Tara Brach - 2014-11-12 The Sacred Art of Listening

Episode Date: November 22, 2014

2014-11-12 The Sacred Art of Listening - Our capacity to live and love fully is entirely related to how we open to the truth of impermanence. This talk examines how our ways of trying to control life solidify our perception of being separate and threatened. We then look at the wings of mindful presence and compassion that open us to loss and grief, and reveal the loving awareness that is beyond birth and death.

The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist, and author. I'd like to begin tonight with a story I heard from a minister who describes giving a sermon one Sunday and hearing two teenage girls in the back giggling and disturbing people. So he says, I interrupted my sermon and announced sternly, there are two of you here who have not heard a word I've said, that quieted them down. and when the service was over, I went to greet people at the front door, and three adults apologize for not listening and for going to sleep in church and promised it would never happen again.

So tonight's talk is titled The Sacred Art of Listening. And I'd like to begin by asking you, in terms of inquiry, how many of you feel that you have an intention to become better listeners? It's just one of those ongoing intentions. Can I just see? For those of you that are listening to a podcast, that was almost everyone. How many of you feel like you have quite a ways to go?

You know what, that's okay. It's not easy. We have strong, strong habits of being distracted or preoccupied or when other people are talking, planning what we're going to say or judging. It's just like any training, in presence, that listening is this sacred art that comes alive when we're deliberate and we're really practicing. So we need to put in the 10,000 hours, you know that

it's 10,000 hours to have some mastery and anything. It takes a commitment to bring this practice of ours of mindfulness into relationships and really listen. And without practice, we don't, without having some formal way of practicing, we don't seem to do. do it. We have a lot of patterning. We stay in. So I found that what often will motivate people is when one or more relationships start obviously deteriorating when they run into trouble. And, you know, with your teen or with a partner or whatever, there's a misunderstanding or conflict and it just keeps spiraling. And clearly it's happening because one or neither party is able to really listen in a way to understand what's going on.

Listening and feeling heard are really the grounds of any mature relationship, love relationship. Listening, being able to listen and also feeling that we are heard. So what happens is then we look at our culture and say, well what's the water we're swimming in, and attentional deficit all over the place. Some of you might have heard this. This is according to the Center for Biotechnology Information. The average attention span of a human being has dropped from 12 seconds. That was in 2000 to 8 seconds in 2013, from 12 to 8.

This is one second less than the attention span of a goldfish. Isn't that amazing? you know, we're going in the wrong direction here. So here we are, you know, losing our attention span. And Nicholas Carr wrote a book called The Shallows, and if anyone is interested in this kind of thing, I thought it was a really great book. And he talks about the effect of technology on our brain

and how increasing cyber world being plugged into the Internet that has actually activated and improve parts of our brain, the parts that can take in a huge amount of information and very quickly process it and distribute it. You know, huge amount of information. But what's been deactivated is the parts of our brain that can concentrate, immerse, and really absorb information in a deep way where we bring in our own understandings and weave it to have it become new learnings. Shallows.

wide, shallow. So the more plugged in we are to the Internet in front of the screen, the less capacity to concentrate, to immerse, and to listen, to really listen, take in information. A math teacher saw that little Johnny wasn't paying attention in class. She called on him and said, Johnny, what are 4, 2, 28, and 44.

Little Johnny quickly replied, NBC, CBS, HBO, and the Cartoon Network. You get the idea, right? Blogger Corey Dr. Rowe observed that the typical electronic screen is an ecosystem of interrupting technologies. I think that's an interesting concept that when we're online, it's encouraging us to peek into email and then glance at Twitter and then waste the day on eBay.

And it's just this divided attention that so many of us are aware of. that this is another statistic. The average office worker checks their email 30 times every hour. Typical mobile users check their phones more than 150 times per day. These are real statistics. That's a fragmented attention. That does not serve deep listening. It's scary.

So, you know, when we're not listening, to others and we certainly can't listen inwardly when our mind is just zipping around like that. I mean, let's confess a little, how many when you're on the phone multitask and not only, you know, when you're walking around, not only do you go and pee but you clean the dishes and shop online, how many of you? I mean, yeah. I mean, how deeply can we pay attention? So, as we know, the way the distractions go is that when we don't have outer distractions,

then our mind distracts us inwardly. We get preoccupied and tugged around because our mind does not want to just sit and open and be present with the moment. So instead of tweeting, there's this inner-twittering going on, right? I mean, constantly. So what I'd like to do in the time we have tonight is explore really what is between me and listening with an awake heart and mind and how do we cultivate? I mean if we care about it, how do we cultivate this really sacred art of listening

because it is sacred? It's what creates intimacy. As you're listening, you might have in mind, a person or a couple of people that you in particular would like to be practicing with. Because anything we take is broad and theoretical. If we say, okay, I'm going to go out into the world and listen to everybody. It won't happen. But if you have two people in mind, you might start practicing.

So we first start looking at, well, what really does it mean in the moment, to really be listening in the moment? and what's deep listening all about. I was inspired by a story a friend told me he was teaching in a Montessori school teaching meditation to Montessori children seven to 11 years old and what he did was he took a gong

and he said, okay I'm going to play this and what I'd like you to do is just listen and follow the sound, just watch where it goes with interest. And he said if you follow and watch you might get closer to God. So, he does it, and then one child goes home and tells his mother about his experience

who then relays the conversation to my friend. And this is what the child said. Well, when I watched and listened to where sound went, I didn't get closer to God, I was God. What happens when we become fully present? We just become that awareness. Let's just explain that awareness. I brought my favorite Tibetan bells for the occasion.

You might close your eyes for a moment. Just follow the sound, watch where it goes with interest. If you follow and you watch, you might discover more deeply what you really are. Just keeping your eyes closed for a few more moments. Listening. Just listening to the changing sounds around you. Listening is really a template for awareness itself, the qualities of receptive space. When we're listening, there's nothing to do.

It's like this open, wakeful sky, not judging. And listening also has a quality of active engagement, that there's a connecting or understanding or appreciating what's actually arising. So listening to sounds can teach you the deepest Dharma or understanding about listening to others. You know, meditation's been likened to listening to music. Experience keeps changing the goals not to get to the end, not to add anything, not to change anything, simply to be there, just to be there. So listening, what happens?

when you're really listening, is there any sense of a self there? What is listening? When we really explore, it's more like open space, it's just awake, opening your eyes when you'd like. So with deep listening, there's a quality of presence where there isn't a lot of selfing, a lot of activity of interpreting, judging, reading into preparing, there's just openness and receptivity. There's no controlling of anything.

But as you know, it's rare that we are listening in that kind of an openness. There's a lot of static usually because we're somewhat in a trance where we're projecting, you know, what we think is being said and where we think it's going to go and we're being influenced by our wants and our fears about the conversation. So what I'd like to do is just let's move in a little closer to what goes on when we are in conversation but our listening is somewhat blocked. And if you break it down to wants and fears, when we're in communication and we're not conscious of it,

there's a whole layer of wanting that creates static. And you might think of even, you know, just scan for recent conversation with somebody. You might have something in mind where you just spent five, ten minutes with somebody, and just notice were there wants there. Did you want that person to experience you in a certain way? That's one of the basic wants we have usually when we're talking. Did you want that person's approval? Did you want the conversation to go in a particular direction?

Did you want to prove something? Did you want to fix the person or accomplish something? You see what I mean? There's all these layers of wants that are usually there. And the truth is, and it's just like any other spiritual practice, that if there's a goal, if we're striving for something to happen, to make an impression, to have something go our way, to persuade, whatever, that striving interferes with presence, with really recognizing and hearing what's truly there.

Some of you might remember the story of a student entering a monastery and and he's really eager to experience enlightenment, and he asks the abbot, how long will it take me to experience like total sotori? And the abbot says, 10 years. And then the guy says, well, what if I work really, really hard? And the abbot says, 20 years. Hey, wait a minute, you just said 10 years.

For you 30 years. But you get the idea that if we're in a conversation, and we're trying to make something happen, that gets between us and listening with an awake heart. And it's the same thing as when there's aversion. Aversion's a flip side of wanting. What happens when you're with somebody and you're talking and there's aversion because they're making you feel insecure about yourself?

They make you feel like you're being judged or criticized. I mean, how many have had that experience of your partner saying to you, these the magic four words, we need to talk. What happens? You get tight, are you really going to listen? It's hard to listen when we feel hurt or offended, when we feel pushed away by what another is saying. We shut down.

It's hard to listen when we feel insecure about having the white response. We want to sound intelligent or like we know what's going on. Then we get tight. It's hard to listen when the other person's not connected. with themselves and they're speaking when they're not speaking from realness or we get distracted. Homer Simpson, great line. He says, Marge, it takes two to lie, one to lie and one to listen. Okay, so aversion arises and what happens? As soon as we're in a conversation and we feel in some way unpleasantness going on, we try to control our experience and get away from it, either by being

aggressive or being defensive. We might drift off internally. I love the way Postmaster Edgar Day put it. He said that when he had a long-winded person on the phone with him, he would hang up while he was speaking, because who would hang up on themselves? You know, great strategy. There's a saying that the process of dying starts at birth and accelerates at dinner. party's. So no wonder Goldfish have more sustained attention. You know, we get pulled all around by this complex mix of what we're wanting to happen and what we're not wanting to happen. So, and just to say that sometimes the wanting and the aversion doesn't have anything to do with the other person. Sometimes we're in a conversation and we're not listening because we

really want to go and get something else done or get some food or be talking to somebody different. Or we're in a conversation and it's our aversion's not to do with that person. What's going on in that moment is that we feel like we don't have enough time. How many of you have experienced that? You just can't quite listen because I don't have enough time. I feel that so often. So I thought I'd share with you a story that really impacted me on this front. I've mentioned here a number of times a book I love called Tattoos on the Heart. This is Gregory Boyle. So Gregory Boyle is a Jesuit priest who works with gangs in Los Angeles,

the most violent parts of Los Angeles. And he'd create work programs for them and a whole lot, a sense of community, a huge amount of healing he's been responsible for. So he describes one morning that he's completed Mass, and the next thing he has is a baptism to do. So he's got a little time between the two, so he goes into his office. He's got like about 10 minutes.

And a few minutes in, a woman walks into the room, and her name's Carmen. And she's a heroin addict, a gang member, occasional prostitute. He says she's often seen defiantly storming down the street, usually shouting at someone. So she seats herself and jumps right in. And he's got seven minutes. And so this is what he describes.

I need help. She launches right in Brash and something of a no-shit sister. Oh, she says, I've been to like 50 rehabs. I'm known all over, nationwide. She smiles. Her eyes wander around my office and she studies all the photographs hanging there. She multitasked and her inspection of the place

doesn't derail her stream of consciousness rambling. The family will arrive for the baptism in a few minutes. I went to Catholic Church all my life. says. Fact I graduated from high school even. Fact right after graduation is when I started to use heroin. Carmen enters some kind of trance at this point and her speech slows to deliberate and halting. And I have been trying to stop since the moment I began. Then I watch as Carmen telt her head back until it meets the wall. She stares at the ceiling and in an instant her eyes become these two ponds, what are rising to meet their edges, swollen banks spilling over.

Then, for the first time, really, she looks at me and straightens. I am a disgrace. Suddenly her shame meets mine. For when Carmen walked through the door, I had mistaken her for an interruption. So you understand that when we have that mantra of I don't have enough time. What happens to anything that comes up? It becomes an object out there that's in our way. What happens to listening? We're not there for it. I want to name one more most basic level of fear that interferes with listening and I alluded to it and that's the fear of not being here that rather than listen, because listening records really letting go of our self-agenda, really kind of emptying out, we're preparing to reassert that I'm here.

It's like that desire we keep having to say, I'm here, I exist. We keep having to put our existence out there. And listening is the opposite. It's almost like saying, okay, let it go, make space for whatever is coming through. So we're preparing, we're uncomfortable and we don't know who we are when we're not planning our response. There's a strong tendency to want to assert a self who knows somebody. This is the fundamental self-sense holding on to itself.

This is why listening is so profound that when we really begin this practice it goes right to the heart of a path of liberation. It's no different than when we're just sitting and practicing and listening to what's going on inside us. It requires putting down our evaluations of what we're experiencing, our judgments, our interpretations, which means we're putting down our self-sense and just letting life be as it is. Liberating and challenging. So the key to this very sacred art of listening is to not

control or direct what's going on, not to pursue our wants, not to avoid our fears, to recognize what's going on inside us, but to stay. And we're not trying to control another person. Here's pretty much my favorite description. This is Mark Nippo. To listen is to lean in softly with a willingness to be changed by what we hear. To listen is to lean in softly with a willingness to be changed by what we hear. Take a moment if you will, just to pause and close your eyes and perhaps bring to mind one

person that you'd like to deepen your capacity for listening with. And you might bring to mind a recent occasion of conversing and without judging yourself just to notice if you were asking the question, well, what's between me and listening with an awake heart? What might have been stopping you? Was there an agenda where you wanted something? Maybe approval or cooperation or their understanding? Was there aversion in some way? Some fear of judgment? A feeling of not enough time? How did you control the experience? Did you get distracted into your own thoughts? Do you try to steer the conversation, plan a response? Imagine for a moment if you're redoing

what would your intention be? How would you sense your own intention around listening? It's using your own words. What do you wish? To listen is to lean in softly. with a willingness to be changed by what we hear, the willingness to discover, to understand more deeply. So when you're ready, feel free to open your eyes. So the gift of this path of really deliberately deepening our capacity for listening is that we spend more moments we're resting in our true nature, in a full awareness that's not centralized around self,

that's open, sensitive, engaged. And for the other, it creates an atmosphere of love. And listening, offering our presence is the deepest expression of love. It's such an invitation for another person. It makes it safe for the other person to unfold and to blossom. And when somebody listens to us without judgment, with that openness and that sensitivity, we unfold in that present. One of my favorite descriptions of the power of listening is to imagine that our essence,

this creative spirit that all of us have, is like a fountain and that it's the source of the fountain, it's for all of us, that same pure awareness, intelligence love, it's all the same for all of us. But when we haven't been listened to, that creative source, that fountain, that fountain, kind of dries, it shrivels. When it's listened to it thrives, it really flows. But when we haven't been listened to and when we don't listen to ourselves, it kind of dries up and it gets clogged.

And then what we express is kind of murky or vague or confused. Sometimes you'll talk to people or you'll find yourself speaking in a way where you're really speedy or nervous and there's no silences and there's no real connection with what's there. And that's because you haven't had that much of that atmosphere of real listening presence given to you or you haven't given it to yourself. So it happens for a lot of us. And sometimes all that'll come out when there's that clogged-upness,

when we haven't really been listened to or when we don't listen to ourselves, all that'll come out as more superficial talk, kind of nervous, pre-packaged stuff. I think we all know about that. that. We know when we're in that state, when we're stressed and not in touch with ourselves, and we can sense it for others. Those are the times when, instead of being connected, we're kind of hijacked by the part of us that's wanting to prove or protect or defend. So we're living from externals, really what's expected, what we should be saying, not communing

from the depths. So listening, when we offer that to each other, it invites that, that creative fountain to begin to flow again. It offers a space for inner truth to unfold itself and really shine through. But just to say, it takes patience, both offering listening inward and to others because sometimes initially there's kind of muddy waters and we need to kind of include that and give space for that so something pure and clearer come forth. Does that make sense, that it would take time? So I want to give you, share a story that really moved me about one woman's efforts in this direction in offering that kind of atmosphere of loving and listening. And this is a story you can find in True Refuge. I wrote it up there. And in this particular

situation, this woman had gone to workshop and done some training and deep listening, and she decided she was going to try it with her mother. Now her mother, Audrey, was a well-known writer. She was very wealthy. She was successful, brilliant, incredibly narcissistic. Some of her friends even referred to her as the center of the known universe. So it was like, anyway, and she treated people as kind of orbiting satellites and so on as an audience to she could regale with stories and she was a great storyteller, but their role was to let her shine. And so her oldest daughter had gone to the West Coast and decided she never wanted to come home again. And this woman was, you know, not quite as alienated. And when a professional

training was offered in the area where her mother lives, she decided she'd stay with her mother, stay on a little bit, and just practice this deep listening. So that was her very intentional project. And it was going to be for 10 days, which is the longest visit with her mother since she left for college. Now, during the time together, her name was Kate, by the way. When she started, she found tremendous amount of resistance going on in her. A lot of judgment. Her mother made her feel unimportant, and she felt like she was going to get suffocated by all her mother taking up all the air, and that she just was barely existing. and it was really challenging for her.

