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Dharmette: Wise Listening (3 of 5) Listening from the Heart

Guided Meditation

Hello everyone, welcome. For this morning, I'd like to begin with parts of a poem by Walt Whitman. It's a wonderful poem that speaks in many ways to our practice. This poem is called "Song of the Open Road," and the part that I'll read to introduce our sitting is where he writes:

"I inhale draughts of space, the East and the West are mine, the North and the South are mine. I am larger, better than I thought. I did not know I held so much goodness. All seems beautiful to me."^[1]

So to inhale space, all around us is in a sense infinite space, and to bring that into ourselves as we sit. And as we exhale, let it all expand outwards to fill all of space. Spacious awareness inside, spacious awareness outside.

He writes elsewhere, just before in the long poem, about loosening up all that holds him. All the ways that we're held, or cling, or crave, let it loosen. And then he talks about space. We'll see later that this is in the context of also talking about listening—listening to others, listening well, letting go. So there's no holding on to definitions, constructions, and ways in which we put boundaries and lines around ourselves and our life. And then to discover that we're better than we thought; we hold so much goodness, and everything is beautiful.

So, assume a meditation posture. Maybe you can adjust your posture so it gives you some access, or might approximate giving you access, to your own goodness and to your beauty. To the beauty all around. And in caring for your posture and your body, gently close your eyes and feel this body as if you've never felt it before, as if it's the very first time that you are sensing. Sensing more fully.

Sensing and caring for the body, and one expression of caring is to relax. To soften the body, the tensions of the body. Softening around any tension that doesn't want to relax. It's okay to be tense if it's difficult to let it go. Being okay sitting here with it. Feeling your body, maybe feeling the global body in whatever way that's easy.

Breathing in space as you inhale. In a sense, as we inhale, the chest, ribcage, and lungs expand, and more space is created within. As we inhale, the chest expands, the belly expands, and we expand into the space around us. And as you exhale, perhaps relaxing into the space that surrounds you. A releasing of fixed ideas of yourself, of your body. Loosening up the line between you and the space around you, the line between your thoughts and the space around your thoughts.

As you exhale, softening the thinking mind. Relaxing. We often don't know how much goodness is within us because we're telling ourselves stories and ideas of the opposite. Relax those stories, those ideas, sitting here gently breathing in space. Relaxing into space. Trusting for these few minutes that you are better than you ever could have imagined. That there's more goodness within than you ever could have known. And as you breathe out, here and now, maybe all things can be beautiful, not least because we stopped the stories and ideas that say they are otherwise.

Letting go. Letting go of the chatter of thinking, judging, wanting. Perhaps so you can listen deeply within. When we let go of trying to be good, but listen with a quiet mind, you might discover there's more goodness within than you ever could have imagined. Let go and listen deeply, tenderly.

To listen well is to know how to quiet the voices inside, the ideas, the desires that interfere with an open listening. Maybe a listening from the heart. A listening that's not trying to control things, or fix things. Listening where we listen to our own heart, to our own depths quietly and non-judgmentally. And then to listen to others, not through the filter of our desires, our fears, our resentments, and annoyances, but to listen from the quiet heart.

And if we listen from the heart, we might be able to listen to the hearts of others. To listen to what's deeper within them than the words they say and the behaviors they do. To listen in such a way that we are connected with each other's hearts. And from there, to offer to the world our good will, our well-wishing. May it be that what we learn through meditation serves us to live a life that promotes the welfare and happiness of everyone, ourself included.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

Talk

So, good morning. Hello on this Wednesday morning, and the third talk on wise listening. I could just as well maybe call it caring, or listening with care, but "wise listening."

There's a story in the Ramayana^[2], one of the great classics of Indian literature and religion, of Rama^[3] going for a walk in the forest. Rama hears a very faint voice, and he can't quite hear what it is, but he's listening and getting very quiet, very still, maybe so he can stand still and listen to it. "What's this voice he hears in the forest?" He still can't quite hear what it's saying, but after a while, he gets some sense of where the voice is coming from, and it guides him to walk in that direction. He follows the voice, listens, and as he gets closer to the source, he begins hearing what the voice is saying. It's saying his name: "Rama, Rama."

So he listens, and he goes closer and closer. Finally, he comes to a very large boulder, and it seems like the voice is coming from inside the boulder. He gently puts his hand out and touches the boulder, at which point the boulder kind of dissolves, and a woman emerges out of that boulder. They greet each other, and somehow—I don't know how the story goes beyond that—but in a sense, he meets himself. That part of himself which is petrified, that's locked in, that's frozen, that's hidden and lost to him, even to himself.

And so this idea that if we listen with care, if we know how to listen—or the equivalent is to sort of feel where the listening is not through the filter of our desires, filters of our ideas of self, and the conceits we have about how terrible we are or how wonderful we are, that define and limit ourselves. That there are no hindrances in the listening. There's no aversion, no agitation, no spinning of stories, and bringing along the luggage of the past and memories. But just learning how to listen in a peaceful, quiet, deep way. Not even listening with the ears, but listening with the whole body, or listening with the heart.

