Tara Brach - The Blessings of Deep Listening

Episode Date: March 24, 2010

2010-03-24 - The Blessings of Deep Listening - Our capacity to listen deeply--to our inner life and each other--is the grounds of true understanding and love. This talk explores the challenges to listening and guidelines and practices that awaken a listening heart.

So if we look back at our lives, look back at today or this week, our back, back, back, and really sense the moments that we've most cherished that have been really meaningful to us. And ones that have been most tender, filled with awe or wonder, and we ask ourselves, what made those moments possible? the moments that we'd love to have all our moments be really alive and meaningful but what made those moments

possible and when I explore this with people and I do sometimes in workshops we'll share some the common denominator in a very simplistic way was a sense of I was there for it

there was a quality of being here being available at home enough in the moment to be able to experience the moment, in contrast to wanting it different. You can't really experience a moment if you're trying to manipulate it into being something different.

So we have this conditioning, and we talk about this often. The Buddha kind of put this out as the basic kind of descriptor of suffering. We have this conditioning to want life to be different than it is. We want something more. we don't want something but there's not that many moments when we're honest with ourselves that there's a sense of just how it is

right this moment you know I could die right now you know this is it this is fine my husband and I have this kind of game we play where we'll just stop and say this is it no no no no no no no no no this you know it's like it's not in the future

There's nothing we're waiting for. We're not trying to get anywhere. And it's playful, but it points out to us how most of the time there's an idea that we're trying to get somewhere or get away from something as it is. So spiritual practice can be described as a training in coming back to what's right here.

It's a training in coming back and then learning to just be here. Notice the tugs to kind of interpret things and judge things. Just stay, just stay. And what I'd like to do is tonight is describe a key element that makes it possible, which is what I call a listening presence. But basically it's meditation. You know, the biggest news, you know, there's a lot of real.

really big news this week. This was a big week. Well, it took more space than maybe it should have, but a big piece of it was covering Tiger Woods, right? And his apology, you might have thought I was going to talk about health care, but no, it was about... You know, he basically said, I lost my way, and basically he confessed that he had stopped meditating, and that really grabbed the media. But it's true that we... lose our way when we stop listening and attending to what's right here. So a listening presence. There's a story that King Solomon dreamed that God appeared and offered him his fulfillment of his fondest wish. And he said, give then your servant a listening heart. That was his wish. May I have a

listening heart. And isn't there something beautiful about that when you sense that possibility of having a listening heart that really we can just be quiet enough to listen? So most people conceptually will go, yeah, that is really important and really cool. You know, listening is really where it's at. You know, even people are terrible listeners. I'll go, yeah, listening. And it's true. And yet, it's not so easy. Steve Martin, this is one of the things he said. He said, there's now a sophisticated communication technique used between men and women that eases marital strain and opens wide the doors of understanding between the sexes. This new technique developed by psychologists and sociologists is called listening. It will be interesting to see if this new technique lasts or

whether it will disappear and be replaced by older, more traditional methods such as leaving the room. so for many our listening is pretty much how we were listened to isn't that so I mean we really model one woman writes we never talked to my family

we communicated by putting Anne Landers articles on the refrigerator Carol Leifer writes that she says the only thing I ever said to my parents when I was a teenager was hang up I've got it so we have our history and I'm being a little playful

but the truth is that listening is absolutely correlated with our capacity to understand and our capacity to love. It's totally correlated.

If we always have an agenda, if our minds are filled with things and we can't take in who's here, we can't listen to who's here, and if our minds are really busy, we can't listen inwardly, we can't really be intimate

with our own life or with others. So it's pretty key. There's a kind of receptivity with listening that's not easy. The Washington Post had an article on it recently. They said that 85% of what we know

we've learned by listening. It's the prime modality for information and learning. And we're distracted or preoccupied 75% of the time. And I think that's an underestimate. So one of the most jarring realizations people have, and come talk to me about it,

is realizing, you know, I'm not a good listener. I actually think of that as the beginning of listening. We've listened to how we're being in the world. Most of us know it. I mean, we know that we might even have the right persona of listening. but we know how much is going on. And so it's interesting to say, well, what makes it so difficult?

