Guided Meditation: Awareness as Love; Dharmette: Wise Listening (5 of 5) Listening with Love

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Awareness as Love; Wise Listening (5 of 5) Listening as Love. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 08, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Awareness as Love

Warm greetings from IMC, Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, and I'm delighted to be here with you all.

Many years ago, I met a woman who had a career as a psychologist. When she was younger, she had done research on early childhood development. Her research involved, for a couple of years, going once a week or so to visit a new mother who was at home taking care of this new child. For two years, the researcher went and just sat in the living room quietly. She didn't have any conversations with the mom and just watched and took notes on the child and mother interactions as part of her study.

After two years of doing this, it was time for the researcher to stop that part of the study, and she announced that she was leaving. The researcher was stunned to hear what the mother had to say. She hadn't said anything; they had not had conversations, as the researcher was meant to be a non-interfering observer. The mother said that the few hours the researcher spent with them were the most important hours of the week for her. She felt so much peace and a sense of well-being just having someone in her presence watching.

I don't have much more to the story to explain why it might have been so profound for the mother; certainly, mothers sometimes feel isolated in the challenges of raising a child. But the power of presence, the power of observing, and the power of listening to people is quite profound. I think there is almost a very deep need, especially for children and maybe for everyone, to really be recognized and known.

Meditation is that for ourselves. What would meditation be like if the observation, the listening, and the presence that we bring to ourselves as we meditate is medicine? What if it is a form of love, a form of caring, a form of respecting and valuing ourselves, realizing that we're important enough to really tune into and be with?

I think it's not always easy for us to have that relationship with ourselves. We might have that with others, but it's too easy to discount oneself, too easy to focus on other things rather than ourselves. Sometimes it's easy to be critical of ourselves. It's easy to get caught up in loops of habitual preoccupations, which in some ways maybe even take us away from ourselves. Oddly enough, to be caught up in stories and thoughts about ourselves is to be living in abstractions.

But to really be the observer, to sit in the living room of our hearts and minds and really be there—not to interfere, but to really see, hear, and witness in some profound way what this inner life is like—our hearts might need this.

So, assume a meditation posture that allows us to be comfortable in the living room of our hearts and minds, so that we can be here to be a witness, to see with love and care what is here for us. Gently closing the eyes.

Begin directly with the eyes closed, feeling and sensing the body. Being a witness, being an observer of what we find here in our body, our hearts, and our minds. Without judgment and without needing to change anything. Just the power of observation here.

Now, maybe allowing your attention to roam around your body, your heart, your mind. Just check in, recognizing what all is here for us.

Then gently, as if it's a tender, quiet, gentle act of care or love, take a few slower, deeper breaths, and longer exhales than usual. Almost as if the expansion of the chest and the belly as you breathe in is a greater touching of all of how you are, and the exhale is a settling and a relaxing into the middle of it all. Not to let go of anything, but to find ourselves seated in our living room chair at the middle of it all to be an observer, a witness.

And then letting your breathing return to normal. If you do use your breathing as that center place to center yourself in the middle of it all, if it's easy enough, imagine that the body's experience of breathing—the sensations of breathing in the body—is almost like it has eyes and ears in the body itself. And from the comings and goings of breathing, observe the movements of life as they occur in the present moment. Listen and hear in a deep way, sense in a deep way through the gentle movements of breathing in your body. Without judgment about anything, just witnessing from the refuge of breathing.

Whatever is happening to you now in the present moment, consider it something that should be witnessed, seen, and heard. Not analyzed, figured out, or judged. Just seen from the quietest place within.

Perhaps your awareness can rest within, as if sitting in an easy chair in a living room, observing all things in the present moment as they unfold. Observing with love, as if being aware is love.

And then as we come to the end of this sitting, there is a way in which we can be seen and heard by others that can feel as if the seeing and observing is a form of love. It can have the same warm, inspiring impact on us. Imagine that your ability to witness the world, to hear the world, to be present for this life around you—imagine that it can be a form of love, an expression of love, a manifestation of love. Bring an intentional, caring attention to the entire world near and far. A love or friendliness that's carried in these words:

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

And just maybe you'll contribute to this in the quality of attention that you offer the world. Your attention is that important. Attention is a vehicle and means by which love, appreciation, friendliness, and respect travel out through our communities.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Wise Listening (5 of 5) Listening with Love

This is the fifth and final talk on wise listening, borrowing from the Buddhist criteria for wise speaking. The fifth one is to speak with friendliness, to speak with mettā^[1], with loving-kindness or goodwill.

And so, if we're listening, we listen with love, with goodwill, with friendliness. It might be easier to listen with goodwill, friendliness, and generosity than it is to speak that way. Sometimes when speaking, we don't know what words to say. Sometimes speaking can feel a little bit like we're offering ourselves too much to someone else, and maybe we're unsure of the impact. If you walk up to a stranger or sit down with a stranger on the bus and say, "I love you," who knows what's going to happen?

But if you sit there with a stranger on a bus and listen to them attentively, with care and with love in the listening—it could get complicated, of course—but it's probably much safer to just listen with respect and attention, as if the person is valuable and important. As if the person is worthy of being known, being heard, and being seen.

