The Art of Listening
Photograph: Leonard Baskin, "Georgia O’Keeffe Holding a Book", bedroom, Abiquiu, 1966
I attended a Zen Workshop last Saturday morning and just before the opening teisho, a formal presentation of dharma, the teacher spoke about the art of listening, paraphrasing Yasutani Roshi’s guidance from Philip Kapleau’s, timeless classic, “The Seven Pillars of Zen”: “Everyone should listen with his or her eyes open and upon the speaker – in other words, with their whole being – because an impression received only through the hearing is rather shallow, akin to listening to the radio.”
What does it mean to listen with the whole of being? Most of the time we are unable to truly listen to other people; we are completely dissolved in a field of associations. One has to attend to oneself to be able to listen with one’s entire being. In speaking with people you can study what takes your attention away or where you feel the words in the body. Dag Hammarskjöld describes this process beautifully in his book, “Markings”: “The more faithfully you listen to the voice within you, the better you hear what is sounding outside. And only he who listens can speak.” It is also difficult to remember that when we are speaking with one another, we are not just exchanging words as William Segal describes: “When one is still and listens, one begins to be in touch with a mysterious element that is within each of us, which can transform and shape us and can help to transform the world.”
So how does one become inwardly active? I think there was an indication for me that morning in the beginning of the sitting. The "Tak, tak, tak, cr-aaaaaa-ck! Gong!" that vibrated through the whole house, as well as my body, was a shock that certainly mobilized me: "I remember "waking up" to that and realizing, wow, I'm here in a Zen Center and these guys are not messing around."
--Luke Storms
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