Tara Brach - A Listening Presence - Three Domains of Training

Episode Date: November 17, 2010

2010-11-17 - A Listening Presence - Three Domains of Training - Cultivating the capacity for listening is essential to loving well and to realizing the truth of who we are. This talk focuses on three key facets of deep listening--non-distractedness, not-controlling and seeking to understand-- that can awaken an intimacy with our inner life and others. Guided meditations on listening precede and are included within the body of the talk. Please support this podcast by donating at www.tarabrach.com or www.imcw.org. Thank you!

How many of you think you know what tonight's talk is on? Can I just get a curious? Can I see my hands? Just curious. Ah, so you weren't listening to the meditation. It's on listening. I'd give it away. So when we reflect on our life moments,

and if we reflect on the ones that felt special, are meaningful, are particularly happy, are poignant, And if we asked ourselves, you know, what made that possible? And we really reflect it was because in some way we were available. We were there for it. Otherwise, it's impossible that it would have that aliveness. The common denominator of moments that are meaningful and poignant are a quality of attention of presence.

We're not preoccupied. Does that make sense? It's like our attention is not preoccupied, so we're there for it. And science agrees. Some of you might have seen in the New York Times this Harvard-based study. I think they had 2,200 people in it. And what they did was they contacted them on their iPhones, and they tracked people.

They would just randomly call people and say, okay, what are you doing right now? Are you thinking? What's your happiness level? It was that kind of a thing. and what they found was that the moments people were happiest it was when they were utterly immersed in their activity and their minds were not distracted and of course they took different they tracked what kind of activities they were doing

and I guess you can guess which one was the most undistracted happy moment it was sex but they were wondering whether you know what happened when people were answering their iPhones or that would have kind of an interesting creates an interesting picture, you know. But whatever they were doing, reading, shopping, whatever, they reported being happiest if they were doing it but not distracted by thoughts. So I thought that was really interesting. They also said, by the way, they found that when they questioned people,

47% reported that their minds were wandering at the moment. I think that's a low estimate. But the bottom line is being lost in thought is incompatible with feeling the aliveness of our body and feeling our heart. In the moment you're lost in thought, you're not contacting what's right here. So what we get is that the spiritual path is not trying to get anywhere. It's in the most pure and simple form coming right back here.

So we're available to our lives. Coming right back here. And so tonight we're going to be exploring one of the most powerful ways to understand that and practice that, which is through the receptivity of listening, through listening. Just to begin with a friend of mine told me about teaching at a Montessori school, just a one-shot class in meditation, to seven to 11-year-olds. And what he did with them was this. He took a gong, a gong that was probably more of a deep and resonating gong,

and he basically instructed them to follow the sound. Just watch where it goes. He says with interest. He said, if you follow the sound, if you're really listening, and just follow it and follow it, you might get closer to God. Okay, so then he later, one of the children told his mother about his experience. mother told the friend. And the child said, well, when I watched and listened to where the sound went, I didn't get closer to God. I was God. Yeah. What happens when we really listen?

When we really listen, when we're fully, fully present in that receptivity of listening, because listening is receptive, you're not doing anything. When we're in that receptivity of listening, we're in inhabiting awakefulness, which really is the purity of awareness itself, or just being awareness. And that's what allows a very pure and beautiful relatedness to the life that arises, whether it's inside us or in others, when there's that receptivity. And I really believe that we learn about love. We learn about true loving relationship when we start exploring this receptivity, this listening presence,

when we're really taking in another being with no attempt to control anything, when there's that openness and attentiveness. It's like when we're listening to the sounds of the wind, our birds, and we just become part of what's happening. Or when we listen to our own heart, there's that intimacy. And it's the same thing when there's true listening to each other. I think more than reading,

endless books or thinking about relationships. It's this kind of a listening presence. And what I'd like to explore with you are the three characteristics that in my practice have really, for me, been key in training and understanding, listening. And one of them is that we're not lost in thought at those moments. And one of them is that we're not controlling anything and the others that we're not interpreting. You could say it differently. You could say that one characteristic is this quality of hereness that we're here.

Right here. And that the second characteristic is that there's this open allowing quality that we're just receptive. And then the third is that we're seeking to understand. We're not interpreting. We're really attuning. I'm going to take them one by one. The first I'm not going to spend a lot of time on, which is that in order to truly listen to ourselves or each other,

we can't be off in that ceaseless inner dialogue. You know, it just cannot be lost in the thoughts. We have to be here. And the training a lot in meditation is to notice, okay, worrying, planning, fantasizing, and just coming back and coming

back until there's more spaces in our life where we're here and not in a virtual reality. So that's the first most ground level training in being able to listen well. And the question that we can ask ourselves when we're with each other is really am I here? Am I quiet enough inside so I can hear you? Okay, so that's training number one. Training number two has to do with controlling because in moments of pure listening, when you're really listening to someone else, are to yourself, you're not

controlling what's going on. There's no directing. If we're listening inwardly to a fear, say we're feeling anxiety, when we're really having a listening presence, we're not trying to make the fear go away. We're not trying to convince ourselves that everything is going to be okay. None of that. We're just allowing it to be just as it is. There's an amazing intimacy and understanding that comes when we just let it be. And it's the same thing with others, whether it's fear or whether someone's sharing something exciting, rather than trying to make their fear go away or trying to add on something to their excitement, there's this space we offer. So what happens, though, with listening, and we'll spend a little time with this, the challenge is that rather than listen, we have the

strong, strong conditioning to try to control things. And primarily, and check this out, when we're with other people, we're pretty continuously trying to control how they're perceiving us. And we've always got an eye on, you know, how is this person taking me in? So we're trying to control how they experience us. Or we're trying to control them and what they're doing. We do it both. So rather than listen, we're preparing in some way to prove ourselves or to impress. or to ingratiate or to make sure the conversation keeps going. Do you know what I mean? We're not just, okay.

Rather than listening, we try to, if somebody brings to us something that's intense or difficult, we're trying to in some way modify that because it feels like it'll be too much to handle, trying to tone it down. Or rather than trying to listen, as many of us know, we've got an agenda that we want to control what that person's either going to think or do.

So I'm bringing these up to invite you to check it out because for many moments, it's like how often do we really let go of our agenda or our self-absorption and with just no defense, just listen. Story of us, mother visits her 20-year-old son John. He's living with a female who's very beautiful, a roommate, Francis. mom gets all suspicious she wants to know the deal

tries to covertly get each of them to talk to her and admit the relationship mothers you know they want to be on top of things so so they sidestep her she leaves a week later they notice that their gravy ladle is missing and son writes a letter to his mom I'm not saying you took it

and I'm not saying you didn't but if you know it's whereabouts please let me know she writes back to him I'm not saying you and Francis are sleeping together, and I'm not saying you're not. But if you look in your roommate's bed, you'll find the ladle. So we're not always just here to listen. There's some manipulation going on. And here's the deep thing that happens rather than listening. On some level, there's this urge to reassert the sense of that I'm here,

some attention to the I'm here feeling. We get uncomfortable and embarrassed. It's like we don't know who we are if we're not in some way poised to have a response. Does this resonate? Can you feel how this? Okay. Okay. So the bottom line is there's not a capacity to truly listen.

And I mean the kind of listen that's like liberating presence. If we have any agenda to judge, to prove, to mold, to change. and the other side of it is the capacity to listen without any controlling is a gift of love. It is our capacity to love because we can't be intimate. We can't embody the love if we're trying to control another or to assert a self. So just to say, if you're controlling a situation, you can't hear what's true. You can't find it out. And you can't see who's there.

You can't find out who's there. And you can't discover that the love that shines through when there's the space of listening. So just not to understand that a listening presence is not a passive presence. There's a profound engagement. You know, when we're listening, it's like we're really, really involved.

And not only that, when we really listen, Like when we create this space that takes in what's happening, we then can respond from a very deep kind of intelligence and compassion. So obviously we're going to be active in the world, but when it comes from a listening presence, it's appropriate and healing action. So this is the second element. The first element is, if you'll remember,

of true listening to each other and to ourselves is not to be lost in the virtual reality. The second is not to try to control what's going on. And if you want an inquiry just to kind of check on that one, you can ask yourself, do I have an agenda right now? Am I trying to impress someone? Am I trying to manage what's happening? Or on the other side, am I open, really open,

to allowing whatever? You know, can I trust the emergence that's happening? And just be open to it. The third, the third guideline for deep listening is not to interpret. The deep listening monitors its own reaction. You're attending not just to what a person is saying, what they're trying to say. So you're really listening in, not overlaying it with your interpretation.

