Johnson knows better. He teaches us how to allow bodily (and thus mental) relaxation by aligning the sitting body (and spine) with gravity in a delicate, sensitive, aware practice in which the body is given its proper importance in meditation. He also teaches invaluable insights on breath and breathing and allowing subtle, resilient motion in sitting practice. His contribution to knowledge of practice, in this respect alone, is immense. But Johnson keeps following the implications wherever they lead, and they have led him to the writing of this book, which incorporates vision and seeing in just as potently a transformative perspective. But first Johnson places his instruction on vision in the context of his instruction on sitting and bodily (somatic) awareness. And it all fits perfectly, as you shall see.
This is equally a book about embodiment and somatics as it is a book about vision and meditation. I especially appreciate the way Johnson summarizes and distills so much of what his earlier writings have to say, so as to provide a contextual understanding of how breath, bodily sensation, alignment, relaxation and resilience ... relate to how we see (and fail to see) ourselves and our world.
This book is full of insight and surprises. I cannot recommend it highly enough!
This is equally a book about embodiment and somatics as it is a book about vision and meditation. I especially appreciate the way Johnson summarizes and distills so much of what his earlier writings have to say, so as to provide a contextual understanding of how breath, bodily sensation, alignment, relaxation and resilience ... relate to how we see (and fail to see) ourselves and our world.
This book is full of insight and surprises. I cannot recommend it highly enough!
Displaying 1 of 1 review