Tara Brach - Listening to the Song

Episode Date: January 24, 2014

2014-01-22 - Listening to the Song - Listening with our full heart and attention is the gateway to understanding and love. This talk explores the challenges to deep listening, and offers ways of paying attention that awaken a healing listening presence.

So in this class, I'd like to talk about the quality of mindful listening. And those of you that were just meditating with us got a taste of it. So we'll explore the challenges and the blessings that come. And to begin, just to share one minister described giving a sermon and having two teenage girls sitting in the group that were kind of giggling and disturbing people. So he, in a real stern way, said, you know, there are two of you out there who've not heard a word, I've said, and that quieted them down. And he said that when the service was over, and he's, you know, standing and greeting people at the front door, there were

four or five members of the parish that apologized profusely for going to sleep during his talk. That was great. So let me ask you this. Have you How many of you have becoming a better listener as one of your aspirations? It's part of your consciousness. And for those that aren't here at most hands are up, certainly me too. So we know that having a true listening presence when we're with others, it's difficult. You know, we easily tune out. We get distracted.

We have a sense that we're too busy to really be here for this in this moment and we get caught in our own thoughts and are rehearsing what we're going to say. So it's a challenge and yet it's a deep intuitive knowing for most of us that right at the center of any really intimate relationship is this capacity to listen. And Paul Tellick said it's the first responsibility of love is to listen. Listen. I think that's so powerful. The first responsibility of love is to listen.

So it's our medium of connecting. It's our way we listen to understand. If a child is trying to tell us something and we don't listen, we cannot understand what's going on for that child. In any moment, listening is our way of connecting. And it's our way of establishing the heart. connection. So I really think of it if we could look at any of our relationships. It's really the quality of listening is the indicator of it being a living love. The love might be there.

That's what really engages it. There's a story I heard many years ago that has to do with an African tribes, one of it, a ritual. And I'll read you what I have. I have to do with an African tribes, one of a ritual. And I'll read you what I have on this, that the birth date of a child's counted not from when they're born, not from when they're conceived, but is counted from the day the child is the thought in the mother's mind. That's the day from which the child was truly conceived because everything we do is done out of mind. And when the woman decides she's going to have a child, then that fills her. And she goes, off and sits under a tree by herself, and she listens, and she listens until she hears the

song of the child that wants to come. And after she's heard that song, she comes back to the man who 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's way to invite it. And then the mother teaches a song to the midwives and old women of the village, and they listen to it and learn it so that when the child arrives, the old women, midwives, can sing the child, the song to welcome it. And then as the child grows up, the other villagers are taught the child song, and they listen, and they listen, and they take it in. And then when the child falls down or hurts its knee or someone picks it up, they sing the song to it. A child does some great thing,

like rights of puberty as a way of honoring that person, they sing the song. And then through life, through marriage, the songs are sung together. And finally, even when this person's ready to die, all the villagers know his or her song. So when they're lying there, ready to die, they sing for the last time the song to that person. So there's something really poignant about that quality of intimacy amongst people

where there's that depth of listening. I think it's kind of a soul listening to really take in who is this, being. And so in a way, there's kind of two levels of listening to the song. And one level is when we listen to each other and we really sense all the different ways that the other person's joys and sorrows and challenges and humor and particular kind of intelligence come through. It's kind of we're listening to the expression of that person's soul coming through this particular incarnation. and then on another level listening to the song,

much like the meditation we were doing tonight, we're listening to all the sounds and all the expressions of a being and sensing behind it, really that one spirit that's coming through all of us. It's a way that deep listening really brings us to the purity of awareness itself. And I think of this when many of you

might have read Herman Hesman, S is Siddhartha. I read it a long time ago. And this deep kind of listening, this listening that takes us right into the very essence and openness of awareness itself, there's a really beautiful description in Siddhartha of how he finally, towards the end of his life, comes to the side of a river and that's where he's just absolutely become still and listens. So this about the power of listening, and I'm going to read you just a little bit from Siddhartha because it had been so long for me it was really a treat just to hear it again. Sidartha listened. He was now listening intently, completely absorbed, quite empty,