But what happens and habitually happens is that we have a conceptual overlay. We always do it. And we focus on our related experience. So let's say the person's talking about challenges with their child. We start thinking about our own and how it was for us or is for us. Or we add a value judgment. We might focus on the part of the communication that's most relevant to us.

Well, it's better to be permissive. Sounds like you're being a bit heavy hand. And we add something. In a little essay called Hearing versus Listening, you have what a woman says. Come on, this place is a mess. You and I need to clean. Your pants are on the floor and you'll have no clothes if we don't do laundry now.

What a man hears. Come on, blah, blah, blah, blah. You and I, blah, blah, blah. On the floor, blah, blah, blah, blah. No clothes, blah, blah, blah. Now. Anyway, so we all have our particular wants and our fears and also our past histories and memories and associations. You know how it is if somebody expresses appreciation for you?

And they might just be getting launched on it and you're immediately going into that uncomfortable thing. And instead of taking on what they're saying, there's the part of you that's going, they don't know me or they, you know, they don't get it or they're just trying to do it. You know, it's like we add on quickly as soon as we get uncomfortable. We don't just let the communication happen. So the third inquiry, the first one is am I here, the second one really is, am I controlling, the third one really is am I interpreting? Am I doing my own thing on this or am I really taking in someone else? A deeper way to say it is, am I seeking to understand? And I really invite you to practice with that. It's one of the most beautiful training.

I've ever taken on is in some way when there's a communication going. Some part of me goes, am I seeking to understand? It gives my intention here really to be listening behind the words, to really sense what this person is communicating. Seeking to understand. There's an image that one writer offered that I think is really powerful. This is Brenda Veland. And she describes this creative spirit that we are as like a fountain.

And she says, everything is coming from the same pure source, this awareness. It's the source. And I think of it as a source of our natural intelligence and our love and our being. So we are this fountain. And when we haven't been listened to, and here's what's important, because most of us got conditional listening, maybe not so great. But when we haven't been listened to, the creative fountain gets blocked. with defenses and with fear-based strategies and unmet needs.

The founding gets clogged, it gets muddied over. So then what gets expressed when we communicate, if we haven't been listened to, what gets expressed is either stagnant or contrived or unclear or murky. You know, it's not from our deepest place. Maybe all that comes out is superficial talk or what's nervous or prepackaged are manipulative. Okay. So rather than living from essence, this kind of creative found, and we're living from

externals, you know, what's expected, what we think we should do. So this is when we haven't been listened to. It's very hard to communicate from the depths. And when we haven't learned to listen to ourselves too. Because when we do listen to ourselves or when someone else listens to us, that listening is like magic. that that fountain begins to flow again. And maybe what first, that space of listening invites forth might be some of the shadow stuff that's been all muckied up. You know, it might be that the muddy waters need to be expressed

and included so we can settle into this deeper place. But in time, when there's that invitation of listening, that fountain just starts flowing. And what comes out is really our insight and our creativity and our humor and our love and our aliveness. That's the magic of it. And you know what it's like to be with people that offer a real presence and a welcoming presence.

It's like if you tell a joke and people laugh, if there's that welcoming, it brings out your joakness, you brings out your funniness, it all comes out. If you tell a joke and there's not a response, all the jokes in you just die. You know how it is? It's like shut down. Well, it's the same thing with listening.

