314. Seeing Through

The ability to see need is developed entirely through attention. By allowing my attention to go where it must, to openly investigate and freely explore both myself and the world around me, my awareness expands. My perspective that was once rigid and narrow gradually becomes more flexible and wide.

When my attention is open and free, I take in more of each experience, and in doing so, I not only see more broadly, I also see more clearly. I’m no longer shackled to one viewpoint — the one that aligns with my desires, aversions, and beliefs. I become capable of seeing things in a variety of ways, including a way that dissolves the things themselves.

All seeing is also seeing through. What I perceive is itself constructed: the distinctions I impose between objects are not as fixed as they might seem, and even what appears permanent is also subject to change. Both the world and my own self are more malleable than they might seem, more radically contingent than I ordinarily believe them to be.

Even more strangely, this realization of total contingency gives rise to a more comprehensive understanding of necessity. For what I learn by seeing through myself and the world is not that everything is nothing and therefore meaningless, but that it is both something and nothing at the same time and its ultimate meaning is undetermined. The world that is also the self is a paradoxical place, a place where contradiction is not only possible but necessary.

In the midst of seeing all of this, I cannot fail to notice the inescapable need of living beings, of myself, and of the people around me. It is in seeing the immensity of need that I also realize I cannot allow myself to turn away from it. I must respond to my own needs and the needs of others and it is precisely this action that I feel I must take that is compassion.