Listening Is An Art
“Listening is an art, it’s a GREAT ART.
When you listen so attentively, fully, there is no barrier because you are then giving your whole attention to what you are listening.
It’s only when there is inattention, when there is only a partial listening, that communication between you and another ceases.
So, can we learn together the art of listening?
The art of listening.
Not only hearing with the outer ear, but also listening to the inward ear.
Not only to yourself, to hear your own reactions, your own responses, but also listen to what another is saying so that your own reactions and what your hearing coincide, there is no division. That’s a great art to learn.
When you listen to classical music, when you so completely listen, not remembering that you’ve heard it before, and going back to all the romantic pleasures that you’ve had when you listend, but actually listening now.
That, as we said, is an art, like “seeing” is an art.
Seeing the clouds, the train going by, the beauty of a great cloud.
When there is that total perception of beauty there is no self intervening, the self, the consciousness with all its problems.
So where there is the art of listening, and the art of seeing, the beauty, the sound of the train rattling by, then there is no self at all. Your just listening, seeing. This is not romantic, but if you do it actually then you will see how simple it all is.
[jet plane flys overhead]
Listen to that sound.
The thunder of that airplane.
When you listen to that airplane completely, there is no resistance to that sound.
When there is resistance, or a defensive process, then the self comes into being.”
~J. Krishnamurti