Good listening makes another person safe so that the goodness of who they are and the juiciness and aliveness is free to flow. It's a beautiful gift. It's a gift of loving. A woman was married to a very bright man and she thought of herself as Charlie Brown and here's one of the stories

that Lucy and Linus and Charlie Brown are lying on a grassy mound. Lucy points at the sky and she says If you could use your imagination You could see a lot of things in cloud formations What do you think you see Linus And Linus says

Well those clouds up there look to me like a map of British Honduras On the Caribbean That cloud up there looks like a little Like the profile of Thomas Aiken's The famous painter and sculptor And that other group of clouds over there Gives me the impression of the stoning of Stephen I can see the Apostle Paul standing there to one side

Lucy goes aha, that's very good. What do you see in the clouds, Charlie Brown? Charlie Brown goes, well, I was going to say I saw a duckie and a horsey, but I changed my mind. So we learned to offer listening and to listen inwardly. And I think it's one of the most beautiful parts of the training that we do here. Tonight's meditation, as you noticed, I mainline on listening. But it's an element of any wise attention.

to listen inwardly. So we'll just take a moment to dip in again to this listening attention. So just a reminder again of these qualities of listening is this, it's undistracted. We're not off somewhere else. We're here. And we're not trying to control what's here. We're just offering a listening presence, not even interpreting it. And it helps to begin by just, just relaxing. If your body's relaxed, the mind settles, opens. Just listen, kind of a global listening, not particular. Again, taking in evenly the inside of the room here, the space outside. It is scent and feel the space around you. Environment of sounds like a symphony. Let it wash through. See if it can penetrate and flow into you without defense.

softening and opening, receptive. So the barrier of inside, outside's not so distinct. There's sound, sensation. It's all included in a listening attention. Listening inwardly deepens when there's a caring interest. So you can inquire just what wants attention right now, or acceptance, our kindness maybe. You might notice an undercurrent of anxiety,

or maybe curiosity, maybe loneliness or sorrow, or maybe a peacefulness. But just sense what draws your attention and listen to it. We usually react or judge or ignore. Just let whatever's here be with an intimate listening as if to any loved one who's having a strong experience, difficult or not.

You're listening to your own heart, your own being. So you're sensing what's going on inside you, listening with care. And then just be that listening presence. It's a loving presence. You can notice what happens if you feel the entire moment. All your senses awake. Not controlling anything. You might ask who's listening, who's aware.

Can you sense that there's no thing or no center? There's just open awareness. Rumi says, you're covered with thick cloud, slide out the side, die and be quiet. Your old life was a frantic running from silence. The speechless full moon comes out now, opening your eyes. So the training in deep listening is one dimension is this practice of listening within, where we just quiet the mindsome and just have this intention to listen

without controlling anything. And on one level, as we start listening and we can start feeling this fountain of our life beginning to express itself, sometimes what expresses is difficult. And our commitment, and this is where the healing is, and it's profound, is to simply let what comes through the fountain,

whatever's been clogging, present itself, and just keep listening with a tremendous amount of tenderness and presence. And as I've taught many times, if it helps to listen inwardly and put your hand on your heart and insert like you're sending a message, I'm here, I'm listening. That helps the fountain to get more release and more free and more purified. So one level of this listening presence is the healing that happens. There's a healing and a freeing up into wholeness. And another expression of that, a deepening expression,

is that it relaxes what we call the selfing. When we're listening, we relax open into a space that releases this identification, this self-centeredness that keeps us bound, and it lets us rest in something larger. It lets us rest in awareness, in our natural state. So this is the gift of this inner listening. And then we begin to explore from this inner quietness because if we know the fullness of listening within,

we can listen to others. And by the way, you cannot listen and really listen to another if you haven't explored just quieting and listening to what's here. Does that make sense? That if we haven't paused and learned how to hold the space for our inner life, we're not really going to have the space for another. I love this short essay called The Song of an African Tribe. I heard a story this writer puts, he says, about this African tribe

where the birth date of a child is counted not from when they're born by our standards, and it's counted not from when they're conceived, as some other cultures do. The birth date of this tribe is counted from the day the child was a thought in the mother's mind. That's the day from which the child was a thought in the mother's mind. That's the day from which the was truly conceived because everything we do is out of mind. And when the woman decide she's going to have a child and that fills her, then she goes off and sits under the tree by herself and she listens until she hears the song of a child that wants to come. And after she's heard that song, she comes back to the man or will be the child's father and teaches it to him. And then when they

make love to physically conceive the child, some of the time they sing the song to the child a way to invite it. And then that mother teaches a song to the midwives and the old women of the village so that when the child arrives, the old women are around her, the midwife, and they're singing the song to the child to welcome it. And then as the child grows up and other villagers are taught the child's song, if it falls down or hurts its knee, someone picks it up and sings its song to it, or does some great thing like rights of puberty as a way of honoring that person they sing the song. And it goes that way through life, through marriage, the songs are sung together. And finally, even when the child is ready to die, all the villagers know his or her song.

