This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Mindfulness of Listening - Gil Fronsdal. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit website www.audiodharma.org to find the authoritative record of this talk.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome. Last week I talked about mindfulness of speaking, and so to follow up, this week I’d like to talk about mindfulness of listening. Listening has so much overlap with mindfulness that sometimes I think that if you can’t be mindful, listen. Or if you can’t meditate, if you can’t learn to meditate, learn to listen.
There’s a little story that I made up once about a person who was visiting from another country for a year and was living next to a monastery. She started visiting regularly and was given some introduction to meditation and really was taken by this. But then her family was going to move back to her home country, where there was no Buddhism and no meditation. So she went to the abbess of the monastery and said, “What do I do when I get home? Who is going to teach me to meditate?” And the abbess said, “Ask around for the person who’s the best listener, and then ask them to teach you how to listen.”
To listen well is a form of mindfulness, or a substitute for mindfulness, but ideally, you do both. Learn to be mindful and learn to listen. Learn to be mindful as you’re listening; learn to listen as you’re mindful.
There’s tremendous value in listening. It’s been said that some people have trouble listening because it involves a lack of control, and I suppose it does. You don’t control the people around you if you just listen. But we certainly can acquire a lot of control of ourselves, mastery of ourselves, if we learn to listen.
So I have two quotes here about listening. Both of them are poems, and I think they’re kind of wonderful. One has the person being really small, and one has the person being really big, so I include both for equal opportunity and equal representation, in case some of you don’t like the idea of being small and some of you don’t like the idea of being big.
We’ll start with the big. This is from Walt Whitman, a very important American poet. This was from his poem called “Song of the Open Road.” It begins with an exclamation:
From this hour, freedom!
From this hour I ordain myself freed of limits and imaginary lines,
Listening to others and considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently but with an undeniable will devesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
I think it’s a powerful step for listening: listening to others and considering well what they say, pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, gently but with undeniable will, devesting myself of the holds that would hold me. I think it’s a great Buddhist little paragraph there, or lines of a poem. But it’s together with this idea of freedom. Freedom celebrated like that could be very self-centered, especially in an individualistic culture that America has often been. It could even be more so an expression of our individuality, seizing the day for oneself. But immediately, this poem includes just a deep sense of listening.
So after this listening to others, he writes:
I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.
I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.
All seems beautiful to me.
Imagine listening in that spirit—listening that you’re better and bigger and have more goodness in you than you know. So this is the one about being big.
And here’s the one about being small. This is by the poet May Sarton. It’s titled “Can I Weave a Nest of Silence.” Isn’t that evocative? It refers to a small bird named the Phoebe.
The phoebe sits on her nest
Hour after hour, day after day,
Waiting for life to burst out from under her warmth.
Can I weave a nest of silence,
Weave it of listening, listening, listening,
Layer upon layer?
But one must first become small,
Nothing but a presence,
Attentive as a nesting bird,
Proffering no slightest wish
Toward anything that might happen or be given,
Only the warm, faithful waiting,
Contained in so, contained in one’s smallness.
Beyond the question, the silence.
Beyond the answer, the silence.
I thought this was a great poem to represent meditation, sitting. The Buddha did liken doing Buddhist practice to a hen sitting on its eggs and incubating them. He uses language of gestation—that something is working and growing, developing and being born from within as we do this practice. So in that spirit, this poem about the bird sitting on its nest with its warmth, gestating something, letting something develop until something gets born. And now May Sarton wants to do the same through her listening. Does listening well give birth to something new? Does listening well gestate something, allow something else to happen in you and in the person you listen to?
There are people whose job is to listen to people’s stories, and they are sometimes referred to as midwives. They hear things into birth. In their listening, things come alive and are born in people. In your listening to yourself, can you listen to yourself? To sit quietly, it would be different if you use the metaphor of listening for mindfulness than if you use the metaphor of seeing. For some people, seeing is much more active. In fact, I know some people who actually engage their eyes when their eyes are closed in meditation; they’re trying to look and stare at their breath. They’re trying hard. It’s a little bit harder to do that with listening. Listening has to almost be a letting go of effort to listen well. There can be an active choice to listen, but there’s a kind of giving up control. It’s almost like you have to let go of effort to listen really well. Your listening can be directional, but still, you have to kind of allow it to come. There’s less interference, and that’s part of the power of mindfulness—when there’s no interference, and we can just feel without any attachment, know without any attachment.