taking in everything. He had completely learned the art of listening. He had often heard all this before, all these numerous voices in the river, but today they sounded different. They were all interwoven and interlocked, intertwined in a thousand ways. All the voices, all the goals, all the yearnings, the sorrows, the pleasures, the good and evil, all of them together with the world, all of them together with the stream of events and the music of life. When Siddhartha listened attentively to this river, to this song of a thousand voices, when did not bind himself to any one particular voice and absorb himself into, it, but heard them all, the unity, and the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word,

perfection. So this path of listening is a way of deep understanding when we open wide and just take in, how is this world, it's an understanding of reality of each other and a really a way of relaxing back into this essential oneness. And I wanted to explore it tonight in particular because I'm just back from having been on a retreat. I spent 10 days in silence up in New England. And I was really drawn to doing it in a way with the silence to have this opportunity for deep listening presence. So I registered for this first. So I registered for this retreat six months ago and I was really looking forward to it. It's just time to be to step out of all the regular demands. I have a lot, you know, I get into this busyness and rather than listening,

I'm trying to get somewhere and listening means you have to kind of put down all the trying to get anywhere and just open. So really, really looking forward to sitting by the river, so to speak. And I remember, this is just a week and a half ago, getting up the first morning when I was still half asleep, just coming into awareness. And the first thought that I had in my mind was, uh-oh, I'm in prison. I was in a little cell-like room, and there's no one you can talk to. And it was, and then part of me was saying, you know, wait a minute, I was excited about this. Why am I what does this come to mind but there's a sense of

okay I'm really stuck there's no back doors I'm just stuck with presence like now I just have to keep paying attention it's like none of my normal escape vowels were there and you know the ego relies on its trappings you know having

whatever whether it's the internet or things to do and so I was just having to like over and over again say okay presence you know of course over the days it became totally delicious but it was really interesting to me that that was this kind of unconscious like oh my gosh now I have now I'm stuck with

this you know but I think it's our predicament whether we're in a formal meditation sitting are with others relating that presence or listening to the song really means staying it really means letting go of all control and being fully available. And we have a really deep conditioning not to do that. Our deepest conditioning is to try to keep controlling our experience, controlling what other people are thinking, controlling to get somewhere, and not to just open and truly take in the life of the moment.

So that's the name. that's what we call trance, that our conditioning is to go into a trance that rather than being here we kind of narrow our lens and we try to get somewhere else. So our predicament is that we are conditioned to do the controlling and yet each of us has that intuition that it's by putting that down and opening up and being here in the moment that really everything we most cherish becomes available. So how to work with that? So the beginning is just to maybe explore a bit more

what it is that makes listening so difficult. And I think of this challenge of trance, you know, what happens when we're with each other that we get tugged around so we really can't just, you know, as Paul Tellick said, really offer that listening presence, as the very grounds of our loving. And you can really consider the broad three energetic conditionings

that we have, that really we work with all the time, specifically in terms of what challenges us in listening. And one of those big challenges is that we are conditioned to want to pursue things. We're trying to grasp after or go for things that we want. And so rather than just being here, we're kind of focused on getting something. And the second thing that pulls us away from being truly able to rest in a state of listening is self-protection. We're trying to, in some way, protect ourselves from something.

So either we're trying to enhance ourselves and get something or protect ourselves. And the third way is what's considered kind of inattention, like, that when there's nothing in particular that we want or we fear, we kind of just get distracted and kind of blank out in attention. So just take a few minutes to look at each of these because it's really useful for us to then reflect in our relationships what's pulling me away from a more open, available, listening presence. And so we'll start with wanting.

