Seeing Those Who Don't See Us
Darshan in Dwarka, India
Dear friends,
This week made me reflect on the all-to-human experience of feeling unseen. We all have moments in which we think, sense or know that a person, or a group of people are not seeing us, neither for the totality of who we are, nor sometimes even for our basic sense of safety in the world. For whatever reason they seem incapable of, or they simply don’t want to see us.
We also have a part of us that understands that we are as guilty as anyone else of refusing to see. Our ability to see others is limited to our viewpoint. But this understanding doesn’t necessarily help us step out of our hurt invisibility and help us see others. Usually, the feeling of not being seen only makes us feel justified in fortifying our viewpoint, and with it our entitlement to not push ourselves beyond our comfortable viewpoint.
The Hindu tradition has a beautiful concept that is designed to heal this dissonance, and help us to gain enough confidence to expand our seeing circle. I know this concept because my nephew, Darshan is named after it. Darshan means to see and to be seen. “It's a reciprocal experience where a devotee sees a deity or holy person, and in turn, is believed to be seen by the divine, receiving blessings in the process.”
I recently contemplated Darshan when discussing the Talmud’s tractate on pilgrimage with my father, who’s spent much of his life teaching Indian languages and religion. In that tractate, Chagigah, we learn that the primary Mitzvah of pilgrimage is called ראיה, literally “seeing.” It is often translated as “appearance,” because the Torah tells us that we must all “appear before YHVH.” (יראה לפני ה״). When I described this to my father, I found out that the same ambiguity that us Jews express with the word ראיה, Hindus express with the word Darshan. “Darshan is the purpose of pilgrimage,” I was taught.
Three times each year Jews would make the journey to Jerusalem for the purpose of seeing and being seen. This goes to show us how much crucial significance the ancients in different parts of the world placed on the sense of being seen - for all who you are – which, they thought, might allow us to see others in the same light. Without feeling like we are truly seen we have a hard time seeing others. Without seeing others, we don’t feel fulfilled, as if we are failing to live up to our potential of goodness and care.
The Talmud expresses this through a beautiful story about a trip that the most important rabbi of his generation, Rabbi Yehudah Hanasi, (so revered that he was called “Nasi” or prince) took with another Rabbi:
Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi and Rabbi Ḥiyya were walking along the road. When they arrived at a certain city, they said: Is there a Torah scholar here whom we can go and greet? The people of the city said: There is a Torah scholar here but he is blind. Rabbi Ḥiyya said to Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi: You stay here; do not demean your dignified status as Nasi to visit someone beneath your stature. I will go and greet him.
Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi grabbed him strongly and went with him anyway, and together they greeted the blind scholar. When they were leaving him, the blind man said to them: You greeted the face of one who is seen and does not see; may you be worthy to greet the face of the One Who sees and is not seen. Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi said to Rabbi Ḥiyya: Now, if I had listened to you and not gone to greet him, you would have prevented me from receiving this blessing!
The blind scholar and Rabbi Yehudah Hanasi taught us a few lessons here. First, that we must be “mevakshey panim,” seekers of the face, meaning we should always strive to see others no matter what their social, physical or political category. Second, that we must do that even in cases in which we know that they cannot possibly see us. And third, that this kind of striving can offer great blessings in return.
In this story, the rabbis were not deterred by the fact that this will be a uni-directional seeing. In our lives this amounts to imagining the experience of and being attentive to the needs and feelings of those who are not attentive to ours. Even so we seek their face, strive toward encountering them through our sight, out of faith that our effort can bear fruit, and love, which asks for nothing in return.
May we be able to see one another and know in our hearts that we are seen.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha