Question

When meditating, must I close my eyes?

Answer

In our tradition we close them gently. It's not tight, just gently. In some other traditions they have the eyes open, but basically what we find is that when the eyes are open concentration gets too strong. As I mentioned before we don't actually want that strong concentration if it overpowers awareness, we want to know what's happening. So in our tradition we have the eyes closed and that helps to make concentration and mindfulness more balanced. That is something interesting, some people think concentration and mindfulness are the same. Concentration is like a camera, it can zoom in but it doesn't necessarily know what it is looking at. That is what the mindfulness and awareness does, it actually knows what it's looking at. So they are two different qualities we want to work together in a balance.

Our apologies if there are any errors in the above text. If anything seems to be wrong or confusing in any way, please feel free to contact the teachers for further clarification.