What makes a listening presence so difficult? And first off, it requires a very real presence in the senses. It requires not being in thoughts, but being awake in our senses, which we're not a lot. I mean, most of the time we're kind of tumbling ahead. So even in a conversation, we're already interpreting and thinking we know what the person's saying and preparing what we're going to say back or having our reaction

So the first thing is we need to pause and put aside a lot to be able to listen But the second piece is that listening takes a kind of receptivity where we're not controlling in those moments And when we really investigate we'll find that most of the time when we're with other people, on some level, we're trying to control what's happening. We're trying to control how the other person experiences us. We're trying to make a certain impression. You can't be trying to make an impression and really listen at the same time. But it's very rare that we put that down.

We're trying to control how much we let the other person control the airwaves. We're trying to control a sense of asserting, I exist. it's hard to listen. So it's a valuable inquiry to start tracking how often do we put down our controlling and are simply here

just taking it in. And what we find is that there's almost this kind of intense irresistible impulse to assert our self, our beliefs, our rightness, our understanding, to fix something. It's very hard not to. And in many circumstances we need to prove a right. That comes up a lot.

Times that we most need to listen are times that we're most addicted to proving we're right. Do you know what I mean? Times there's conflict? That's when we need to listen, but no. We are interpreting and planning what we're going to say and proving. Somebody described a cartoon of Henry the 8th and one of his wives. and they're with a mediator. And the mediator says, you say off with her head, but what I hear is, I feel neglected. That was great.

The more stressed we are, the less we listen. The more fear that's going on, the more we speed up, and the more we're just trying to take care of and soothe our fear. When there's any agenda, soothing our fear, proving ourselves, we can't be listening, especially in our culture, but it's not just recent. William James

writes about this ceaseless frenzy that we always think we should be doing something other than what we're involved with in the moment. Have you had that experience of talking with somebody, but really trying to get that conversation done so you could get something else done? Nobody here, but you know what I mean, the idea of it. So we have this 75% of the time that we're distracted, that we do not arrive fully. And when we don't arrive fully and we don't listen, what happens is that we get increasingly caught in our own story of the world. And the more we're living in our mind versus this flow of taking in information and listening and being with, the more we're in a trance. It gets very small. When you can't listen to others and you can't

listen inwardly, you're living in a virtual reality, a trance. Now, one of the best descriptors I've seen of this trance, I'm going to read to you, and it came in the form of a diary. This is this diary of a dog and a cat, okay? This is the cat's diary first. So you get a sense of the world the cat's living in. Day 983 of my captivity. My captors continue to taunt me with bizarre little dangling objects. They dine lavishly on fresh meat, while the other inmates and I are fed hash or some dry nuggets.

Although I make my contempt for the rations perfectly clear, I nevertheless must eat something in order to keep up my strength. The only thing that keeps me going is my dream of escape. In an attempt to discuss them, I once again vomit on the carpet. Today, I decapitated a mouse

and dropped its headless body at their feet. I had hoped this would strike fear into their hearts since it clearly demonstrates my capabilities. However, they merely made condescending comments about what a good little hunter I am. Bullshed. There was some sort of assembly of their accomplices tonight. I was placed in solitary confinement for the duration of the event. However, I could hear the noises and smell all the food. I overheard that my confinement was due to the power of allergies. I must learn what this means and how to use it to my advantage. Today I was almost successful in an attempt to assassinate one of my tormentors by weaving around his feet as he was walking. I must try this

again tomorrow, but at the top of the stairs. I am convinced that the other prisoners here are flunkies and snitches. The dog receives special privileges. He is regularly released and seems to be more willing to return. He's obviously retarded. The bird must be an informant. I observe him communicate with the guards regularly. I am certain that he reports my every move. My captors have arranged protective custody for him in an elevated cell, so he is safe. For now, dot, dot, dot.

