The Art of Looking

Recently we had a dialogue at this centre from 2 pm to 4pm. There were 8 of us. We read 2 or 3 pages from Freedom From The Known. It was about the art of looking and listening. How do we look at objects, nature and people around us? Is there clarity, freshness and beauty in our way of looking? Or is it a dull, old habitual way of looking with unconscious thinking? When we were young, before going to schools, we looked at everything with a fresh and curious mind. There were clarity, freshness and beauty in our way of looking. We were fascinated to look at flowers, birds, moon, people, colors and shapes. There was not much knowledge about these things within us. After we went to school, we were encouraged to remember the names of birds, flowers and other objects around us. We were enthusiastic in gathering knowledge about our environment. Learning was fun up to the end of 7th std. There were no examinations at the end of academic year to test our knowledge. When we came to senior school in Std.8, we had to learn too many subjects.  Slowly learning became a burden. We had to memorize too many things in order to pass examinations. We developed fear and other psychological problems like competition, ambition, shyness and guilt about the nature of sexual feelings and insensitivity to nature.  Our mind was occupied with too many thoughts and problems. Now trees, flowers,  birds, colors, shapes did not look strange and beautiful. We looked at all these things with the words and knowledge we had learned. We became intellectual as we grew older. We learned how to solve mathematical problems and apply our knowledge to solve problems in science. We learned how to analyze social, political, economical problems. We became clever in expressing ourselves through words and ideas. But in this process, we paid a heavy price. We lost the ability to look at things, people and nature with the sense of wonder and freshness, the way we looked before we went to school. Is it possible to get back the way of looking at everything with freshness and beauty, without knowledge and images? Is it possible to have a silent and awake mind which can look at all things with innocence, beauty and love? It is possible but for that one must have a passion to look within, to see how thoughts arise and how they move from one thing to another. One can observe in relationship how thoughts create all kind of psychological problems. Without turning our attention within, it is not possible to be free, happy, peaceful and to feel love and beauty. Without this freedom, life can become mechanical and meaningless even if one has money, power and fame in society.