And so when they're lying, they're ready to die, they sing for the last time the song to that person. So when I heard this story first, I was just very touched and very moved. This is kind of longing for this harmony with life where we're, it's just very touched and very mood. where we're, it's a kind of a soul listening, or there's that that deeper commitment to quiet ourselves and take in who's here and take in the earth that's here. And in that taking in, in that opening,

we find a sense of belonging that is precious and healing. So it takes intention and there's a very sense of belonging a very strong inclination instead of listening to do something. And one of the reasons in this culture that there's really little listening, there's instead this almost clamoring of noise, like we're having to yell louder and louder to hear each other, and you can hear it on the cable news,

and it's like the only way to be listened to is if you scream. Well, in this culture, we're so busy. There's not enough time. There's this kind of franticness. It's as William James put it, that we're in the ceaseless frenzy. And in the ceaseless frenzy, what we think is that we always should be doing something else. So what happens when we're with each other or when we're trying to be with ourselves is there's a sense that there's not enough time.

Have you noticed that? Yeah? There's not enough time. So it takes an intention. like a remembering that there is enough time. Recently, my mom moved down here last year, and we've been kind of, she's been finding the doctors that she's going to be working with.

We went together to a doctor that we sat down with him, and all of a sudden there was this kind of mojo, kind of magic in the space, because it was like he totally had enough time. And his listening was so deeply unhurried, and respectful, that it was like a gift. It was like he offered this space, this gift that then just brought out what was real.

And doctors and everybody else, everybody is usually so busy that I was so struck. It was kind of an expression of spirit. Like you could feel spirit in the room because there was this unhurriedness. What a gift. What a gift. So the training, being here,

opening, not controlling with another, person, seeking to understand. And it helps just to invite yourself. And if you want to practice, and I'm trying to be very specific. So this is applied Dharma. If you want to practice, just to say to yourself, okay, I'm here now on some level internally. You just sense what's happening right now. This friend is talking. I am quiet. There's time. Tell yourself there's time. I'm listening to who you are. I'm listening to who you are. Because everything that's good comes out of this listening presence. I found that when we listen and really listen, the vulnerability that's so hard to express can be expressed and the goodness. It's almost like you're listening and the goodness

that's the very source of that person's fountain begins to be free to express. A friend of mine as a therapist. Her mom was fairly well-known novelist, very wealthy and successful, very brilliant woman, and also extremely narcissistic. She was kind of the center of the universe and everybody else was a satellite orbiting around

and she would hold forth and she was charming and fascinating, good stories, but she had very little interest in anybody else. You know, knowing her close up as my friend, you know, because she was her daughter, the emotional swings were really difficult because her mother was very charming, but she could also, it was like when she was loving you, she was loving up a pet, but then she'd go into not engage and get into these very depressed

black states. So not surprisingly, over the years, the family became very estranged. This woman's husband divorced or she married again, so this woman, my friend had a stepfather, and she had an older sister, and the older sister gave up on the mother totally, wouldn't go home except on holidays. A stepfather loved her, but kept a distance, and they got into a routine that was very distanced. So nobody really wanted to be her captive audience anymore

that was close in. So this therapist did a training in active listening, my friend, and kind of a Dharma training in very much what we're talking about today. Just be here. Try not to control. just really allow it. Keep allowing. Allow even more. Let it really just be as it is. Don't add your ideas and interpretation. Just be here. She got this training. So just to listen without impatience, receptivity. So she visits her mom and she's there for a couple of weeks and makes it her experiment to really listen.