Okay, the dog's diary. 8 a.m. Dog food, my favorite thing. 9.30 a.m. A.m. A car ride. My favorite thing. 9.40 a.m. A walk in the park.

my favorite thing. 10.30 a.m. got rubbed and petted. My favorite thing. 12 p.m. Milk bones. My favorite thing. Three, wag my tail. My favorite thing.

And it goes on and on and it ends with sleeping on the bed. My favorite thing. Dog and cat diary. So, I know it's silly. I know it was drawn out. But here's the deal. That we are each living

in our own virtual reality. We are conditioned to do it. We're conditioned to tell ourselves stories about where we fit in the scheme of things and what we need to do to be okay and how others are relating to us and what's going to happen. We're living in that.

A listening presence begins to decondition the trance. It is the most powerful way to step out of the stories and contact truth, the truth of what are we actually experiencing in this moment and the truth of who we're with. If we can't pay attention,

and this is the Buddha described as the basic description of suffering, if we can't contact the fears that are within us are the loneliness or the hurt, the places that want attention, if we can't contact that, then we're divided from ourselves and there's no way to heal. So a listening presence gives us a way to include the parts of our being that have been lost in a story and a reactivity. And I want to offer a metaphor tonight that I find really helpful in considering this. And that is that our inner life, our spirit is like a fountain, a fountain that naturally gets clogged up with unattended wants and fears.

And when it's clogged up, we identified with that which is clogging it, with the fears, with the wants. We identified with the parts of ourselves that aren't included, the needy self, the fearful self. And so we forget this fountain. We forget the spirit that's here. Listening dissolves the debris. Whatever we haven't been paying attention to, when we start listening to and feeling it directly, it starts dissolving. The identification starts dissolving. And what happens is that fountain starts flowing again. So when there's a listening presence, there's a flow of energy.

You'll feel it. It's like this aliveness starts pouring through us. It's the same thing when we listen to others. When we listen to others, it's like the fountain within them comes alive. And at first we might be listening to where the clogged up places are, but if we stay and we're going to explore this a little more listening to each other, we actually call forth the spirit in another person. That's with deep listening.

So we'll look at the training. We're going to look at both the training, how do we better listen inwardly and how do we better listen with each other? And if we begin inwardly, the practice as much as we did tonight where we just start listening to, to sounds themselves.

So what I'd like to do is just kind of talk less for a bit and invite you to bring your attention to sounds. And as you set yourself to do so, just gonna read you a short reading from Adjashanti, a spiritual teacher, who talks about how we can learn about relationship, truly our capacity for intimacy, by learning to listen to sounds.

He says by listening to the birds outside, by observing the quality of our listening itself, the quality of the embrace of the sound, the way we let the sound in and let ourselves be touched by it. By simply doing this, we become more conscious. He says we can learn more about Darmic relationships. our relationships really with, in the highest way, with each other in our life,

by listening than we can by 100 books. So just take a few moments to re-relax your body. Just like your shoulders relax, hands, let the breath be natural, and just become conscious of your own listening, a kind of global listening, just taking everything and evenly. Listening, there's nothing to do. It's very receptive. Taking in the scent and the feel of the space around you,

a sense of the space outside. Just relax and notice that sounds can penetrate. They can wash through you without defense. So sound, sensation, all included in a listening attention. Without judging, just notice the process of listening, what it's like for you, how the mind moves away and into something else,

and the possibility of coming back, opening, and letting the sounds wash through again. This receptive listening can then be brought to situations where we're caught in emotional tangles, where we can be more intimate with our experience. And if you have anything going on in your life,

just to experiment right now, anything that you've been struggling with this week or today, that you wish was different that you're trying to fix, where there's some emotional reaction, not bringing up trauma of any sort, but just sense if there's somewhere that's been difficult. Just to have the intention for the next few moments to be listening to how it's playing through you, this situation.

It might be something going on in a relationship or with your health. It might be half to do with work, struggle with addiction. Just listen inward as if you were listening to a loved one who is having trouble with something. You might even just give the message inwardly, okay, I'm listening now.

