Meditation with eyes open

Many of us tend to fall asleep when we close our eyes and meditate for longer than 15 minutes. We close our eyes, have a relaxed posture, breathe slowly, focus only on our breathing….and slowly…very slowly…fall asleep!
 Some of us meditate with our eyes half-closed, but I find that hard…this also causes eye pain in a few of us. So why not try meditating with eyes open?

There are actually many ways to do this. You could just gaze at a blank wall or at a flower.

My favorite is an incense stick. When I meditate with my eyes closed, the silence of my breathing has a profound effect on my meditation. It is my breathing that calms me down and shuts me off from the outside world. I am able to identify this “silence” with the “silence” of the smoke that rises from the incense stick. It looks heavenly when the smoke coils up in silence and quietly disappears. I personally think that meditating with an incense stick is an effective way to calm down the mind and slow it down, if not silence the chatter and clutter within. Without falling asleep.