Meditation: Eyes Open or Eyes Closed
Meditation: Eyes Open or Eyes Closed
Should you practice meditation with you eyes closed or your eyes open?
Meditating with eyes open or eyes closed usually depends on the tradition you are practising in. However, when it comes to cultivating mindfulness within the Buddhist tradition, most advised to practice with your eyes open, although not within all schools (Dogen, 2004; Rinpoche, 2002; Wallace, 2022). This might sound counterintuitive as most of the time, within secular mindfulness practice applied towards general well-being, practising with eyes closed is taken to be the norm. This might have been heavily influenced by the way the meditator has been depicted in media through the iconographic representation of the tranquil meditator (you can read about this in a previous article, “The Tranquil Meditator: A Western Iconographic Misrepresentation”).
When it comes to practicing with eyes open, it is usually instructed to sit with a relaxed, lowered gaze, looking about 1 to 2 meters in front of you at the floor. The key is not to focus on anything in particular or any one object but to maintain a visual sense of the entire space around you. What this does is it helps relax the mind, and it helps relax attention.
That said, nowadays, many people meditate with their eyes closed. When meditating with eyes closed, it is important to remember not to force your eyes shut that you end up pressing your eyelids together or squinting your eyes shut or straining them shut. If we do this, we end up tensing up the face, which will be counterproductive as it will invite tension into the practice. So, the key here again is to allow the eyes to shut on their own gently in a resting position. This means that some light from our surroundings might still be visible in some circumstances.
Further, both practising with eyes closed or eyes open come with their own benefits and drawbacks.
For example, the major benefit of practising with eyes closed is that it helps reduce stimulation from your visual environment and external distractors. However, a major drawback is that if we do not have a good familiarity with the practice, practising with eyes closed might have a tendency to more easily slip into daydreaming, space out or fall asleep, or just getting caught in whatever is going on in the mind.
Moreover, we need to consider the tendency of the mind to make pictures or think in images. So, when we are with eyes closed, there is still the tendency for “visual distractors” in the form of mental images. These tend to be quite strong and can easily capture your attention in mindfulness practice. In these instances, opening the eyes during our practice can help dispel or diminish the mental images that are coming into the mind because the visual field from physical experience tends to supersede the mental images and can help act as an anchor in these instances to help settle the mind.
So, although practising with eyes closed can be calming and feel more introspective, it is more susceptible to daydreaming, sleepiness and getting lost in all sorts of imagination. In moments like these practicing with eyes open can help, as having your eyes open during practice helps discourage daydreaming and sleepiness and sometimes can act as an antidote for an overactive mind in our practice.
Sometimes, especially if you are a beginner with practising meditation, it is suggested to start with eyes closed and once a certain “sense of calm” has established itself to gradually open the eyes (Rinpoche, 2002).
Ultimately, there is no hard and fast rule dictating whether you should meditate with your eyes open or closed. You can use both.
What is important is to find out what works for you, and what helps support your practice. So, for example, if when you meditate with eyes open, you cannot settle down as you find yourself shifting your gaze around, looking all over the room, try practising with eyes closed and see how it goes. On the contrary, If you are finding it difficult to meditate with your eyes closed and every time you try to meditate, with your eyes closed, you end up stressed and tense or start falling asleep, try practising with eyes open and see how it goes.
Further, it is important to note that for some people or in certain situations, strongly attending to the inner environment might be overwhelming (we mentioned this in the article on “Mindfulness and Dissociation”). Therefore, practising with eyes closed can be overwhelming and sometimes destabilizing, and as suggested in “Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness,” keeping the eyes open can be helpful (Treleaven, 2018).
Below is a video sharing from my own experience on the topic of eyes closed and eyes open in meditation.
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Bibliography
Dogen, Z. M. (2004). Beyond thinking: A guide to Zen zeditation [epub]. (K. Tanahashi, Ed.) Boston, MA: Sambhala Publications Inc.
Rinpoche, S. (2002). The Tibetan book of living and dying (2nd revised edition ed.). London: Rider & Co.
Treleaven, D. A. (2018). Trauma sensitive mindfulness: Practices for sale and transformative healing [epub]. New York, NY: WW Norton & Co.
Wallace, B. A. (2022). The art of transforming the mind: A meditator's guide to the Tibetan practice of Lojong. (L. Quirolo, Ed.) Boulder, CO: Shambhala Publications.
Wolf, C., & Serpa, J. G. (2015). A clinician's guide to teaching mindfulness: The comprehensive session-by-session program for mental health professionals and healthcare providers. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.