I'm listening to how this is so that you listen to and witness the stories in your mind about what's wrong, what's wrong with me or what's wrong with another person or what's going to go wrong, just listening and knowing that the stories are happening and gently listening to what's under the stories, perhaps feelings of fear or anger,

shame, restlessness, impatience, so that whatever is going on right now, even if you didn't connect with a challenge in your life, just listen inwardly without any judgment to the sensations, the moods. Sense what happens if you send a message to your own heart that I care, I want to listen. Sense if there's a little more aliveness of that fountain, that spirit, the movement of energy, as you offer a listening presence.

So a comment on these guided meditations, there's always a good number of people that either don't have something immediate on their mind, or that even if there's 10 things and spend the whole time I'm guiding, figuring out which one of the 10, you know, or else there's stuff on your mind, but you can't get in touch with how it's feeling. Please don't evaluate these guided practices within yourself. Just know that this gives you a taste that you can explore at your own pace. the main teaching here is that if you can begin to very intentionally listen inwardly ask yourself what's going on right now and listen listen to your body listen to your heart in that process of listening what's clogged can become loosened

and the spirit and heart and life that's there can become free to up to flow. So that's the experiment, is to bring that listening attention inward. So now let's talk a little bit about listening to others, since we know that is, for most of us, an edge, something that would be valuable to be more aware of. I'd like to share a story. I think I might have shared it once here before that really touched me. This is a friend of mine, a therapist, whose mother, a very well-known writer, wealthy woman, successful, brilliant, and very narcissistic. And so the mother just kind of went through life very much the center of the universe, as everybody else was a satellite kind of orbiting around her,

and she would hold forth a lot, and very, very little interest in what other people were thinking or feeling or had to say. She was so interested in herself, you know. And she did have fascinating good stories, but if you got to know her or around her a lot, it was wearing to have to always be the listener. And she was very, her emotions very much went to big swing. She was either incredibly charming holding forth

or very much would withdraw into these kind of very dark, isolated places. No surprise she was estranged from the family. So my friend, who was the younger daughter and then her older sister, you know, there was a lot of tension. And the older sister was so strange, she would only go home on holidays. The husband, her father, loved his wife, but also became a very distant relationship. So basically, nobody wanted to be around her. Nobody wanted to be her captive audience in her family. Well, this friend of mine as a therapist, part of her training was in active listening.

I mean, that's a very common training for therapists. And as she practiced herself, she discovered a secret that really is something that's intuitive, but it was a discovery, which is that when you really listen, when there's no impatience, and that's a big one, and there's no resistance to how the other person's being, now try this on, you're listening, no impatience, You're not at all resisting how the other person's being.

There's just this receptive open space. The other person will first go through all their habitual styles. In other words, all the cloggedness in their fountain will be clogged. They'll do all their ways, their normal ways of trying to impress or trying to grab your attention or try to prove. People will do their routines. But if you keep listening, if you can hang in there and keep listening, without resisting, without judgment,

that person will gradually relax into a more natural, engaged flow of receiving and listening, receiving, and listening. So she experimented, and she went to visit her mother, which was the big experiment. And for a couple of weeks, every time she'd visit, she'd just practice, she'd just say, okay, I'm going to really listen.

And what would happen is her mother, it would trip off. You can't be a mother-daughter relationship or any of these family relationships of having things triggered off. So things would get triggered off, and she'd listen inwardly and go, okay, angry, you know, just listen to the anger. But that would pass, and she'd keep listening. And she just kept showing up and listening.

And when she felt impatient, the same thing would happen. She would just be with that. If she felt unimportant, the same thing. She'd listen inwardly and then include her mother in this very patient. listening attention. And as she listened, she could hear desperation, as if her mother was saying over and over again, I'm here, I matter, I'm here, I matter.

She just kept hearing that. And she, in offering the space of listening, what she was basically communicating is, I know you're here and you matter. I know you're here and you matter. So it became less and less that her mother had to do it because she was already saying, I know you're here, you matter.

And her mother started relaxing some and telling her how much she felt alone and unappreciated. And in a very friendly way, a very honest and very caring way, her daughter said to her, after she had basically said, you know, people don't love me. She said, it's not that.