and part of really listening meant that listening to her own resistance and reactivity it's not like you just push away listening to her own impatience her own feeling the anger and hurt it not being somebody like that she just wasn't in the room okay but she would listen to she just open to that and then she'd just keep opening to her mother just basically with that same kind of mantra of just let this be as it is just be here patient patient, patient. And gradually, as she listened, she could hear her mother's desperation as if she was saying over and over again, I'm here, I matter, I'm here, I matter, you know, just over and over again. And it was like she was offering the space of listening that was recognized her, giving her that

information of you're here, you matter, you're here, you matter. She was kind of offering that. And her mother started relaxing and telling her how she felt alone and unappreciated. So she went from this, you know, storytelling to just saying, okay, I feel alone and unappreciated. And then this friend of mine, completely sincere, because she had kind of moved through her resistance,

just very sincere and honest, said, it's because you don't listen to people. and her mother froze. It was like shell-shocked. But there wasn't a reaction because my friend had been so present with her, there was some trust there. It wasn't attack. It was just a caring reflection on the truth. So her mother wanted to know more.

What that really meant? And my friend told her. And she said, you know, with her sister's name, with your husband, she says, if you don't listen, people feel like they don't matter, that they're not known, and it's true. You can't know them if you don't listen. You can't be close. So this woman looked at my friend, at her daughter with a sorrow and an understanding that pierced my friend's heart. It was like something happened. It was maybe the pain of alienation or that this was her time, but she needed help and she started to listen. And things shifted. The older sister told my friend after

the holiday. She said, for the first time on my life, I felt like I was a real person with her. And the stepfather and her started doing things together. They started taking walks. They started spending time. They started realizing that they did have the time for each other. So it's like her fountain started flowing. There is a magic. We forget about it. But there is magic to either feeling listened to or to offering that to another that heals in personal relationships and is the only hope for societal healing. The only way to take different peoples who have been misunderstanding each other and in that misunderstanding creating an object other, a bad other, the only way to begin to heal the cycles of violence is listening.

is listening. And this is not an abstract training. I mean in the Buddhist tradition, Kwanian, the Bodhisattva of compassion, her description was the listener to the sorrows of the world. This is the awakened

heart. And each of us here are bodhisattvas. By the word awakening being, you wouldn't be here tonight. If there wasn't something in you, that really cherished waking up, being more who you really are.

I mean, living from wholeness and from heart and from spirit, you wouldn't be here. So this training that we're talking about tonight really is a training to be present with the sensations of the breath and listen to the body and listen to the heart. And it's a listening to each other and this world in a way that we become intimate with our life. When we're really fully listening, we become that fullness, that wholeness, that presence. So let's close together, taking some moments again to explore. And as you pause, sense a kind of letting go of ideas about things and a coming into a direct contact with what's right here. listening to your breath, feeling your breath.

Your senses are awake and listen to the sounds around you and with the same receptivity that hears those sounds listening to the heart, to your own heart. You might sense one person in your life that you spend time with that you'd like to explore more consciously listening with. I'd sense that person right here. Just feel your intention with these three training pieces of just being here, not distracted, with this person.

Not trying to control or have an agenda, kind of offering a space of listening. It just really allows what comes out, not interpreting. instead of interpreting truly seeking to understand. The word understand, stand under, as if you're standing under a tree that you can really sense what it's like to feel the life of the tree

and feel the roots underneath the change of the seasons. We stand under to understand. You're standing under, that you're seeking understanding. What does this person mean? What are they trying to say? And most basically,

you're becoming this awake space that's just tender and receptive. Notice what happens if you imagine letting this person be exactly as they are, that profound allowing and acceptance. And you sense the vastness of love that's there, knowing that, of course, there'll be many moments of a conversation,

kind of back forth where you're not occupying so consciously the space of listening. And that's natural and human and good and fine. But that this too is a possibility, this purity of listening. And knowing that the response that comes out of that listening will be informed by your deepest, purest heart. It's letting go of the thought of another and just listening to what's actually here right now, Again, these sounds, backs into the openness of listening. When a thought arises and you notice it, just pause and sense the thought of sound in

the mind. I'm going to include the sounds that are actually here, opening back to this aliveness that's right in this moment. You're covered with thick cloud, slide out the side, die and be quiet. old life was a frantic running from silence. The speechless full moon comes out now. So I appreciate your listening presence tonight. I thank you. The talk you just listened to has been freely offered. If you'd like to make a donation, learn more about my schedule or about programs offered by the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, please visit either my website, which is tarabrock.com,

our IMCW site, which is IMCW.org. Thank you very much.