A baby’s eyes drink in the world with no ego-awareness, no thoughts, no judgement, no motive and no shame. To meet the gaze of a baby is to be engulfed in wonder and captive to an all-flowering divinity.
Imagine you are on a crowded subway. You notice some passengers: a derelict old man, possibly a drunk; an upper-class lady, prim and proper; a heavily tattooed menacing-looking thug. Standing across from you, a young mother absorbed in scrolling her phone, holds her baby with one arm. As the mother pivots, the baby’s eyes meet yours and gaze right into you, transfixed as though witness to a miracle.
Your outer world dissolves as you are drawn utterly into the steady silent stare of these wide-round eyes, purity-soft, agleam with fathomless innocence. Your eyes leap open, your face a pantomime of animated affection as your dancing heart embraces the baby’s sweet gaze in an eager flood of wordless love, play and light. Time and place cease. Each worry of your life is evaporated, every problem never was. The exchange lasts moments – moments in which a baby’s eyes summon from your dormant heart the all-encompassing truth of eternal beauty.
The mother pivots to her left and the baby’s eyes fix on the scruffy old man. You follow the baby’s gaze: the man’s face aglow with an unhorizoned smile of timeless wisdom and mystic freedom. Next the baby peers at the proper lady, summoning from deep behind her façade a compassion-heart aching with an aeon of human suffering. With its next glance, the baby transforms the tattooed thug into itself, his pure mirror-eyes the radiant perfection-proclamation of innocence-sweetness.
For purity, simplicity and tranquillity in all your being, see yourself in a baby’s eyes, then see the world through its unblinking gaze.