Too Bad I Didn't Have the Foresight to Give this a Title

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“Seeing is believing,” a sentiment I learned from that ghost on the Polar Express. Sight as a sense seems to transcend just seeing the world around. To see is to understand. To wake up we open our eyes to perceive the world. We see the truth, a new perspective means looking at something from a different angle. Vision becomes a part of faith to see the divine both literally and figuratively.
Not The Polar Express
Mountain
In Darsan: Seeing the DivineImage in India, Diana Eck talks about seeing is a vital part of Hindu faith in India. The seeing of the divine becomes some important that “the places [to see the divine] becomes an icon” of the divine itself (Eck 73). Seeing is a vital part of the religious experience and feeling a connection to the divine. Being able to see the divine in the real world is integrated into the religion unlike the Puritan idea that religion must be entirely mental. Eck refers the rejection of religious images as a “Western antagonism to imaging the divine at all” (18). There is less religious faith placed into the literal sight of the divine for the West.
So how does a Christmas movie I watched as a child connect the religious experience of a country? For me, the answer is that to believe something, we must see it; and to be able to see something we must believe in it. Sight and belief are intertwined in a way that makes it difficult to separate them. If we cannot believe in the divine then how could we see it? But if we do not see the divine, then how can we believe it? To see means to believe in a sense, otherwise you would not trust your eyes.
Sight is difficult to connect to a personal experience since it acts as the understanding of those experiences. For example, if I recall a family meal to invoke the sense of taste, my sight is still a part of setting the scene. Vision helps me recognize the food, look at my family and see what I am doing. Though seeing can also evoke powerful feelings without any of the other senses. The awe and majesty felt when you see a giant mountain loom above you or the shoreline sprawl out below you. Watching the clouds stretch out in the sky or seen the sun shine down on the world. Sight has the power to inspire such strong feelings with its beauty. Sight is in itself a recognition of the divine.

Comments

  1. William MyungApril 24, 2020 at 11:10 PM

    I feel like sometimes our sight can be used against us. It can be used to hide and twist the truth. I think that "believing" with your sight necessitates making certain mental jumps. Like, maybe you can believe that someone is a good person, but you are not with that person 24/7. You would have to make inferences based on what you know of that person and how they behave.

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