It's just, you don't listen. That's what she said. She says, you don't listen to people. Her mother froze. But there was no reaction because my friend had put in her time in establishing a trust. She had really been there. And so it wasn't, it was like there was enough trust that something went in. And it wasn't an attack.

And her mother wanted to know more. She wanted to know what she meant. And so my friend told her. And she said, you know, that her sister and woman's husband, she says, if you don't listen, people feel like they don't matter, that they are not known. And it's true. You can't know them if you don't listen. You can't be close. This is stuff that there's not one person in here that on some level we don't know this. When you don't listen, people don't, on a visceral level, feel they matter, right? So this woman looked at her daughter with a sorrow

and understanding that, as my friend described, it pierced her heart. It was like she got it. This is a woman maybe in her late 60s, early 70s. So she needed help, and she started training on how to listen. But something changed because my friend's older sister went home for the holidays and said, for the first time, I felt like I was a real person. And this woman and her husband actually started doing things. together, long dinners, walks. So by listening, her mother's fountain started flowing again.

But it took somebody basically holding the space saying, you matter by just being there, to undo it. There's a tremendous amount of woundedness. So this is the kind of training. It's described on the Bodhisattva path so beautifully with the arctypical figure of Kuan Yin, who, the Bodhisattva of compassion, who basically listens to all the cries in the world. And it said that she listens to all the cries and they totally break her heart open to 10,000 pieces. But then each piece becomes a bodhisattva of compassion and in some way responds. So it's like we can't, if we think we're in a self that's got to listen to everybody. There's no way. You know, it's not like we can do that. We just have to be intuitive and wise where we can show up. But when we can, the description of compassion is the

resonance of the heart, the quivering of the heart and the face of pain. When we listen, there's a natural quivering and a resonance that allows us to belong to each other. It creates a connection. I heard another story recently, and it was written as a little essay in the New York Times, and I heard it secondhand, but about this man wrote it. He was in the line at McDonald's somewhere, and one of the women in the line, it was a long wait, and she was complaining and telling everybody what a terrible day it was, and she was really antagonizing people. People got very impatient, and she was just projecting any direction she could, what misery she was. She was, she was in. Finally, a woman who happened to wear a purple hat, I don't know what the relevance of

this is, but a woman in a purple hat went up to this woman that was complaining and said to her, why don't you come here, let's sit down and tell me your story. And so this woman that had been like really loud and gesturing and kind of a crazy lady sat down with this other woman and it went like it's settled and settled until she was just this normal person having a little. a conversation. You could just feel, as this man described it, how somebody went from being kind of insane with needing to matter to having a natural flow of who they were, just speaking, sane, okay. So the message is you're real and I hear you, and it's a gift. It takes a lot of intention to do this training. It really goes against our conditioning.

in a lot of situations. There's some of the things that I find really useful, especially when I'm finding that I'm on the phone, but I'm also answering an email, and at the same time I'm checking out my calendar. I'm doing like all these things, and I purposely try to stand up and leave my computer, but there's such a tendency to not give our whole attention.

It's very hard to do that. So sometimes they'll just be an internal reminder of this friend is talking. I am quiet. There's endless time. And I know that sounds weird, but just say there's time. I hear every word. And I'm hearing what's beyond the words, and I'm hearing who you are. So these are, I'm just throwing out some phrases, but in some way listening not just to the words, but you're listening to what the person's really trying to say. And behind that even, you're listening to who that person is. And all of a sudden, listening goes from being this chore or this dutiful thing to the most amazing adventure.

Because there's nowhere in no interaction that it's not possible to have listening give rise to a profound sense of presence and realization and connection. It's possible. I've been speaking primarily about listening inwardly to our own heart. and listening to each other. But as so many of us know, it's the only way we'll have any societal healing, healing between cultures, between ethnicities, between warring countries.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu describes this current year as a time of radical brokenness in all our relationships, everywhere we look in the global family, disconnection and fear of one another, an increasingly noisy era. People shouted each other in print at work, the volumes directly related to our need to be listened to.

