A look is a deep thing. If you just see a person as you pass by them, no relationship is created. But if your eyes meet, something happens. A warm look, a warm smile, may dissolve the boundaries and perhaps you’ll even talk to one another.
The eyes are the windows to the soul as we know, and this is why eye gazing is so important in any relationship. And what I mean by eye gazing is receptive eye gazing – so that you may be open to receive another as they are, as human being, rather than a possession, object, or something you may attach conditions, expectations and limits upon.
Whenever we are able to look lovingly at someone, there is a blessing here that may reveal itself to us. The key word is lovingly.
So today, let us dive into the art of looking lovingly, and the blessing present; and for this discussion, I’ll share with you verse 18, or meditation technique 18, from the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra.
I’ve previously written on verses 10 and 16, which you may read here,
Verse 10: When receiving caress, sweet princess, enter it as everlasting life.
Verse 16: Blessed one, as senses are absorbed in the heart, reach the center of the lotus.
There are many descriptions in old classical texts about what yoga means or is, and I invite you to research and explore them. But as a starting point, here are some: “Yogah Chitta vritti Nirodhah“ “Manah prashamanah Upayah yoga ityabhidhiyate“ “Yogah Karmasu Kaushalam” ” Yogasthah kuru karmani sangam ‘tyaktva dhananjaya Siddhyassiddhyoh samo bhutva samatvam yoga uchyate“ ‘“Ujyate anena iti yogah“.
For the purpose of today, the one to understand is “Ujyate anena iti yogah”, which translates to “that which joins is yoga”. Some people would explain it by saying that yoga is the joining of individual consciousness to the universal consciousness. But yoga isn’t just about a traditional practice, as for many people yoga may take a different form.
Essentially, it is a devotional path, and a dissolution of boundaries and conditioning, so that one unites with the true essence of love, and becomes love. Yoga is where the boundaries dissolve, and you “lose” yourself in a way that you fall into union with all around you. It is an understanding of the interconnection of everything, and how we are in union with all already.
Verse 18 says,
Look lovingly at some object. do not go to another object. here in the middle of the object — the blessing.
A beautiful face, a beautiful person, a beautiful body, a beautiful flower. The key word here is lovingly. We may often think we surely look at someone or something lovingly, but do we really? Most times, no. We look at it lustfully. And here lies the difference.
A beautiful face, a beautiful person, a beautiful body, a beautiful flower. Why are we looking at it? Do we desire something of it? Do we want to get something out of it? Do we expect something of it? Then it is lust, not love. Then it is merely of the intention of our self serving interest – what to do with it, and how to make “this”, whatever the “it” is, a way for our own happiness in that moment.
Lust essentially means to use something for our own happiness, while love isn’t really about “us”. Love has a certain sense of freedom, while lust conditions, limits, attaches thoughts or expectations, and seeks to fulfill a desire or need within us. Lust is about how to get something, while love is about how to give something.
Suppose you see a beautiful face, whether known or unknown to you in your life, and if you feel love toward the face, then naturally the immediate feeling arising within you would be how to do something to make this face happy, how to do something to make this man or woman happy. Notice that the intention is focused on the other, rather than yourself.
In love, the other is important; in lust, you remain at the center of importance. So lust is self serving. You see a beautiful man perhaps, your eyes meet, you share sweet words, and perhaps the emotions are mutual; but then your mind starts wondering what may happen now, will we kiss, will we be together, will I hold his hands, will he ask me on a date.
These are natural thoughts and emotions, and not to be ashamed of at all; but the key here is: if you seek to actually allow for the blessing to reveal itself, you must look into it lovingly. Let it be. Listen. Stay present. Find the treasure within this cross where the here and now meet.
In lust, one will sacrifice the other; in love, one will sacrifice their attachments and their ego and their selfishness. In lust, one seeks to have; in love, one surrenders the control and opens the hands.
The simple truth is that we often live in delusions and self deceptions. We may speak of love, but we rarely ever truly love. We may speak of looking lovingly, and be very convinced we do, but we don’t. And if we are truly honest with ourselves, we will come to understand that we rarely look lovingly at something. Awareness is the key always.
So if we make the conscious effort to look at something or someone lovingly, we will inevitably see the blessing. Because when we look lovingly, at anything or anyone in life, no matter if only for a simple fleeting moment or for years, we will begin to love. The flower will no longer be just a flower. The body will no longer be an object. The face of the cute stranger will no longer be just a face.
So this sutra essentially reminds us that even if we look at an object, something material and non sentient, we may begin to see it as living, if we look at it lovingly. The flower becomes alive. And this aliveness, as if a person, humbles us. A cat or dog or a little squirrel is no longer just an animal, we become more responsible towards wildlife. We treat it better and more kindly.
But when we look with lustful eyes, humans become objects. They become things. Things we use. And once it is no longer serving us in the way we thought it should, we discard it. We replace it. We move on to the next. And the next. And the next. And we begin treating one another as objects, we objectify one another, we grow more selfish, entitled and arrogant. We become consumers. We become users, living in spiritual poverty.
Lustful eyes are repulsive. Loving eyes are inviting, beautiful, because they receive us with purity. When one looks at you with lustful eyes you will contract and feel repulsed, and feel them as ugly. When one looks at you with loving eyes, you feel raised, you feel joyful, you feel seen. This is where the love is, because,
Love is a seeing and of being seen, not of flesh, but through the flesh.
Love makes anything and everything unique. That is why without love, you may never feel like a person, a human being, alive. You’ll only feel like a number, and you’ll feel badly about yourself. Unless someone loves you deeply, and has seen you deeply for you and your unique self as you are, and has given you that freedom in your soul, you may never even feel that you have any uniqueness.
This is why our modern culture of social media has led to so many people feeling worthless. This is why people have such a hard time even talking to one another anymore, or even approaching someone – because we use lustful eyes, not loving eyes. Because we treat each other not like humans, but like products in a supermarket. Because we are selfish, and self serving, and even the word “love” has lost all its meaning, because people have no idea what it actually means.
I love him but … I love her but … I love it but … and if there is a but, it’s not really love is it; it is a condition we have attached to it. There’s nothing to feel ashamed of, but it’s just about us being really honest with ourselves.
Love is not a transaction. Love is not a but, love is not only if. Love is not “I love you as long as you do what I want”. And yet love is not a martyr neither. But we need to be really honest with ourselves, and our own hypocrisies, selfishness and entitlement. We need to be really honest with our attachments and our versions of what we think love is, or relationships are, because the humble truth is that very few actually are able to love in a pure way without negating their inner essence and truth neither. But I digress.
Why was your childhood toy important to you? It’s because you spent time with it. It’s because you looked at it with awe. We can only love what we appreciate. And when we look at something lovingly, it becomes special to us, it becomes unique. And if it is unique, we will not misuse it, we will not treat it badly, because it’s as if it is a part of us and we want the best for it.
When you are in love with someone in your life, everything suddenly begins to be more beautiful, haven’t you noticed? You walk outside and it’s as if you are dancing with the flowers, seeing colours everywhere, and there is a continuous smile on your face. Suddenly you feel you are in a romance with everything, even the food you eat tastes better, and even when you look at yourself in the mirror you see yourself as more beautiful and glowing.
Look at it lovingly; do not move. Here in the middle is the blessing.
Do not keep moving from one to another. Keep present. Keep your attention. Don’t discard things or people just because of temporary moods or because it isn’t serving your self interests. Look deeper within your own self. What do you seek? What does love mean to you? How do you love? Do we only love if they love us? Do we only love if they do as we wish and want them to?
When you truly love, and truly look lovingly, all other faces become shadows, because only one face remains. When you speak to that stranger on the street, with whom your eyes met, and smiles met, and the loving looking make you both feel comfortable to speak and approach one another – all other faces do not matter. Only one face remains. When you love, only one face remains, and you do not move.