So her first process was to inwardly listen and just acknowledge and be kind towards her own resistances. So I often teach forgiven, forgiven, not to make herself wrong for the reactivity. So she did that. She just noticed her own judgments and reactions and on some level was with them and that created a little more space

for her to begin to, be with her mother and she would coach herself and she would say now what is happening my mother is talking i'm quiet there's endless time i hear it every word and what is beyond the word i hear who she is she'd use those kind of phrases to keep herself right here there's enough time i'm listening i'm listening to what's behind the words i'm listening to who she is you understand like this really, it got easier for her to hear what was behind her mother's word. She began to hear desperation as if her mother was insisting over and over again, I'm here and I matter, I'm here and I matter, which is, you know, what the narcissistic, you know, there's an emptiness

a whole, so it's like, I'm here and I matter. And as she took in the pain of that desperation, that's when she got, she started really caring, started really feeling her own compassion and so somehow through her presence she was able to communicate you're here and you matter you're here and you matter and her mother started to relax and she knew it because there were longer pauses between the stories and the commentary

and her mother sat back in her chair more and looked out the window and seemed more reflective slowed down so several days before she was going to leave her mother began to tell her that she felt alone and unrepresenter appreciated. And this is when Kate responded in a really sincere way, a very gentle and honest way. And she said, Mom, it's because you don't listen to people. Her mother froze, but she didn't get defensive. Because Kate had been so many moments offering this uncritical sympathy that a trust

had been established. So it wasn't attack. It was a caring reflection of truth. Her mother wanted know more. She said, please tell me, I need to know. And Kate told her, she explained how it'd been for her sister and for their dad and now for her stepdad. When you don't listen, people feel like they don't matter, like they're not known. And it's true, you can't know them if you don't listen. You can't be close. Audrey looked at her daughter with a sorrow and understanding that pierced Kate's heart and something changed. Now maybe it was the pain of alienation that broke through her defenses, or it was simply her time, but she knew something needed to change. Somehow rather, this creative fountain was getting unclogged, and others noticed.

After her sister's visit, they all got together for the holiday, she told Kate, for the first time in my life I felt like I was a real person to her that I existed. But the change was most poignant with her mom's new husband, her stepfather. They started doing things together again, the long dinners and evening walks that had ended shortly after their marriage. Kate's mother was no longer speaking to demand the world's attention. She was speaking and listening in order to belong with other people, to share their lives. So her fountain was unclogging, and she was becoming more real. It's an amazing gift. that we can offer, even just a little bit, even with somebody that we don't know we're not

going to spend much time with, just offering that space, something begins to happen. This is Tikna Han. He says, deep listening is the kind of listening that can help relieve the suffering of another person. You can call it compassionate listening. You listen with only one purpose, to help him or her to empty his heart. Even if he says things that are full of wrong perceptions, full of bitterness, you're still capable of continuing to listen with compassion.

You just listen with compassion and help them to suffer less. One hour like that can bring transformation and healing. So what are the basics in this training? It's really the same as when we meditate. We set our intention, okay, when I go back home and I'm with my partner or with my teenage son or with my father or whatever it is, I plan to listen, to really see if I can let go of all the interrupting static and just be there. And then it's very helpful to have an anchor, to have something to keep coming back to physical

sensations in your body or your breath, something just to say I'm here, I'm here, and a commitment to being willing to notice whatever the resistances are. So as you're listening, you notice you're judging or as you're listening, you're noticing unpleasantness and not wanting to be there. So part of you just names it and forgives it. It's okay. You have to be open to recognizing what's going on inside you or you can't truly be listening to another. And then I find the self-coaching. It's a really brilliant approach if there's sometimes just a few words that you remind yourself of. Sometimes I'll just say there's plenty of time, even if I don't believe it. Really? Just saying it because some deep part of me knows it's true.

You know, my neurotic egoic self that wants to always get more done doesn't believe it. But there's a deeper place that knows that if I can really pause that there's some timeless presence there, that that's where everything that I cherish is possible. And I'm really pausing when the ideas of a future and a past just start dissolving. So we train to listen. We coach ourselves. We say, what is happening right now? What's behind those words?