Just to be there and to not be in a hurry, to wait, to be small, to build a nest. I like this very much. Part of meditation, especially in the early years of being a meditator, is that we’re beginning to create something wonderful inside: a nest, a tenderness, a softness, a presence, a capacity to be present. Here, the body begins to soften and relax. There’s a yogic body that comes into play that slowly gets formed by meditating day by day, and the body itself shifts and changes. The heart shifts and changes, the mind shifts and changes. With less and less preoccupation, the mind doesn’t wander off so much in thought. Something begins shifting and changing when we’re not riding our concerns and preoccupations really tightly, really wanting something or not wanting something, reacting with liking and not liking, drifting off in distractions.
With the idea that we’re building a nest, as opposed to doing it to have an attainment—”I’m going to get this, I’m going to be a really good meditator, I’m going to get the attainments of Buddhism, full enlightenment, I’m going to get the jhāna1, I’m going to get this, I’m going to get that.” But what if what we’re doing is building a cocoon, building a nest, building a womb, gestating something? That’s a little bit more the Buddha’s understanding of what we’re doing in meditation. The Buddha did not present Buddhist practice as something we engineer, something we construct, something we build. He presented Buddhist practice through language and metaphors that suggested we were creating the conditions for something to be born, something to arise, something to grow.
Creating the conditions for something to grow can be represented by this metaphor of the nest. It can be represented by being so still and quiet and warm, to incubate it, to bring warmth and tenderness to all that you are.
There’s a wonderful story from the Ramayana2 that I’ve quoted a lot. Rama3 is in the forest with his companions, and he hears a very faint voice. He asks his companions, “Do you hear the voice?” and they say no. But he hears the voice, so he tries to figure out where it’s coming from and starts moving in that direction. Then, very faintly, he hears the voice is calling his name, “Rama, Rama.” He asks his companions, “Do you hear the voice?” “No, we don’t hear it.” So he goes closer and closer, and as he gets closer, it’s a little bit louder, but still very quiet. Finally, he comes to the source of it, and the source is a very big boulder. Coming out of the boulder is this voice, “Rama, Rama,” kind of inviting him to come closer. So Rama puts his two hands on the boulder, and immediately the boulder transforms itself into a beautiful woman who, long ago, had had a spell cast on her and was turned into a solid boulder. But someone like Rama had to come to dissolve her, so she wouldn’t be so petrified.
How I interpret this wonderful story is that Rama listened. Only he could hear. What is it only you can hear? What’s calling you inside? What is it that’s solid or petrified in you that’s waiting to be touched, waiting to be somehow held, recognized? To sit in mindfulness as a listener to yourself—what is it that’s speaking deep inside that doesn’t have words, doesn’t have a voice? This idea of listening deeply is a little bit different than looking. Some people, if they’re looking for their depth, looking for the answer inside, are really active, searching around, looking in all the different places. “Where can I find it? It must be somewhere here, behind the navel, in the back of the heart. No, it has to be in the base of the brain. Where is it?” But you can’t do that if you’re listening. To listen, you have to just be quiet, still, listen, feel, sense in some deeper and deeper way.
So what is it that calls you? I love the language of being called because that’s been so much of how I’ve operated in my adult life. I was called to meditation, called to practice meditation. The things that began happening to me when I meditated were basically saying, “Come here. This is good. This is the right place to be. This is where peace is, this is where harmony is, this is where your wholeness resides. Come here and let this wholeness grow.” And so I then went from meditating every day to living near a Buddhist center, to becoming a resident of a center, to going to live in a monastery, all because I felt this inner call to go into this deeper and deeper listening to what was calling me.
Eventually, there was a call to be of service, the call to be a teacher or to somehow support people in the suffering of the world. In Mahayana4 Buddhism, they have this great bodhisattva5, a great celestial being called Avalokiteshvara6, who hears the suffering of the world. We have a photograph of a beautiful statue of Avalokiteshvara from the museum in Kansas City. It’s in the pose of repose; it’s sitting in a very relaxed posture, the one who hears the cries of the world, who is relaxed, at ease, who listens well.
Maybe we can only listen well if we’re relaxed and at ease. To the suffering of the world, is it okay to be relaxed and at ease listening to the suffering of the world? Some people say, “Absolutely not. You have to be distressed, you have to be angry, you have to be distraught. You have to show that you really care by being all worked up.” That is not creating the nest. That’s not creating the place for some deeper wellspring of growing and maturing and responding to the world. Actually, it mitigates it. If we are caught in distress, in anger, distraught over the conditions of the world—which is easy to do, it’s actually maybe in a certain way very logical to do that—then we are held by what would hold us, to paraphrase Walt Whitman. But he said, “devesting myself of the holds that would hold me.”