And just to consider this in your own life, you know, when you're in conversation with family or friend or colleague, is there something you're wanting? What's the agenda? In other words, do you want to have that person experience you in a certain way? We usually do. If we're honest, we usually have some way we want to appear. It's intelligent or capable or caring or whatever it is. are we wanting that person's approval? To the degree we're wanting another person's approval,

we're not going to be able to listen because some part of us will be manipulating what's happening to get approval. So is it that we want a conversation to go in a particular direction or not to go in a particular direction? Or do we want to prove something? Or do we want to get something from that person? So those are just some examples that, you know, if we're wanting, we have some agenda,

it's not going to be a truly, I'm right here listening. Now, often our wanting has nothing to do with that person. We might be talking to a person and we just want to be doing something else. And so we're just not going to be there to be with that person. It may be that we want to be with someone else, we want to get something to eat or get things done. So that is one of the real common ways. Whenever there's a strong pull to pursue other wants, though, we can't pay attention.

There's a story I heard of this couple had two young boys, eight and ten, and they were always getting into trouble, and the basic thing, they just would not listen to their parents. They wouldn't cooperate. They wouldn't pay attention to any of the rules or guidelines, and, you know, they were really noisy when guests came over and they'd break things and so on. So parents at their wit end and they heard about that the new pastor in town was really good with working with children and helping them to learn to listen and cooperate.

So he agreed to see the two boys, but he said one at a time. So the eight-year-old boy went in first, and the clergyman sat down and looked at him kind of sternly, and he says, this is what he asked. me said, where is God? The boy made no response so the pastor repeats the question even with a sterner tone, where is God? Again the boy made no attempt to answer so the clergyman raised his voice even more and shook his finger in the boy's face. Where is God? And at that the boy bolted from the room, ran directly home, slammed himself into the closet and his older brother followed him into the closet and said what happened? So the younger brother

replied, we are in big trouble this time. God is missing and they think we did it. The problem is when you don't listen. So it's a very strong poll. When we have wants to do things, to have fun, to do something else, we're not going to be able to listen. And you might think of a real experience when you were talking to someone and that was the case where you just wanted to be somewhere else. you know what it's like. Okay, so that's wanting mind. Now, in a similar way, when we're feeling aversion, when something's really unpleasant,

again, we contract and we pull away our attention. So it might be that we feel threatened or turned off by what somebody else is saying. One writer said, the only thing I ever said to my parents when I was a teenager was, hang up, I've got it. So you get the idea. Yeah, and, you know, so we monitor ourselves and sense, okay, how well are we listening when we have aversive experience?

For instance, you've probably noticed what it's like when somebody criticizes you, and then how well can you listen after you feel criticized? Not so well. It's difficult. Or if you have a fear about seeming unintelligent or boring or like you don't get it, It's hard to listen because you're trying to put together the appearance of what you want to look like. It's really hard to listen if we have judgments about another person's viewpoint or their behaviors. If you think of what it's like, if somebody's sharing their very charged feelings about, let's say, climate change or about abortion or about guns, and you really, really have the opposite view,

it's really hard to listen. Okay? This is a contraction of attention, so we can't stay there. Now, sometimes the aversion that we feel doesn't have to do with the person. It's really got to do with something else going on our lives. We're under stress,

and there's a sense that I don't have enough time, and I need to be doing something else. That's a really big one. But I want to mention one of the most subtle fears that gets in the way of just listening. In other words, not preparing a response, not positioning ourselves, not analyzing. And that is the fear of not being here. In other words, if we're really listening, we've put down all the egoic striving of showing that we're something, something, of defending, of trying to get something. And the whole sense of self becomes very

transparent, very loose, very open. And that is disorienting and scaring. It's like we like to know who we are and be oriented and be poised to respond. So it's very hard not to prepare ourselves or position ourselves. Does that make sense? There's a need to keep reasserting and representing ourselves. So we don't put down our thoughts very easily. Now, bottom line, when we have an agenda, trying to get something, or when we're trying to protect ourselves or prove ourselves, we're unable to listen to the song.

