Can you recognize the truth of your own experience of seeing, free of conceptual overlays and preferences?
Miksang Photography is based on authentic visual experience expressed exactly as seen—True to Life.
The study of Miksang begins with this six-week class which presents the fundamentals of how we normally see and shows us how our mind continually functions to label and interpret our visual experience.
The Miksang Practice Recognizing Direct Perception demonstrates over and over to us how the process of thinking about our experience of seeing dims down the vividness and directness of our perceptions in every moment
By learning to recognize perception beyond thought when it happens, we can begin to develop confidence in the truth that “There is such a thing as unconditional perception that does not come from self or other.”
We can train our minds to be still, open, and receptive so that we can see our world with a mind of visual awareness.
This means that in each moment we are fully present in the here and now to experience our world in a fully genuine, authentic way, as it is.
Through a combination of the Miksang visual practices Settling into Awareness and Recognizing Direct Perception, and assignments that focus their intention on various aspects of direct seeing, students learn to prepare their state of mind to see directly before they go out with their camera.
In this way, seeing beyond thought is not a struggle. It becomes self-evident that it is possible to become fully available to see and express our perceptions with a mind of effortless equanimity.
Miksang means ‘Good Eye or Purified Eye’ in Tibetan. We all have a Good Eye as part of our human makeup. This means we have the ability to see the world in a pure way, without overlays of meaning and value, pleasure, dislike, or disinterest.
When we can see with our Good Eye, the world is always fresh, because everything we see is as for the first time. There is no memory, no association, only the world manifesting to us, as it is, out of nowhere.
These perceptions are vibrant and vivid, pulsating with life. The visual world is our feast, our playground.
Seeing in this way brings us joy in being alive.
Through our images we can express our experience of seeing. Our photographs will carry within them our heart, our mind, the blood of our experience.
