Episode 175 – How To Listen

The focus of this episode is listening  •  we might think of listening as something passive, but it is actually a very active process, one that is closely associated with paying attention  •  a traditional dharmic example of listening fully and properly is that of a deer in the forest: when a deer hears an unfamiliar sound, its listening becomes instantly heightened  •  listening is talked about as the first step in developing insight or prajna  •  some of the things that prevent us from being able to hear the teachings are distractedness, spacing out, not having control over our mind, and having preconceptions which filter and distort what we hear  •  true listening is based on getting out of oneself, and on not jumping to conclusions  •  true listening includes the entire atmosphere: the gestures, the quality of the day, the other people in the room, the way the room was set up, and the spaces where nothing was said  •  Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche once said, “Hearing does not mean just using your ears, it means using all your senses. For instance, when you hear a Dharma talk, you may smell the incense burning on the shrine, which inspires reverence for the lineage. After that, whenever you burn incense, you have a memory of that, and a connection with the teachings you heard in that setting. You could say that you are smelling the Dharma.”  •  so listening is our gateway into the teachings of the Dharma.