A gaze that is born of fear, a gaze that excludes and exploits is not darshan. Darshan is gaze that is free of fear. Darshan is gaze that looks at the other for its own sake not because it is ‘mine’ or ‘not mine’. Darshan is an empathy-filled gaze. We see people around us as deer who fear predators, or as lions who fear scarcity and seek prey, or as dogs who bark when threatened or whine when ignored. Darshan enables us to see people’s thinking patterns or mind-sets.