We can't contact the truth of what's here. We can't really listen. I like the way Mark Nipo puts it. He says, to listen is to lean in softly with a willingness to be changed by what we hear. Isn't that beautiful? With a willingness to be changed by what we hear. That's how little we're holding on to the rightness of our position or our defenses or anything. Let's just take a moment to reflect so we can bring it right into our personal lives, okay?

You might want to close your eyes. And you might, as you close your eyes, sense this as a pause where you can just take a moment to connect with your body and your breath and you're listening and your heart. And sense who comes to mind is somebody that's an important part of your circle, not somebody where there's a huge rift because you don't need to work with a major conflict right now, but just somebody who's important to you

where you'd like to cultivate a deeper capacity for listening, and just to begin to inquire what is between me and really listening with an awake heart when we're together? What stops me? And just to sense into this one. When you're with this person, is there something you're wanting

from this person? Do you want their... If the child, maybe you want their cooperation more than you want to listen. Or if it's some colleague or friend, maybe you're wanting approval to appear a certain way. Or is there some sort of a fear of criticism, a need to be right? Are you just being pulled away because of the stress in your life that gives you that sense of there's just not enough time? You might notice what you're just...

you do to control the experience? Do you get distracted and just go into your own thoughts or rehearse what you're going to say or try to steer the conversation? See if as you reflect you can let go of any judgment, just be curious. And also as you reflect, just to sense your intention to be more aware, your intention to understand the other, to connect. You'll have a chance to revisit for now, just take a few breaths and open your eyes. So given our conditioning, and this is all of us, listening is a training. A listening presence takes training. We have to put in our 10,000 hours. And the key is our intention. If you have a real sincere intention to listen, that's what will energize. That's what'll draw your attention. Just to know that it matters. It's like

knowing that listening is really the opening to loving, that you want to be able to listen to the song. So given that we get pulled around, how do we do it? I mean, how do we do that training? And when I was at the retreat, when I found my attention getting pulled around and, you know, I kind of wanted this, come back, come back. And I kept going back to a poem that I remembered from David Wagoner. I had a few phrases that kept coming back to me. I thought I'd read a piece to you just because it was so helpful. And the poem is called Lost. And he says, stand still. Stand still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you are not lost. Wherever you are is called here. And you was treated as a powerful stranger. Stand still.

The forest knows where you are, you must let it find you. Stand still. So I found for myself that when I see going off, moving away from here, I just hear a little voice saying, stand still. And there was something about that, just coming into that stillness, and then just listen. So the first step, the gateway, to... to listening.

When we're with others, listening to others, and also listening inwardly, because really we're doing both. The gateway is pausing, standing still. Now, to deepen then, let's look at the definition of listening itself,

and today I got an email and somebody sent me this picture of the Chinese these characters that make up the verb to listen. You can feel free to come up and look at it later if you'd like, just out of the blue. No idea that I was composing a talk on it. I just sent it to me, so. But it's wonderful because if you look at it, there's a few, in the pictograph of it, there are a few pieces that come together and it has ear, eyes, undivided attention, and

heart. So let's just take a moment to reflect on that, that the first piece of listening is we open our senses, the sense gates of seeing and the hearing, that we open our senses, that we bring an undivided attention, this recognizing in this moment what's happening, a very engaged, awake attention, and we bring the tenderness of our hearts. So those are the three pieces. Wake up the senses, this undivided knowing what's happening in the moment, and this tenderness of heart. And those come together into a listening presence.

And we're going to explore that together. Where do we pay attention? Whatever is calling our attention. It's like when you just listen to sound, and you might close your eyes and just listen to sound, you don't go to a sound, there's a spontaneous knowing whatever is drawing your attention.

