Aloha - Everyone
Benefit from
Deep Listening or Total Listening in your meditation and daily living.
These are
skills any of us can learn regardless of your age, intellect or life
experiences. Historically, Buddhists,
Quakers and psychotherapists have been practicing some forms of deep listening,
compassionate listening or total listening.
This kind of listening requires that we put aside our judgments and
listen from an open heart. Don't be so eager to fill the sound of silence. Try to bring Deep Listening and Total
Listening in our daily practice and live.a joyful and compassionate life.
DEEP LISTENING
"Deep
Listening is the kind o listening that can help relive the suffering from the
person. You can call it compassionate
listening. You listen with only one
purpose: to help him or her to empty his heart and if you remember that you are
helping him or her to suffer less and then even if he says things full of wrong
perception, full of bitterness, you are still capable of continue to listen
with compassion. Because you know that listening
like that, with compassion, you give him or her chance to suffer less. If you want to help him or her to correct his
perception, then you wait for another time.
But for the time being, you just listen with compassion and help him or
her suffer less. And one hour like that can
bring transformation and healing. "
- Thick Nhat Hanh
Except from
Thich Nhat Hanh's interview with Oprah Winfrey.
Thích
Nhất Hạnh is a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, teacher, author, poet and peace
activist. He lives in the Plum Village Monastery in the Dordogne
region in the South of France
TOTAL LISTENING
You are
either listening or talking; it is impossible to do both at the same time. Here, I don't just mean stopping your
external speech, but I mean quieting the inner speech as well. When you are quiet within, only then can you
really listen. To listen totally, you
have to listen with everything you've got. Through such training in mindful
silence, all barriers to communications are fully dissolved. You become effortlessly sensitive to the
people around you. You generate happy
harmony in your family and rich success in your business.
From the
place of total listening, you might even hear your own body trying to tell you
something. Before coming down with a
sickness, the body always gives many warnings.
However, very few of us listen to our bodies' signals, because we are too
busily engaged in our inner conversation.
Even when our bodies scream a desperate warning, begging for a rest, we
are too busy thinking to hear the S.O.S.
Then we get caner, heart-disease, or some other terminal ailment. Mediators, on the other hand, learn to listen
to their bodies from the place of mindful silence. They hear the needs of their bodies, like
they hear the needs of their families, and end up living long, happy lives with
both. Total listening generates insights:
From silence, you get to know the true nature of things. And the very best insight is realizing life's
meaning. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we
all would put aside for a while every dogma, both religious and personal, and
just listen to the throb of life with an alert, silent mind. Then we would totally listen to the teaching
of life. Life is constantly, patiently,
and gently offering us her wisdom, but we are too busy talking to ourselves to
ever listen totally. No wonder so few of
us ever understand.
Mindfulness,
Bliss, and Beyond, A Mediators’ Handbook by Ajahn Brahm
Born
Peter Betts, in London, United Kingdom, Ajahn Brahm is a Theravada
Buddhist monk. Currently Brahm is the Abbot of Bodhinyana Monastery, in
Serpentine, Western Australia.
Namaste -- Cathi
