2023-09-07 Wise Listening (4 of 5) Listening Beneficially

2:56PM Sep 7, 2023

Speakers:

Gil Fronsdal

Keywords:

listen

beneficial

highest

impatience

practice

benefit

freedom

fortune

appreciating

listener

good

little bit

caught

carried

person

speak

open

concerns

wonderful

mind

Welcome to this fourth talk on why's listening. And so the fourth topic is to listen. So that it's beneficial to listen for what's the most helpful for others. The the ancient language in terms of speech, the fourth criteria is to speak what is beneficial, but the word for that's being given for beneficials. Which means also the goal. And the goal is freedom, the goal is to be free of suffering, in the classically in Buddhism, and so we apply this to listening is to listen from a place of freedom, the best that we have, from a place of listening from a place where the benefits we received through meditation, maybe the best benefits we received becomes a reference point to how to listen to others. And so like, for example, for me, there are a few times maybe I'm having to go someplace a little bit late, but someone wants to talk to me. And that can feel inside, I'm impatient. And I've learned to recognize that my impatient is my own, and not to in any kind of way, project that onto the others, like other people, and somehow think poorly of them or think the problem is with them. But rather, I've learned that my impatience harms me, my impatience is unfortunate that I should lose a subtle place. So I make it my practice, then, to return to a place of subtleness, or openness or freedom, where I'm not caught in the impatience. The byproduct of that is that I can listen with with out that impatience, which is a much better way to listen. And so I'm listening with the highest benefit for myself as a reference point. And as I practice with that, then I, you know, with a little bit of luck, I can be available without that hindrance, and just be there listening to others. So, that pattern of checking in with myself or with the hindrances I have, and freeing them myself up, it means that I'm not trying to be impatient, act impatient, we're really what's happening is I'm impatient. Really, what's happening is, I'm caught up in my desires, or really what's happening is I'm trying to not, I'm not listening, I'm caught up in needing to prove myself or defend myself or do something. And that gets no way of really being listening to someone. But rather than insisting that I should listen, the practice is to kill, take a good look here, become free of these hindrances, or these free enough, so that it becomes I can come into the listening without it. And then I'm a better listener. As a byproduct of doing this inner work, I might be motivated originally to be a better listener. But I know that I should check in and work on myself so that I can be a better listener. So to listen in a way that's beneficial to listen in a way where we're tapping into the deepest benefits that we know that's available maybe from practice or from our spirituality or from our life. This is part of healthy listening, dharma dharmic listening, and then to listen in such a way that we have other people's welfare in mind as well. So to listen and in a way to, so that, you know, we hear people out mean for people to be heard out, to receive the gift of listening to receive someone who holds it all spaciously even if they have a tendency to over speak and are dominating. There's some wonderful Aikido wonderful kind of movement, that just instead of being reactive to that, step towards it and open up and listen even better. The very thing maybe that I've sometimes don't want to do because now I'm reinforcing They're over speaking, but sometimes step forward know, and get involved active listening and get interested. And sometimes people who speak too much haven't had that experience of people really interested them. And perhaps something deeper in them needs to be fair there needs to be met than just the words they're speaking. So the idea of what you know, offering the highest benefit to others, through our listening. And is a wonderful reference point for being a listener. It doesn't have to be this way all the time, maybe shouldn't be this way all the time. He is not naive and overlooking the context. But this is one of the gifts that can come out of this practice, is really becoming not only a good listener, but listening in such a way that we're attuning ourselves, or we're connecting ourselves to some deeper potential of freedom that's possible in the other person. One way one foremost takes is to listen, appreciating the other person appreciating something about them, maybe that they can even appreciate them in themselves, appreciating their capacity for love. They're appreciating here as a tender person, here's a person with life experiences that's been difficult, and they're doing the best they can, given their challenges. So yesterday, I read this poem, The Song of the open road by Walt Whitman. And he has a wonderful line, I think, the second line of the poem that goes something like I asked not for good fortune, I am good fortune. So rather than asserting out in the world, provide me with benefits provide me with good fortune. He says, I am good fortune. And this is the possibility of this practice is that we're not looking outside of ourselves, to be happy or to be peaceful, we become our inner peace, we become an inner happiness, we find it in ourselves. And it takes some responsibility for finding it here. So is listening in a way that's beneficial that has the highest welfare and mind can transform an individual that we beat, we just feel like yes, all kinds of misc conventional misfortunes can have with us gonna happen to us. But we are the good fortune, we are the free heart, we we are The Open Mind. And that's so beneficial. That why would we allow ourselves to get carried away by impatience, as I said, talked about earlier, or carried away by reactivity or fear, when we have a practice, to help us go back and find that place of good fortune, find that place of freedom, find that place of openness. And then from there, listen to others, from there, take care of what needs to be taken care of in the world, take care of our challenges and our difficulties. But they carry our good fortune with us. So to listen, from the place, it's most beneficial and us to have some sense of that. And that's one of the values of this meditation practice is to find some reference point of well being that can help us listen to that, that with that, be in the world, be present in the world. connected to that open to it, what's the highest benefit here for me? And certainly, I asked this for myself. And, and, and frequently enough, I've been caught up in something that seems important. And and it's not the highest benefit. I went to had my car surface yesterday. And and, you know, I was a little bit concerned about the price and the concerns with with some little bit of a dive, be overcharged and different things. But I could see that why would I come with that tension and tightness, too, at the end, caused myself this kind of tension with those kinds of concerns. So certainly I had those thoughts in the back of my mind, but I relaxed and just kind of have stayed there and, and appreciated the service person that I was with and, and, and, and just was in very nice conversation and delighted in him. And I think he's kind of started smiling and was happy as well. And, and at some point he asked me

you know, something like, how are you? And I said, Honestly, I said, Oh, I'm quite happy, because I was sitting there quite happy, and I'd done my work to be in that kind of place. And then I said, I'm quite happy. Except for the, you know, you know, I'm not so happy about the high price of the service. You know, I wasn't asking for anything, but that was just true. You know, there's a little little bit it seemed kind of high, expensive. And, and he said, Okay, I'll take $100 off. And I don't know if it was, I don't know how much weight we want to make from that little story. But the important point was, here was this situation where I was going to be present. I was going to take care of myself in this situation, and not sacrifice my own well being, because of my fears, because of my concerns. In a small situation like this, I was going to take care of the situation the best I could. But I was going to care for this place of freedom, and not get caught by something that compromised it to myself. So I kind of became my own good fortune in a way that Walt Whitman talks about. So to listen be present to others from our freedom from and do the inner work that stays as close to that. That's really great. That's a fantastic thing to do. So thank you. And we have one more talk tomorrow and why is listening