Now what happens when we're listening to another person, our to ourself, is that part of what goes on when we're listening is then there's a reaction to what we're hearing, right? And if we don't then bring our attention by listening to the reaction,

In other words, if we're having a reaction to somebody and we don't pay attention to it, we're going to be looking like we're listening maybe, but it's not going to be coming in because we haven't listened to the reactions. You have to listen to whatever is going on inside you. So I'd like to give you an example of how that happens. Because it happened to me just a few months ago, and communication isn't always here we are talking. Sometimes we listen to each other through email.

And this is an email story. So a few months ago, I had a meeting with a small group of people. And soon after, I got an email from one participant who was really disappointed in how the meeting had gone, how it had unfolded. She felt that we didn't navigate the internal tensions well. We got caught in them and hijacked. We took too much time with them, with, you know, emotional. content and I was a key player in one of the personal exchanges and so I was very much a part of her upset okay so blame criticism so I got this email and I knew not to I didn't go respond right

away that I was smart enough about but for the next 45 minutes I was walking around my house doing things and I was completely absorbed at developing my defense I mean I was I had it all figured out why she was wrong and why I was right and how that the meeting really needed to be just the way it was. And if we hadn't dealt with such and such, it would have come up to haunted. I had my whole thing figured out. Then after a while, because I do reflect on these things, I said, wait a minute. You know, here I am.

And I wasn't listening. I was in my aversive, self-protective thing. So I said, okay, let's see what's really going on. So that's when the, okay, pause. Pause, just pause. And then, you know, I took some moments just to open up, you know, right into this moment, my senses, and just to pay attention and feel my heart, and my heart was really, really contracted and really, really tight.

So that's where the first listening went. It went not to what she was trying to say, but to my contract. attracted, defended heart. Does that make sense that you start with your own reaction? So I was just listening to my own tension and finding in there that there was anger and underneath the anger as I let the anger be there, there was hurt and there was a sense of I'm bad. There's a sense of, you know, something's wrong with me. And then underneath that there's the keep listening, keep listening. this longing for love to be there and connection.

And then as I kept listening, I sensed into the tenderness of that, and then into just the space of tender presence it was there. So I kind of listened and the listening let things unfold. And then with that tenderness, I could start saying, okay, let me listen to what really, what's the song coming through that email, right?

Just a note, the song does not always sound like some beautiful harmonic symphony at first. Sometimes it sounds bitter, but it's still a song, and it still needs to be listened to. So I could listen with that same kind of engagement and tenderness, that undivided attention, okay, what's really here, and that heart attention, that heart presence, and sense that behind those words there was this person's hurt or feeling left out of something or whatever I'd come to, I could listen into what was there, and then be able to take the content more of, okay, so what's instructive about this and what might not be, but I was listening again.

I share this because we bypass that inner listening. Now, in this example, with an email example, you might say, yeah, if you're doing emails, you have time to pause and process and listen and what do you do when you're actually in vivo. And in a way, you do the same thing and it's imperfect. But you do the same thing. You're listening to another person

and your sensing reactions come up and someplace in you goes, okay, this is here, I hear you, I feel you, it's okay, accepting that this is happening. In other words, there's some gesture of a kind listening attention to your own heart and body

to help create the space and with the intention that, okay, let me let in. Part of what helps, and this is why it's the 10,000 hours, is that the more that we get the knack of saying, okay, just put it down and take in what is coming in. Let myself be touched and changed, as Nipo says.

The more we see the power of it and trust it. If you trust the power of listening, you'll take the chance to let go of control and listen. There's a metaphor that has been really, really helpful for me on this. And I want to share it with you. I've shared it in a talk, I think last year, where we imagine our inner life and our spirit as a fountain, the sense of what we are as a fountain, that there's awareness and it's expressing out in our different life expressions. But when there's unprocessed hurts and fears, our fountain of who we are becomes clogged. Okay?

