The key to listening is...silence

Have you tried listening? Really, really listening to the person speaking to you. In normal conversations, we do listen sometimes. When in a conflict, however, we tend to speak more than we listen. We try to put our point across, convey our message, scream out our emotions, and do everything but sit still and try to listen (not even understanding) the person speaking to us.

An Indian philosopher once said:

I do not know if you have ever examined how you listen, it doesn't matter to what, whether to a bird, to the wind in the leaves, to the rushing waters, or how you listen in a dialogue with yourself, to your conversation in various relationships with your intimate friends, to your wife or husband. If we try to listen, we find it extraordinarily difficult, because we are always projecting our opinions and ideas, our prejudices, our background, our inclinations, our impulses; when they dominate, we hardly listen to what is being said. In that state, there is no value at all. One listens, and therefore learns only in a state of attention, a state of silence in which this whole background is in abeyance, is quiet; then, it seems to me, it is possible to communicate.

May we practice the art of silence from time to time.

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2008 marks our 10th year in practice. Thank you for your support.
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