The Buddha’s eyes are the eyes of compassion. When the Buddha views a person with his compassionate eyes, desiring to save him, the Buddha perceives all things, including the person’s character, intellect, and mental attitude. The five kinds of eyes (pañca cakṣūṃṣi, go-gen) or ways of viewing things are the following: the eye of a material body (māmṣa-cakṣus, niku-gen), the divine eye of celestial beings (dirya-cakṣus, ten-gen), the eye of wisdom (prajñā-cakṣus, e-gen), the eye of the law (dharma-cakṣus, hō-gen) and the eye of the Buddha (Buddha-cakṣus, butsu-gen).

The eye of a material body means the way of viewing things of an ordinary person, who can perceive only material shapes and forms. Such a person often has a wrong or partial view of things. He mistakes oil for water and a whale for a fish.

The eye of celestial beings means the viewpoint from which we investigate matters theoretically and discern their essential qualities. This is the scientific way of looking at things. When we take this view, we realize that water is formed by the combination of oxygen and hydrogen. From such a point of view, we can foretell when there will be a conjunction between two stars down to the year, month, day, hour, minute, and second. At the same time, we can estimate exactly how many millions of tons of petroleum are buried underground. Such a person, who has the ability of seeing things that an ordinary man cannot see, was called a clairvoyant in ancient times.

The eye of wisdom means to discern the entity of things and their real state. This is, in a sense, a philosophical way of looking at things. A person with the eye of wisdom can observe things that are invisible to the average person and can perceive matters that are beyond imagination. He realizes that all things in this world are always changing and there is nothing existing in a fixed form (all things are impermanent); nothing in the universe is an isolated existence, having no relation to other things; everything exists in relationship with everything else like the meshes of a net (nothing has an ego).

The eye of the law is the artistic way of looking at things. To the average man, a mountain is just a mountain and a cloud is merely a cloud. But a poet feels that the mountain speaks to him and the cloud teaches him. He feels that a beautiful flower, a dignified tree, and a little stream talk to him, each in its own special language. Unlike the average person, an outstanding artist can directly touch the lives of such natural phenomena. In the case of man himself and his human life, such an artist can also perceive truths that the ordinary person cannot. This is why in Japan the title of Hōgen, literally meaning “eye of the law,” was given to certain outstanding artists as a special rank, as in the case of the famous artists Kanō Masanobu (1434-1530) and his son Motonobu (1476-1559).

The eye of the Buddha is the highest of all viewpoints. A person with this kind of insight not only can perceive the real state of all things (wisdom) but can observe it with compassion. He penetrates the real state of all things with the desire to make all of them develop to the full extent of their potential, each according to its own original nature. In other words, he is endowed with the divine eye of celestial beings, the eye of wisdom, and the eye of the law while also possessing the mind of great compassion; it is he who takes a religious view of things in the true sense.

If we view all living beings with the eye of the Buddha, we can naturally discern the means most suitable to guide each one. The Buddha can do this perfectly. Granted that we as ordinary people cannot possibly attain such a mental state, we can approach it step by step through our accumulation of practice in the way to buddhahood. As people of religion, we must always try to view everything with a mental attitude based on the compassionate mind of the Buddha.