In this video John discusses the difference between seeing the world through the eyes of the self, and seeing the world through the eyes of practice.
“When we see the world through the eyes of the self we grasp things with our certainty. So we say things like, “oh that’s a wall”, “there’s the sky out there”, “oh time is passing”, “my zazen isn’t very good today”, and so on, the quality of our experience has a slightly weird apparational quality about it, neither existence nor non-existence because seeing in this way, through the eyes of the self, through the eyes of certainty, the world exists within our mind, and, as it were, we exist within our mind as well.
Seeing through the eyes of practice is entirely different, we do out best not to grasp our moment to moment experience with our certainty, but sometimes we can’t help ourselves, and when we do we just learn to release that grip of certainty. And the feeling tone when we see in this way is entirely different, it’s as if we become soft, and open, and connected.
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