Who's there that I'm really listening to? So I began by really describing the power of listening and also of being heard in bonding and intimacy and healing in our personal relationships. It's equally so as a society, as a culture, that the only way to heal conflict is to listen. How will warring religions or races, our ethnic groups, or governments ever come to understanding a peace if they can't listen to each other,

if they can't seek to understand the other's values, needs, and concerns? So it's the only way to end the cycles of violence. Somebody's got to begin to listen. It's the only way to peace. I want to read you just a paragraph. This is Mushim Akita Nash, who has done a lot of work

in terms of healing racism in American spiritual communities. And she describes this. She says, We were sitting quietly on his living room couch when Dad, without preamble, said, when I was sworn into the army we all sat in a big room together

and everyone was sworn in as a group everyone except me because I was the only Japanese-American they made me wait until the end after everyone else had left and then they took me into a little office at the back of the room and swore me in separately he paused

then added in a mild even light-hearted tone of voice you know that always kind of pissed me off My father had been sitting on that story for 50 years or so, slowly letting it and other racist injustices he'd suffered, eat him alive. No wonder his entire body had been taught with rage as long as I could remember. The amazing thing was, after entrusting me with his story, Dad looked like a different person altogether, totally relaxed and content. The next day he went to sleep before dinner and died quietly before midnight.

There is tremendous healing when a person has the safety and space to share their story. We know this, South Africa, what an incredible model with the peace, with the truth and reconciliation hearings, that many who testified to atrocities they had endured under apartheid talked about how by giving their testimony, how much healing they experienced. One young man who had been blinded when a policeman shot him in the face at close range, he said this. He said, I feel what has brought my eyesight back is to come here and tell the story. I feel what has been making me sick all the time is the fact that I couldn't tell my story.

So listening creates relationship. Nothing exists in isolation. Yet our pain is when we perceive ourselves as separate. So, listening connects. Connects, it creates intimacy. I'm going to share with you a poem written by Nick Penna, Waiting in Line. When you listen, you reach into dark corners and pull out your wonders. When you listen, your ideas come in and out like they were waiting in line.

Your ears don't always listen. It can be your brain, your finger. your toes. You can listen anywhere. Your mind might not want to go. You can listen. If you can listen, you can find answers to questions you didn't know. If you have listened, truly listened, you don't find yourself alone. If you have listened, truly listened, you don't find yourself alone. Nixon fifth grade. So we'll practice just a little bit together and I'll close by saying that the sacred art of listening like any meditation takes a committed practice and we each have the potential. It's the greatest gift and what it reveals is non-separation,

our connection. So take a moment again to come into sitting still and let this be a pause for you. See what is possible to relax, what part of your bodies might let go a little. and begin to listen to the life within and around you, to the space in the room, to what's beyond the space in the room, and just sense the openness of awareness that's listening. You can feel the breath come in, and with the out-breath, just follow the out-breath as if you could dissolve outward into the space around you. Listening.

The in-breath, just feel your embodiment, the aliveness of your body, the out-breath space sound so that you're listening to and feeling the life that's here. And as we did a bit earlier, bringing to mind someone that you'd like to be exploring listening with, listening with an awake heart. Imagine you together, whatever the setting is. But imagine the room or if it's outside, out where you are. Imagine that person talking. And again, just feel your intention.

You might let the breath help you to really be right here, feeling with the in-breath, the connection with the body, sensations, maybe use your hands to really feel yourself here, soft, live hands. And with the out-breath, sensing space and sound, and then taking in the sounds and the realness of the person you're with. Right here, listening, you might say to yourself, what is happening? My friend is talking, I am quiet. There's endless time.

I hear the words, I hear what's beyond the words. I hear who this person is. You might sense the possibility of that fountain, that creative spirit coming through. And just sense when you're listening, really listening, who are you or what are you? Can you sense the emptiness and fullness of presence? openness and sensitivity, letting go of any thought of conversations and just closing by simply listening again, just to the sounds right this moment, listening to your own heart, whatever mood or weather systems here, sensing the intimacy when you begin to really listen to the life

within and around you. Namaste. The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule, or programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit tarabrock.com and our IMCW.org.