There’s also a story in China of Guanyin7, where someone asks a Zen master, “What’s it like to be Guanyin? What’s it like to listen to the sounds, the suffering of the world?” And the Zen master says, “It’s like adjusting your pillow in the middle of the night.” Isn’t that weird? But the idea is that you’re kind of half-asleep, and you adjust the pillow unself-consciously. You feel something needs to be adjusted, and that simple, relaxed, unself-conscious adjusting of the pillow—that’s what it’s like to be compassionate. There’s a need, and there’s a responding to that need, but there’s no distress.
So how do we listen well to others? One way is to try to listen without the filters of our own judgments, our stories, our interpretations of what’s going on. That’s one of the values of mindfulness. The more mindful you become, the more you’re also tracking yourself. You’re tracking whether you’re actually responding to them in your mind and have stopped listening to what they’re saying. I don’t know if I’m just weird, but I’ve known myself to do that. “What did the person just say? I’m just preparing my answer.” And that’s not healthy. The idea is to recognize that’s happening, to listen, stay listening, stay present, hear the person out.
To be able to track yourself and know how we’re reacting. Sometimes I’ve felt this tremendous power, this urge to speak, like it was hard to keep my mouth shut, sometimes interrupting other people because of that power. Mindfulness is supposed to protect us from that, unless the situation requires action. But to track ourselves, to see what’s going on.
Mindfulness also provides us with a lot of wisdom and understanding. If we can track ourselves as we listen, we can understand the reactions we have to what we hear. We can understand the beliefs that are operating, the thoughts that come up, the judgments that come up. We can feel and recognize the emotions that are coming up, the tensions that are coming up, or the softness that comes up. We can kind of track what’s happening inside of us. That doesn’t make us a worse listener; it can actually make us a better listener, so all those things don’t interfere.
Also, if we listen to ourselves while we’re listening to others, it turns out part of who we are is in this wonderful natural world. We’re not a singular, independent thing. Who we are is partly co-created all the time in the world. So if we’re tracking that and being present for it in ourselves, we’re actually watching and seeing the co-creation that happens. If we only paid attention to ourselves, which some people are capable of doing, then we don’t hear the other person. But if we only hear the other person, then we don’t hear ourselves. Some people feel we’re obligated to listen to someone 100%. We’re supposed to be a good listener. It turns out we can’t be a good listener if it’s 100% with the other person.
So what I like is the idea that mindfulness helps us to have the attention 50/50: 50% here with oneself and 50% with someone else. I want to offer the alternative to these two poems. One poem is about becoming large and the other about becoming small. For me, the wonderful, delightful alternative is to disappear. That’s a third option. When the attention is really present, 50% to the person and 50% to what’s all in here, then, as Walt Whitman says, the imaginary lines disappear. The imaginary boundaries between self and other kind of disappear. And so the usual understandings and sense of self that often interfere with listening well disappear. It’s just such a pleasure to disappear this way.
Are you going to be unsafe in the world if those kinds of imaginary lines, that separation, is no longer there? How are you going to take care of yourself? I suggest you actually can take care of yourself better because you’re tracking your feelings, your thoughts, the impact, the concerns, the beliefs. You really see what’s going on here. You get all the right information that you need; you just don’t package it into an identity that “this is who I am, I’m supposed to be this way.” And so you’re able to then, in the conversation, respond appropriately and take care of yourself because you have all the information from the other person. It’s not a dangerous thing I’m suggesting, but it’s a great relief. Isn’t that nice? I mean, it’s kind of a drag to be small, and it’s kind of a drag to be big. But it’s not a drag to disappear. Then there’s no resistance anywhere.
One way to listen well to others is to let them know that you hear them. Active listening often means that we, in a very simple way—you don’t repeat everything they say—but even with one or two words, demonstrate that you’ve heard what they said. Even simply saying, “Yeah,” like, “Oh Gil, you were talking about listening today.” Well, then I know you heard. And something different can happen.
More powerfully, help people know that you understood them. People have a tremendous need to be understood. I would venture to guess that you have a tremendous need to be understood. If you have a need, one of the wonderful, maybe pop-psychology principles that I like is: if you have a need, offer it to others. Give it. So if you have a need to be understood, understand others. The alchemy of that is very fascinating. It’s really fascinating what can happen. It might be that people feel like, “Wow, this person’s really interested in me. Maybe I should ask them how they are.” And then they initiate it. But if you say to them, “You never listen to me, you never show interest in me,” then they get defensive, and then they’re not going to listen. But you kind of do this aikido move, you know, you understand them.
