Lovely descriptions. The following is what I usually say when this comes up ...
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I personally am not staring fixedly at a "point" or a dot ... nor am I staring so unfocused that my eyes go blurry. I describe it as "staring at everything and nothing in particular". My eyes take in the room or the floor or wall quiet naturally, but I do not latch onto anything particular I am seeing. "Staring wide eyed into space" may be a good description. Maybe my focus just wanders from point to point to point quite naturally, resting where they rest, on this or that, then moving on when they move on.
I do not see particular harm in staring at a fixed spot the whole time, except that it is a little unnatural. Even when facing the wall, I do not fixate like glue on a single spot.
Let me just say that, in our Shikantaza way with the eyes about 1/3 open, there should be nothing particularly unusual or out of focus about the vision. It is seeing normally, but just not thinking about and judging what one is seeing. Otherwise, nothing usually particularly strange about the vision.
Monks in monasteries would sometimes sit in sunlight during the day, weak candlelit rooms at night, so I don't think that is the problem.
If you are doing something to excess (such as forcing the eyes to fixedly stare, failing to naturally blink, allowing them to really go out of focus or the like) then you are kinda "trying to hard". It is rather like riding a bike: If you relax, it is easy. If you try to hard, you lose your balance and fall.
Gassho, J
What a room looks like before Zazen ...
What the room looks like during Zazen (but just not thinking particularly thoughts like "ugly sofa, nice chair, wish I were outside, need to clean this dirty floor ... "
SatToday
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I personally am not staring fixedly at a "point" or a dot ... nor am I staring so unfocused that my eyes go blurry. I describe it as "staring at everything and nothing in particular". My eyes take in the room or the floor or wall quiet naturally, but I do not latch onto anything particular I am seeing. "Staring wide eyed into space" may be a good description. Maybe my focus just wanders from point to point to point quite naturally, resting where they rest, on this or that, then moving on when they move on.
I do not see particular harm in staring at a fixed spot the whole time, except that it is a little unnatural. Even when facing the wall, I do not fixate like glue on a single spot.
Let me just say that, in our Shikantaza way with the eyes about 1/3 open, there should be nothing particularly unusual or out of focus about the vision. It is seeing normally, but just not thinking about and judging what one is seeing. Otherwise, nothing usually particularly strange about the vision.
Monks in monasteries would sometimes sit in sunlight during the day, weak candlelit rooms at night, so I don't think that is the problem.
If you are doing something to excess (such as forcing the eyes to fixedly stare, failing to naturally blink, allowing them to really go out of focus or the like) then you are kinda "trying to hard". It is rather like riding a bike: If you relax, it is easy. If you try to hard, you lose your balance and fall.
Gassho, J
What a room looks like before Zazen ...
What the room looks like during Zazen (but just not thinking particularly thoughts like "ugly sofa, nice chair, wish I were outside, need to clean this dirty floor ... "
SatToday
l know that eyes have man blind spots that we usually are not aware of unless brought to our attention. 
), but we are simply not "seeing" or "looking" and using our eyes in Zazen in the usual run of the mill way. We are not looking at things to recognize and think about them. One has the eyes open, but is sitting in deep equanimity about what one is seeing, not caught up in judgments or analysis about the experience. The reason that we sit with eyes partially open is a bit practical (so as not to doze off so easily), but more than that, it is to manifest an attitude of not shutting ourself off from the world yet not running toward the world either. As well, we sit without paying much attention to the distinction between "outside" me and "inside" me, and thus sometimes the hard borders and frictions of self and non-self soften. I sometmes compare the experience to driving a car ... alert, but seeing everything and nothing in particular, while one's heart is quiet and in deep equanimity about the open road.
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