And there is within us something that is calling us. Maybe not with our name, but in the language of the Buddha, it's the Dharma^[4] that's calling, "Come here, come here, come here." It invites us to come, invites us to investigate: "Come and see, come and see."

So if you listen to this sometimes very subtle voice that's within, this message from within, and then follow it to get closer to it, sense it until we can do the equivalent of putting our hands gently on it. The image that I like is the idea of cupping our hands together, coming underneath, and just holding what's there with support. Sometimes what's deep inside is fear, sometimes it's sorrow, sometimes it's hurt. Just to hold it gently. And then whatever is petrified, whatever is frozen, whatever is locked within has a chance to dissolve.

And so here we have a story of listening deeply. Listening, hearing, and going along with what we're hearing. Regarding the role of listening, some people will say that listening requires some degree of letting go of control. If we don't like what we're seeing, we can close our eyes and we can look away. In a sense, maybe we can't do the same thing with the ears. I guess you can put earplugs in or cover your ears, but the ears are just more open to what's there. So to yield control of what you hear, there's a letting go of control of a certain type. That's a part of the challenge of really good listening: the balance between the control to listen and the letting go of control of what we're hearing.

If we're listening to ourselves in a deep way, it's the same kind of balance of having enough control of ourselves to be able to really listen, but in such a way that we're letting go of control of what we're listening to. That we allow what we're listening to, sensing, and feeling to show itself.

This is where this wonderful poem by Walt Whitman comes in. Much of it is wonderful, I think. It's called "Song of the Open Road." Here in the middle of the long poem, I'll start from this sentence: "From this hour, freedom!" with an exclamation mark.

From this hour, freedom!
From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines,
Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space,
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.
I am larger, better than I thought,
I did not know I held so much goodness.
All seems beautiful to me.

Here we have this wonderful combination of letting go of—here he calls it "holds," attachments—letting go of control, even while at the same time having a very clear sense of being in charge of oneself. First he makes this very strong statement that is kind of like a promise or an assertion that "from now on I'm going to be free." How can we say that with confidence? Because you can't just make yourself free, of course. But I think he's seen something inside of himself—some capacity not to hold himself in bondage, not to keep himself from his own inner freedom.

"I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines." This is a great thought in Buddhism: that we limit ourselves with our thoughts, our constructs, the imaginary lines and definitions that we use to understand ourselves, the world around us, and people. And then he's going to listen to others. He's not saying the result of his freedom is thinking he can do whatever he wants, overriding people and not caring for them. The first thing he says he's going to do with his freedom is to listen to others, and considering well what they say.

I hear this as giving them the benefit of the doubt, and listening well. What listening well means for me is you want to listen below their words. You want to listen even below the surface emotions that are driving their words. Listen to the goodness that's deep inside. Listen to the pain which is deep inside. Listen to that potential for goodness and freedom from pain that's deep inside everyone. Everyone. Listen to that, so that in the listening, you may be beginning to awaken that possibility of freedom in them.

So the first thing with this freedom he says is that he's going to listen to others: pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, and divesting himself of the holds that would hold him. And then after listening, he talks about just infinite space, becoming everything, becoming large and spacious. When he's let go of what holds him—his attachments—then there's a feeling of expansiveness. And, "I am larger, better than I thought, I did not know I held so much goodness." Imagine listening to others where you know that they are better than they've ever thought.

The third guideline for speaking that the Buddha gave is to speak in a way that goes right to the heart. It touches other people's hearts, and touches your own heart. So with listening, listen from the heart. Listen in a way that touches the hearts of others. Listen in a way that you have let go of your attachments so you can be attuned to the possibility, the potential for freedom, peace, and happiness that others have. Because if we're only reacting to the surface—to their anger, to their bitterness, to their complaints, to their fears, their anxieties—we don't want to deny those, and not see it, and not understand that. But if we only listen to that, we kind of stay at that level. It might even reinforce that that's all that counts, that's all there is.

But if you can listen to what's deeper, listen in a way that touches their hearts. Listen in a way that you're listening from your heart, from your capacity for a deeper tenderness, a deeper love, a deeper care. And maybe then you can begin doing the work that Walt Whitman says: pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating. That maybe allows you to be attuned to how they are larger, better than you think, but also they're better than they ever thought. Maybe you discover that they hold a lot of goodness. But maybe your gift is that you see that they hold more goodness than they ever realized, and you appreciate that. You appreciate them.

That's what allows this affirming of the goodness of others. Recognizing it is amazing—what that makes room for, and allows to happen and come forth, that will not come forth if we remain in our reactivity to them, or in our trying to control them or fix them.

So, to listen well. To listen to what calls you in the forest deep inside, and to listen to what's deep inside in the forest of others. May we all listen to each other well, and in that listening bring forth the best in all of us. Thank you.