And the painful parts of our being, when they're pushed away and neglected, they impede that flowing aliveness. Okay, so that makes sense. And that obscures really the song, the essence, the source of who we are. So that when we don't listen to our inner life, we get cut off from the source. But when somebody listens to us, When somebody really listens, the debris starts to dissolve and the fountain begins to start flowing again. This is the power of listening to each other or to ourselves.

With the listening attention, there's a kind of disillusion of the cloggedness and a beginning of flow. And we know what it's like. when somebody really without any judgment with a real openness and tenderness is listening it starts bringing out what's there brings out parts of ourselves

now at first the song it brings out is going to be muddied if we've been clogged for a long time when we start listening to ourselves first things we're going to get are all sorts of defensiveness and cravings and confusion it's going to be mucky the same thing

when we listen to someone else and they haven't been listened to for a while? There's a bit of sputtering. Do you know what I mean? So at first it's that way. The conversation, when you're first listening to somebody and they haven't listened to themselves or been listened to, it might be dull or superficial or self-absorbed. But if you're dedicated and you hang in there

without resisting, without judging, gradually it helps that other person's tangled defenses to relax so their natural vitality and spirit starts coming through. We know what it's like when we're really listened to. We become more ourself. We become calmer. We become funnier. We become more creative.

Love begins to flow. The story I like that illustrates this, I wrote it up in True Refuge, and I want to share it with you because it really touched me to sense there's a woman who came to a workshop and she heard this kind of metaphor of the fountain and how if you really listen to someone like you really hang in there even if they're all self-absorbed and jumbled they'll begin to come from a deeper and deeper

place she decided to try it with her mother okay now her mother is actually this according to her description very very narcissistic kind of the center of the known universe kind of person. She was a well-known writer, and basically whenever she spoke was if she had a rapt audience, even it was just one person, and all they wanted was to hear from her,

and it was very hard to be around her. In fact, this woman's older sister wouldn't even go home and visit anymore. It was so difficult to be around this woman. But the woman that I'm talking about decided to spend time with the mother, she went home on a vacation, she spent 10 days with her mother and decided that she'd really listen. So whenever she felt resistance or judgment, whenever she felt unimportant, because with narcissistic people, you could feel just so

irrelevant like you're just there, or when she'd feel bored, she'd bring in her listening, you know, kindness, a forgiveness to whatever she was feeling, really, it's okay, made it okay within herself, so that there was more of a space and a clarity she could bring to with her mother. And she'd also coach herself, and I thought this was great. She'd say, now, what is happening? You know, this undivided attention. My mother is talking.

I am quiet. There's endless time. I hear it every word, and I hear what's behind the word. I hear who she is. So this is her coaching herself to listen to the song. My mother's talking, I'm quiet, there's endless time, I hear it every word, and what's behind the word. Okay, so she's using, I thought, so beautifully,

that she would pause, she would take care of and listen to her in her life. She'd open her senses, I'm right here, I'm listening, that undivided attention, and with her heart because listening requires a heart presence you have to feel the energy of the communication with your heart start to feel behind the words and she began to hear first a kind of desperation as if her mother was insisting over and over again

I'm here and I matter and she would take in her mother's pain and felt her own heart soften with care and through her own steady presence she would communicate you are here and you do matter and her mother started to relax took some days but she started to relax because there started to be pauses between all her stories and commentary

and she would sit back in her chair some and look through the window so there was kind of something was loosening with this kind of unbelievably unconditional listening presence that her daughter was offering And then several days before she was going to leave, her mother began to tell her that she felt alone and unappreciated. And this woman responded in a very sincere and gentle and present way. And her response was,

