Is there a way to not see Hinduism?

As we read these accounts of how different religious traditions and experiences are enhanced through certain senses, I’m reminded that each of these sensory avenues alone is not enough for a complete understanding of a religious experience. I find myself thinking, what is Islam like for a deaf person in Indonesia? And now, what would it be like to be blind in India? I know none of these readings advocate for one sense to be used and considered over all the rest, but the more they talk about how important images and sight is for Hindus in India, the more I think about how exclusive it could be for people who are differently able.

I am exceptionally attuned to issues having to do with seeing because my dad is nearly blind. I find myself reacting when I read things like “Not only is seeing a form of “touching,” it is a form of knowing” (9). I know this to be true through my dad’s experience. He can’t tell when someone across a room is trying to make eye contact with him, and he can’t tell if he’s met someone’s eye or if his trying to discern what’s in front of him looks like rude staring. Because seeing is a kind of touching, my dad has grown used to keeping his gaze away from most unknown people because a non-consensual look is almost like a non-consensual touch. People don’t like to be looked at and stared at without their permission. This quote also makes me wonder, if seeing is a kind of knowing, are there things only knowable through sight? If seeing, recognizing, and understanding the various sights and icons before you is crucial to full religious practice, what are people like my dad supposed to do? Granted, my dad is not Hindu, but if someone in India was similarly disabled, the invention and popularization of color printing would be a huge benefit, as Darsan brings up on page 44. What once had to be found out in the community could be brought into the home. This helps someone like my dad who, if he gets close enough to an object, can begin to make out the details. But I’m left wondering about people who are totally blind.

Darsan quotes the Visnu Samhita, which states “Without a form, how can God be mediated upon? If (he is) without any form. where will the mind fix itself? When there is nothing for the mind to attach itself to, it will slip away from meditation or will slide into a state of slumber” (45). I’m afraid the notion of needed images in any way, whether as a focus for meditation practices or as an actual divine image, kind of invalidates the lives and experiences of people who live without sight.

The next attitude that Darsan presents, however, gives power back to people without vision. Darsan says some don’t believe that an object to meditate on is helpful for anyone other than a beginner, and that “Yogins see Siva in the soul and not in images. Images are meant for the imagination of the ignorant” (45). While this is a notion that Darsan struggles to reconcile with his thesis of the importance of images, I think it is a notion that opens the experience of Hinduism to those without the faculty of reliable vision.