This morning I'd like to begin with a story from this little book,
A Monastery Within.
It's Tales from the Buddhist Path by my teacher Gil Fonsto.
And the story is about listening.
A young woman from another country moved with her family to live for one year in a town near the monastery.
When in the course of the year she discovered the monastery,
She would periodically visit to have discussions with the abbess.
The abbess introduced her to meditation,
Which became very meaningful for the young woman.
When the family's year-long stay was drawing to an end,
The young woman asked the abbess,
In my country there is no Buddhism and no one has ever heard about meditation.
How can I continue to learn and deepen the practice you have started me on?
The abbess said,
When you return home,
Ask far and wide for who among the wise people is recognized as having the greatest ability to listen.
Ask that person to instruct you in the art of listening.
What you learn about listening from such a person will teach you how to further your meditation practice.
So listening.
This week we have been exploring wise communication from the standpoint of listening.
And Tuesday we looked at our relationship to listening to ourselves deeply.
This practice that we do in some way is synonymous with listening.
We're learning about ourselves through listening to the way that we breathe and sense experience.
We're listening to the emotional body and the habits of the mind.
And we're listening to these cues in silence,
Training ourselves to not latch on to what are really just passing phenomena.
Passing,
Arising and passing.
So as we expand our inquiry into the relational field of listening,
I kind of suspect that there is a crisis in our society of people who have not been seen,
Who have not been heard,
And who have not been respected.
And we can respect others with our capacity to listen,
Listening intentionally.
And it's different from just hearing.
When we listen to someone on purpose,
As opposed to not really making it clear,
Just hearing them as if we would hear,
You know,
Background sounds,
Traffic or birds outside.
There's not much depth in that way of hearing others.
Instead,
We can turn to someone and really hear them out.
And we can listen to them as if we were listening to someone else.
We can turn to someone and really hear them out.
Listen to them on purpose with intentionality.
To be actively involved in listening means to consider what others are saying more than what you're about to say.
So to listen with love is not to interrupt people.
But rather let them speak until they're finished.
I think for the purposes of listening,
It might be useful to use the five criteria of speaking that we just covered for the purposes of listening intentionally.
You know,
Listening for what is true,
Looking for the truth.
And that actually has a lot to do with reviewing ourselves so that we don't overlay our judgments or our biases on top of what we're hearing.
We want to listen really cleanly to what's being said without perception.
Listening in a timely way when it's really important to listen.
So listening in conversation rather than to keep speaking and saying our opinions.
Maybe you don't need to say all you can say every time you have something to say.
Sometimes people have a strong sense of purpose.
Of wanting to get things off their chest and get their opinions out there and be right.
So to speak in a timely way means to give other people a chance to speak and be heard.
Listening in a way that's kind,
You know,
That touches the heart.
Listening in a way that helps people feel safe and comfortable around you,
Connected.
Listening to what's beneficial.
You know,
It can be so beneficial just for someone to be heard.
Sometimes when I'm running late or I'm in a hurry and someone wants to talk to me,
I can feel inside that I'm impatient and I've really learned to recognize my impatience.
And in recognizing that I'm impatient,
I'm learning not to project that onto the other person.
Because what I've seen about impatience in myself is that it harms me in a way.
I lose my sense of ease when I'm inpatience.
So I make it a practice when impatience arises to take a breath and kind of return to this place of openness.
And the byproduct of that is that I'm able to be more open.
Is that I can listen without impatience.
I can just get present with the person in front of me.
And I can listen with the highest benefit for me because I'm not bringing the impatience forward and for them.
And sometimes in those moments,
It's just the most profound connection.
So listening is a practice and we practice with the intention of hearing people out.
And we give people the gift of listening so that they're heard and they feel heard.
And when we can hold all that they say spaciously,
Even if they have a tendency to be quiet,
To over speak and are dominating.
You know,
Instead of being reactive towards that,
We can step towards them,
Like moving towards them,
Open up and even listen more carefully.
And that's sometimes something that we don't want to do.
Because the idea is,
Well,
We don't want to reinforce this over speaking.
But sometimes people who speak too much haven't had the experience of others being really interested in them.
Perhaps something deeper in them needs to be fed.
Or more needs to be met than their words,
You know.
Or more needs to be met than their words,
You know.
So this idea of offering the highest benefit to others through our listening,
I think it's a wonderful reference point.
One of the gifts that comes out of this practice of meditation and wise communication is not only becoming a good listener,
But listening in such a way that we're attuning or connecting ourselves to some deeper potential of freedom in that other person.
You know,
It's quite amazing to see that happening.
One form this takes is to listen while appreciating something about the person.
Maybe it's something they can't appreciate in themselves.
You know,
Perhaps their capacity for love or tenderness.
Here's a person with a life experience that's been difficult and they're doing the best that they can,
Given the challenges that they have.
There are times when,
In this Buddhist practice,
We're called to live a more intentional life,
A purposeful life.
And listening is one of the interesting places for that.
When we can appreciate the difference between actively listening and hearing.
We can hear without any sense of purpose at all.
We enrich ourselves if we listen with purpose.
It feels like it comes from the depth of us and supports what is beautiful and wonderful within us.
And we can listen from this place of freedom.
And so we continue to do the inner work that keeps us close to that.
I'll close with another story that's a little bit more amusing.
There is an old story of a young man who was walking down the street and he saw a little more amusing.
There is an old story about our nation's 32nd President,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
That has come to mind during our current state of affairs.
FDR,
Who was often receiving large groups of people in greeting lines at the White House,
Had expressed frustration that none of the greeters seemed to pay attention to the things he said to them.
So he devised a plan that would help prove his point.
One morning,
During one of these meet and greets,
The President passed through the line,
Shaking each guest's hands and murmuring the same peculiar statement.
I murdered my grandmother this morning.
As he had feared,
It quickly became evident that his words had slipped in one ear and out the other.
Each guest responded with phrases such as,
Marvelous!
Keep up the great work.
We're sure proud of you,
Mr.
President.
God bless you.
That continued until he reached the end of the line to greet an ambassador from Bolivia.
Though taken aback by the President's statement,
The ambassador leaned closer and whispered,
I'm sure she had it coming.