Mom, it's because you don't listen to people. Now, her mother froze, but she didn't get defensive. Why? Because there had been enough days of this unconditional listening, presence that there was a trust. I mean, she had received such uncritical sympathy that she knew she was getting truth. So her mother wanted to know more. She said, please tell me, I need to know. So her daughter explained it, explained how it was for her, for her sister, for their dad, for her stepdad. She said, 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. So the mother looked at her daughter with a sorrow and an understanding that totally pierced her daughter's heart. Something changed. It was the pain of alienation that broke through her defenses or just it was her time. But she knew something needed to be different. So she started shifting. She really brought attention to others. and other people noticed. And her sister did visit. This woman's sister visited,

and she told her that for the first time in my life, I felt like I was a real person to her, that I existed. The change was the most poignant with a stepfather. They started doing things together again, long dinners, evening walks, that it all ended shortly after their marriage. So, in other words, the mother was no longer demanding the world's attention. She was speaking and listening in order to belong to other people to share their life.

And it's because her daughter had listened in this unconditional way that the mother's fountain began to unclog. So her life could flow from its source. She could be living from a deeper place. So to me this was a beautiful example of listening to the song. That she just kept listening. and first the song was muddied, came from a deeper place, and then that undefended place of yearning.

Each one of us knows it in some way that if we can stand still, if we can just pause and wake up our senses, just come here, listen, see, be, feel with our hearts, there's going to be more contact with others, And if we can offer that inward, we're going to be coming to really the awareness and love and source that's really the essence, that's the purity of our fountain. So let's close tonight. We'll just do a brief meditation. We'll have a chance to explore this a little, to explore this in a relationship for yourself, this listening presence.

And we begin with the simple gateway. say stand still, sit still, just let there be an inner stillness so that you can listen to the sounds that are here. You might even for a few moments just feel your breath and sense as you breathe out just letting go into the space, the sounds, relaxing outward. With the in-breath there's kind of an embodiment. You feel yourself opening and yielding to the breath, with the out breath, just following it out and listening to sound.

In breath, you just open, let the hand soften and open, the belly, the chest, loosening, opening, with the out breath, letting go, listening to sound. You might again let come to mind a person that you'd like to practice more deeply listening, listening with an awake heart. Imagine a situation that is likely to happen, place and setting where you might be with each other. And the person's talking, perhaps the content is something familiar to you,

something the person's wanting or fearing, whatever it is, the person's talking, and just sense your intention, just very consciously know in some way that you want to listen to the song. Or maybe it's Mark Nippo's words. You want to be able to lean in softly with a willingness to be changed by what you hear. You want to understand that person. You want to connect.

Imagine that person's speaking. And in some way you can coach yourself if it helps. What's happening? my friend is talking or my partner or my child, I am quiet. There's time. There's endless time. I hear it, every word, and what is beyond the word. I hear who this person is, listening to the song.

You can widen your attention now, sense that you can deepen your listening with individuals. you can listen to the life around you. As Kabir says, every leaf teaches the Dharma. That we listen with our eyes and our ears and our whole awareness. We listen to the trees, the silhouette of those branches,

and we listen to the hard earth and the snow. We listen to the winds and the birds. This is Mary Oliver. once I saw in a quick-falling white-veined stream among the leafed islands of the wet rocks

a small bird and knew it from the pages of a book it was the dipper and dipping he was as well as sometimes on a rock peak starting up the clear

strong pipe of his voice at this there being no words to describe, I had to bend forward, as it were, into his frame of mind, catching everything I could in the tone, cadence, sweetness, and briskness of his affirmative report.

Though not by words, it was a more than satisfactory way to the bridge of understanding. though not by words, it was a more than satisfactory way to the bridge of understanding. This happened in Colorado more than half a century ago, certainly more than half my lifetime ago. And just as certainly he has been sleeping for decades in the leaves beside the stream, his crumble of white bones, his curl of flesh comfortable. even so, taking these last few moments to just open wide, listening with your whole awareness,

like Sid Arthur letting all the sounds of the river, all the sounds of your heart, your body, the life within and around you, let it all wash through, listening to the song and resting in the vastness and purity of awareness. Namaste and thank you for your listening attention. Anybody fall asleep? 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.