January 1
Listen with ease
Have you ever sat very silently, not with your attention fixed on anything, not making an
effort to concentrate, but with the mind very quiet, really still? Then you hear everything,
don’t you? You hear the far off noises as well as those that are nearer and those that are
very close by, the immediate sounds—which means really that you are listening to
everything. Your mind is not confined to one narrow little channel. If you can listen in
this way, listen with ease, without strain, you will find an extraordinary change taking
place within you, a change which comes without your volition, without your asking; and
in that change there is great beauty and depth of insight.
January 2
Putting aside screens?
How do you listen? Do you listen with your projections, through your projection, through
your ambitions, desires, fears, anxieties, through hearing only what you want to hear,
only what will be satisfactory, what will gratify, what will give comfort, what will for the
moment alleviate your suffering? If you listen through the screen of your desires, then
you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires. And is
there any other form of listening? Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to
what is being said but to everything— to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to
the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to
your friends, to the cry of a baby? Listening has importance only when one is not
projecting one’s own desires through which one listens. Can one put aside all these
screens through which we listen, and really listen?
January 3
Beyond the noise of words
Listening is an art not easily come by, but in it there is beauty and great understanding.
We listen with the various depths of our being, but our listening is always with a
preconception or from a particular point of view. We do not listen simply; there is always
the intervening screen of our own thoughts, conclusions, and prejudices...To listen there
must be an inward quietness, a freedom from the strain of acquiring, a relaxed attention.
This alert yet passive state is able to hear what is beyond the verbal conclusion. Words
confuse; they are only the outward means of communication; but to commune beyond the
noise of words, there must be in listening an alert passivity. Those who love may listen;
but it is extremely rare to find a listener. Most of us are after results, achieving goals; we
are forever overcoming and conquering, and so there is no listening. It is only in listening
that one hears the song of the words.
January 4
Listening without thought
I do not know whether you have listened to a bird. To listen to something demands that
your mind be quiet—not a mystical quietness, but just quietness. I am telling you
something, and to listen to me you have to be quiet, not have all kinds of ideas buzzing in
your mind. When you look at a flower, you look at it, not naming it, not classifying it, not
saying that it belongs to a certain species—when you do these, you cease to look at it.
Therefore I am saying that it is one of the most difficult things to listen—to listen to the
communist, to the socialist, to the congressman, to the capitalist, to anybody, to your
wife, to your children, to your neighbor, to the bus conductor, to the bird—just to listen.
It is only when you listen without the idea, without thought, that you are directly in
contact; and being in contact, you will understand whether what he is saying is true or
false; you do not have to discuss.
January 5
Listening brings freedom
When you make an effort to listen, are you listening? Is not that very effort a distraction
that prevents listening? Do you make an effort when you listen to something that gives
you delight?...You are not aware of the truth, nor do you see the false as the false, as long
as your mind is occupied in any way with effort, with comparison, with justification or
condemnation...
Listening itself is a complete act; the very act of listening brings its own freedom. But are
you really concerned with listening, or with altering the turmoil within? If you would
listen, sir, in the sense of being aware of your conflicts and contradictions without forcing
them into any particular pattern of thought, perhaps they might altogether cease. You see,
we are constantly trying to be this or that, to achieve a particular state, to capture one
kind of experience and avoid another, so the mind is everlastingly occupied with
something; it is never still to listen to the noise of its own struggles and pains. Be
simple...and don’t try to become something or to capture some experience.
January 6
Listening without effort
You are now listening to me; you are not making an effort to pay attention, you are just
listening; and if there is truth in what you hear, you will find a remarkable change taking
place in you—a change that is not premeditated or wished for, a transformation, a
complete revolution in which the truth alone is master and not the creations of your mind.
And if I may suggest it, you should listen in that way to everything—not only to what I
am saying, but also to what other people are saying, to the birds, to the whistle of a
locomotive, to the noise of the bus going by. You will find that the more you listen to
everything, the greater is the silence, and that silence is then not broken by noise. It is
only when you are resisting something, when you are putting up a barrier between
yourself and that to which you do not want to listen—it is only then that there is a
struggle.