I suspect that there is a kind of crisis in our society of people not being seen, heard, and respected enough. We can address this with our capacity to listen. Listening is intentional; it's different from just hearing.

Sometimes in meditation, it's wonderful to just rest in hearing and be so simple and quiet. But in our social lives, things get enriched by our intentionality, by doing things on purpose. To listen to someone on purpose, as opposed to not really making any effort to listen and just hearing them as if you would hear the traffic or the birds outside—there's not much depth in that way of hearing others.

But to really turn to someone and hear them out, to listen to them on purpose with intentionality, can be multifaceted. Part of the intentionality is to listen to them with appreciation, with a sense that it is worth listening to them. That what they have to say is worthwhile to hear, and it is worthwhile to be a witness to this person's life. To listen with goodwill—and to call mettā "goodwill"—is maybe an easier approach than saying, "listen with love."

"Love" gets complicated sometimes with what that means. It's kind of a high bar for people to always love everyone. But even with people that we have trouble with, are challenged by, or even don't like, sometimes it might be possible to find goodwill. Wishing them well, wishing them the opportunity to be heard. Hoping that in being heard, respected, and appreciated, maybe it touches something deep inside of them that is beneficial and helpful, and maybe the person as a result won't be as challenging. So, to listen with goodwill—good listening is a form of love. It is a form of goodwill, respect, and care for others.

So how do we do this? What are the means for this? I think it's helpful to realize that listening with love and goodwill is not just having an attitude of goodwill, but it's what more we bring into the listening. The listening can be active. We could ask questions because we want to know more, treating the person as valuable enough to find out what they think and what their experience is like. We can ask caring questions. Just asking questions and appreciating what they've said is active listening.

For some people, it's very rare they get appreciated for what they say. In group meetings and social situations, there are plenty of people who are not appreciated when they speak. Some people are easily recognized by others; they have a bigger presence or a status in society that makes people focus on them. Other people don't have that, and people will sometimes overlook them. Sometimes someone will say something and no one will acknowledge it, and then a little bit later someone else will say the same thing and be acknowledged.

But pay attention: Are people being appreciated? Are people being listened to in meetings and different situations? Who is not being listened to? Who is being overlooked? Can you listen? Can you fill in during meetings and social situations for the lack of attention or deep listening that some people all too often experience? This is an active, purposeful "yes, let's listen, let's pay attention here."

Another aspect of this active, loving listening is: don't rehearse what you're going to say. Instead, consider what the person is saying. Consider it and listen to what's not being said. Listen to the feelings and emotions behind what they say. Listen to what they might be asking for without it being a question. Listen for the purpose for which they're saying something. To be actively involved in listening means considering what people are saying more than considering what you're going to say.

To listen with love is not to interrupt people, but to let them finish speaking. Of course, sometimes it's appropriate to interrupt. Sometimes the playfulness of conversations involves a back-and-forth and interrupting, but that's in context; it's appropriate with people you're familiar with. But at times, love is not interrupting. This is purposeful listening.

Then we consider the purpose for which we're listening. Some of the purposes of these five criteria are to listen in a timely way—to listen when it's really important to listen. Know when to listen in a conversation rather than keep speaking and sharing your opinions. Maybe you don't say everything you can say every time you have something to say. Some people have a strong habit of feeling the need to get things off their chest, get their opinions out there, and be right.

To speak in a timely way means to give other people a chance to speak. It is listening for what's really true, purposefully looking for the truth. This has a lot to do with reviewing ourselves so that we're not overlaying judgments and biases on top of what we hear, enabling us to be a clean listener. It is listening in a way that touches the heart, which is related to this idea of listening with love. Listen in a way that helps people feel safe and comfortable around you. Listen for what's beneficial, in a way that supports you and others. And then this last one is related to that: listening with goodwill.

These are all purposes that we choose to live by. There are times when this Buddhist practice of ours calls upon us to live an intentional life, a purposeful life, and listening is one of those interesting places for that. When we appreciate the difference between listening and hearing, we realize we can hear without any sense of purpose at all. We enrich ourselves if we listen with purpose, provided it's the right purpose. A purpose that feels like it comes from our depth and supports something beautiful and wonderful inside of us to flow and emerge on its own. We aren't straining or stressing for this purpose; it's a purpose that allows something to flower. One of the most beautiful flowerings we can have is love. To live a purposeful life where love is at the center—what a great gift it is for our world.

Listening is one of the expressions of love. If love has a language, listening is perhaps the grammar for that language. Thank you.

Announcements

This Sunday, I begin teaching a three-week retreat at our retreat center, Insight Retreat Center, so I won't be here for the next three weeks. A number of the people who normally would come here to teach are not available the next couple of weeks. At least for the next week, and maybe for the next two weeks, we're going to do a replay at 7:00 a.m. We'll still have the 7:00 a.m. period, but we'll play some of the series that I did almost three years ago, around 2020. It's been a while, and maybe it's nice to have it repeated. It will appear as if it's a live broadcast, so you can participate in chat and all that, but I'll be here live in spirit and heart, not in person.

Then, in the third week, Nikki Mirghafori^[2] will speak. She is a wonderful teacher here at IMC, and I am very happy that she's going to share herself with you for those days. Thank you all very much, and I look forward to seeing you in about three weeks.