Read time 2 minutes. The opening of the third eye involves the interplay of Zen understanding and practice as preparation for transformation.
In our last lesson, we looked at the power of correct understanding. Today, we’ll turn to Zen practice and look at how these two forces quietly conspire. Together, they form a structure. Not like a staircase. More like a stance or a position. One that just might allow for what some traditions call “the opening of the third eye.”
Understanding can’t force awakening
We’ve been taught to seek transformation through knowledge. So we assume that if we just understand Zen deeply enough, that will do it.
It won’t.
A correct understanding is not the thing itself. It is the thing that gives us faith to return to practice. And that practice is not the thing either.
But the two—understanding and practice—do something together. They create an inner availability. A willingness. A readiness.
And that, sometimes, can be enough.
The role of practice
There are countless methods aimed at spiritual transformation—mantras, meditation, austerity. We won’t debate their relative merits here. Our focus is narrower: to train our awareness. To see how it’s habitually aimed outward. To learn how to redirect it inward. Repeatedly. Gently. With increasing skill.
This is our practice. And it’s foundational. But like understanding, it’s still not the thing.
The shift—the real one—won’t come by force. It happens by positioning. You prepare. You allow. Then, maybe, it happens.
This is what’s meant by “the opening of the third eye.” Peace is already here—but veiled. Obscured by ego. Our work is not to fabricate peace, but to remove what obscures it.
Awakening doesn’t happen by will. It happens through readiness.
Less effort, more permission
So which matters more: understanding or practice?
Everything. Nothing.
Zen is subtraction. We stop fighting. We stop forcing. Then we stop trying to “achieve peace,” and we learn to allow it instead.
If it comes, it comes.
And if it doesn’t, we remain available.
Explore more:
James Clear touches upon all of this in his article discussing the Zen concept of beginner’s mind.
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