As a way of finishing these words, I’d like to reread this one part of Walt Whitman’s poem:
Listening to others and considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently but with an undeniable will devesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
So may it be that listening is one of the ways that you’re able to start letting go of some of your attachments and clinging. That listening is an antidote to holding on tight, that you begin letting go, just like meditation is meant to be an antidote to holding on tight, helping you to let go. So if you can’t meditate, now you know what to do: practice listening instead. And listening you can practice all day long, when you’re with people or with yourself. Listen to yourself well.
So those are my thoughts. With this fresh on your mind, and maybe inspired by it, how about if you turn to one or two people next to you and say something about what arose for you in listening to this talk? What inspired you, what was interesting to you, what protests you have, what you didn’t like about it. But give the other people a chance to practice listening to you. As you speak, be sure that you’re listening to yourself as you speak, and don’t speak for very long. Make it really brief, because mostly this is a listening exercise. You want to get over your talking so you can be doing the listening part. And as you listen to them, listen to yourself, that 50/50. So have a friendly conversation. Those of you who don’t want to be part of this, you’re certainly welcome to go have tea or sit quietly in here. We’ll take five minutes or so just to come back and have a few more words. Make sure no one’s sitting alone. Look around you, and then I’ll ring a bell when it’s time to stop.
So what did you learn about yourself as a listener in that exercise? Anything? Were you listening? Anybody want to offer something?
Audience Member 1: I found out that I’m not nearly as good at it as I think I am.
Gil Fronsdal: That’s progress.
Audience Member 2: I also found out I’m not as good as I thought, and I like to give advice.
Gil Fronsdal: So in recognizing that, was that also progress?
Audience Member 2: Definitely. Good, definitely.
Audience Member 3: I find for myself, if I’m excited, all my energy goes out. I mean, any kind of strong emotion, if I’m angry, the idea of bringing it back to myself is challenging.
Audience Member 4: It’s funny that you spoke before me because I was going to say something similar. Just that the eagerness to speak can be distracting, and it’s nice being able to witness it and let it go so that we can drop in with one another in a more still and tender way.
Gil Fronsdal: That was very nice to hear that you see it that way. Thank you.
Audience Member 5: A quick comment. I just find that I get so interested in hearing more and learning about the person that sometimes I ask too many questions.
Audience Member 6: Now I finally understand what “tune in and drop out” means.
Audience Member 7: I have just one little story to share. It’s one of my favorite things about becoming a meditator. I’ve only been meditating about seven or eight years, but when I was an absolute beginner, I immediately fell in love with loving-kindness and found it to be a very lovely thing to carry around during the day. I was very mindful of that in the beginning. That was the one piece I could carry. And all of a sudden at work, at least once a day, someone would stop when we were done discussing and say, “You’re such a good listener.” I’ve never had that happen prior in my life. I was very good at it then because I was so mindful of this new thing. It doesn’t happen nearly as often now. I don’t know if I just went on to more complicated meditation concepts that I’m trying to master, but it was the most delightful gift from my practice. It might be my favorite thing, and it really is a shame it doesn’t happen very often, I have to confess. But it was a gift.
Gil Fronsdal: Well, you know, it’s invaluable to always be a beginner.
Audience Member 8: I was thinking it’s easy to really tune into listening when I’m speaking with strangers, not the people that I know in life.
Gil Fronsdal: Ah, that’s fascinating. There’s so much history and complications and all kinds of things with people we know. But they might be the most important people to listen to.
Well, thank you all very much. I hope this was nice for you. This topic of listening is really central to a mindful life. May you mindfully listen and listen mindfully. Thank you.
Jhāna: A state of deep meditative absorption. ↩
Ramayana: One of the two major Sanskrit epics of ancient India, the other being the Mahābhārata. It narrates the life and journey of Rama. ↩
Rama: A major deity in Hinduism, considered the seventh avatar of the god Vishnu. He is the central figure of the Ramayana. ↩
Mahayana: One of the two main existing branches of Buddhism and a term for a broad group of Buddhist traditions, texts, philosophies, and practices. ↩
Bodhisattva: In Mahayana Buddhism, an individual who is able to reach nirvana but delays doing so out of compassion in order to save suffering beings. ↩
Avalokiteshvara: The bodhisattva who embodies the compassion of all Buddhas. The transcript had a garbled version (“a loadhara”), which has been corrected. ↩
Guanyin: The Chinese name for Avalokiteshvara. Guanyin is the bodhisattva of compassion, revered by East Asian Buddhists. ↩