You do not throw out the rose which hasn’t bloomed yet. You stay. You do not walk away from the face of someone you say you love when things are not as they were in summer’s warmer days, you stay. There is wisdom gained in snow. There are cycles of land teaching us, and offering us an opportunity for a deepening.
Here in the middle of the object is the blessing. There is no longer selfishness, nor thinking of your own personal pleasure or instant gratification. There is presence. Remain here. Remain with the person. Remain with the flower. Remain with your beloved’s face.
Remain with the eyes you meet and look into lovingly. Remain here, present. And let this loving flow and move through you, and flowing with just one heart, with the feeling of, “What can I do to make the loved one happier?”
When you move outside if your own center, and into the other, there is the love, because you no longer think of all from the perspective of yourself. You are now thinking in terms of the other. And as such, consciousness now flows towards the other, with compassion and real seeing. And this creates the bridge of love.
In love you’ll forget yourself. You’ll feel helpless. You may feel powerless. You may feel scared fearing you’ll be changed and transformed after this – but that’s the point of it. Because love is a peeler. It peels the layers off our bark that aren’t true to us anyway – all of our false identities, selfishness, arrogance, entitlement, delusions, masks … it peels it off, so that we release our true fragrance, our sweetest most natural self. You only lose what wasn’t true.
Love is a surrender. And that’s not comfortable. But this is why love itself is a deep meditation. And really, if you actually truly love someone, no other meditation is needed. But because no one actually loves, one hundred and twelve methods were told and written, and even they may not ever be enough.
Loving is difficult. And the humble truth is that there are very few traces of it. Many people will go a whole life deceiving themselves they loved, but they never truly did. And perhaps that’s the saddest reality. It all sounds so simple – to love – and people all the time say things like “I love you”, even to someone they barely know or care about. And sure they “love”, but only as long as it serves them, and only as long as the other does what they want, or fits within their narrative.
So few people actually are even able to see another for the true self. We have our windows so tainted. We barely see ourselves, and it’s almost impossible to then see another as they truly are. We see them as we want them, and we get annoyed the moment it is no longer what we wanted. We give to others what we think they need, rather than what they actually need. We give to others what we want to be given, rather than what the other person actually needs and wants. We can’t even listen to someone anymore, and even if we “listen”, we rarely actually hear.
We seek possession, validation, instant gratification. These are lustful eyes. It’s as if someone is looking at you through a peep hole, and it’s uncomfortable, ugly, and repulsive. How can you even want to be with that person. How can you undress to show your true self, and connect, and be intimate – because intimacy means to see someone truly within. But to show your true self, you need the loving eyes to be looking at you – because this is the freedom and comfort. The receiving eyes. The loving eyes.
Because of our inability to look lovingly, clothes have become so meaningful. If you are naked with someone who doesn’t truly love you, his eyes will turn your whole body, your whole being, into an object. But when you are in love with someone you can be naked without feeling that you are naked. Your body becomes art, poetry, alive moving beautiful thing. You would like to be naked, because you would like this transforming love to transform your whole body into a person, into something alive and moving.
When two people are present with each other, two lovers, whether they just met or have known each other for long, they both become actually absent. A pure existence remains – without any egos, without any conflict, without conditioning, just a communion. In that communion one feels peaceful, joyful, even blissful. And yet it’s not that the other person has given you that sense of bliss – the bliss has come because unknowingly you have fallen into the deep meditation called love, called presence, called look lovingly.
So follow the peace. Follow the lovingly. Don’t move to the obsessed what if, what next. Just stay here a while longer, stay in that lovingly look you share, and give, and receive. There is a blessing that may reveal itself. A blessing that may even stay with you long after you’ve both walked away from each other; a sweet fragrance, like the soul of rose, that will remind you of the sweetest timelessness and surrenders that hold us in union.
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Cover art is a film still from the film Drums of Love, 1928, Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.