Doesn't that make sense? That we wouldn't be yelling and blaming and screaming and shouting out who I am and what I matter if we didn't need to be listened to? So if we could institute listening more actively and it's happening. I mean, it's happening in some places the truth and reconciliation models are the best, where we actually start listening. You can bring anybody together in time. One young man who had been blinded when a policeman shot him in the

face at close range. This is in South Africa. This is what 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. Every one of us has something that needs to be recognized that we need. I mean, unless we're really, really free, we need others to see us and to get something. And we're clogged when we're not feeling seen or understood. So that's the gift we offer, is holding a space where we, with deep patience, with deep friendliness, make room, and then find that that fountain starts flowing. I want to say that just because somebody needs to be listened to

doesn't mean it's always the right time or you're the right person to listen. So this isn't like some across-the-board rule that we all need to show up in a certain way. more I'm hoping tonight that you'll just look a little more carefully at your own life and say there may be one person right now that you see regularly that becomes your place

of training that becomes the person you might have someone in mind that you know you get preoccupied or reactive and you really want to practice coming into more presence with and that even a little bit that you pause

and say, okay, I'm listening. And I have all the time in the world right now. And if I notice impatience, I'm just going to be aware of it and then come back again. And if I notice judgment, I'm going to be aware of it, but I'm going to come back again. That training is your contribution to the healing of the planet. That training.

It really, really matters. The gift of this listening attention is that it gives us the moments of our life back. We're on our way somewhere else. By tonight just deciding in your own heart and mind, you know, I'm going to more consciously pause and listen inwardly and outwardly, you'll give yourself a spring that you could not have imagined.

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 transcribe, 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 satisfactory way to the bridge of understanding.

This happened in Colorado more than half a century ago, more certainly than half my lifetime ago, and just as certainly he has been sleeping for decades in the leaves besides. the stream, his crumble of white bones, his curl of flesh, comfortable even so. This listening attention gives us the blessings of living fully, and it connects us with that fountain, that spirit that really flows through all beings. So I'd like to close, if you will, just as take a few moments to again explore this attention. I'll just to just be a little. I'll just Just explore the dimensions that we cover tonight and begin simply with sound. Relax.

Just letting the sounds wash through you. It's no problem if the mind drifts. Just to pause when you notice that and reopen the attention to the actual sounds that are right here. The listening attention, just listen inwardly. Listening to whatever the sensations of the body are right now.

Pleasant or unpleasant. Listen to your heart. There's that kind of message and it's intimate that you really are willing to listen to just the experience of your heart right this moment. Gentle, tender, receptive. Invite the presence of someone who matters to you here. Maybe someone that's having some difficulty.

Bring a listening attention as if the person's right here. As if your message is purely you're real, you matter. I'm listening to your life right now. A listening heart. These are the words of a poem, John Fox, when someone deeply listens to you. When someone deeply listens to you, it's like holding out a dented cup you've had since childhood

and watching it fell up with cold, fresh water. when it bounces on top of the brim you are understood when it overflows and touches your skin you are loved when someone deeply listens to you the room where you stay starts a new life and the place where you wrote your first poem begins to glow in your mind's eye

it is as if gold has been discovered when someone deeply listens to you your bare feet are on the earth and a beloved land that seemed distant is now at home within you. Again, listening to the sounds, listening to and feeling the moment right here in this room, listening to and feeling the collectivity of who's here, different friends, those you know and don't know,

each in our own way wanting to love and wake up and live from truth, sense that you could listen as the bodhisattva quangyan to our world just for these last few moments letting in all the streams of sorrow and beauty and mystery of war and of the deepest dedication to love and peace letting it all swim through you we close with the loving kindness prayer may all be everywhere and be filled with loving presence, be held in loving presence. May all beings realize loving presence as their essence, as their source. May all beings awaken and be free. Namaste. So thank you for listening for your presence tonight. I felt it.

The teaching you have received has been freely offered. If you would like to contact the Insight Meditation community of Washington to make a donation or to learn more about our programs, please visit our website at www.imcw.org.