Listening to the Song – Part 2

Tara Brach - Tara Brach

In this second part of her series on listening, Tara Brach explores how deep, mindful listening transforms relationships and fosters inner h

Key takeaways

True listening is not about waiting to speak but about being fully present in the moment.
Listening deeply involves creating inner stillness by emptying the mind of thoughts, judgments, and expectations.

Main topics

The practice of deep listening as a spiritual discipline
Using meditation to cultivate attention in conversations

Notable quotes

"When I watched and listened to where the sound went, I didn't get closer to God. I was God."

Conclusion

By committing to deep listening—both inwardly and toward others—we cultivate

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:04) Welcome, friends, to the Tara Brach Podcast. I'm so glad you're here. Each week I share teachings and guided meditations to help us awaken our hearts and bring healing to our world. You can learn more or support this offering by visiting tarabrach.com, where you can also join our email list. Speaker 1 (0:32) Now, let's explore together the many ways we can live from the love and presence that's our deepest essence. Namaste. Namaste. Welcome, friends. Thank you for being here. Speaker 1 (1:15) This week we are deepening our attention as part of the two-part series on listening. And what I want to do as a kind of preface to this talk is invite you to practice listening as you listen to the talk. And what I mean by that is let the words be less important than the listening itself. the quality of presence that you meet the experience with. So listen with your body, listen with the ears of your heart, and notice when the mind wanders. It will wander. Gently come home again and see what most as you're listening resonates with your own experience. Speaker 1 (2:10) I often think that the deepest listening is not about collecting ideas but it's about remembering something that's already here, something that really matters to your spirit. Okay, may this serve you well. Speaker 1 (2:30) This is the second part of a two-part series on listening and really how to deepen our practice in paying attention, to listen with what Saint Benedict calls the ears of the heart. And really it's how to create that intimacy, listening to our inner life, listening to each other, to our living earth. So I, this week, asked Facebook friends to share some of their wisdom about listening. I'll be weaving that in. We got some wonderful responses. I learned a lot. I'll share some. And the talk's really organized around some of the key questions I've gotten about listening over the years. We'll start with a cartoon of a man and a woman on their first date. And his thought bubble is saying, I can't think of anything to say. She must think I'm a total bore. Her thought bubble, a man who actually listens to me. I think I'm in love. Speaker 1 (3:41) So you might remember from the last class, one of my favorite images or metaphors is of our life as a fountain and that when we're clear, when things are moving, really our soul can express into words and actions who we are. But when we haven't been listened to, debris clogs us up and we get kind of... withheld and then what comes out isn't really what we mean and what we care about and what we feel. And so when we offer someone listening, it's a way of, because we all have some debris, of dissolving some of that debris so the who they are can flow through more clearly. It's an amazing gift. It tells someone you matter when we listen. So I often think of it as if tens of thousands of us just had that heightened commitment to listening more deeply. There are ripples in this world that are so beautiful and so possible. And I know that most people think listening is a good idea and that some of you even might have, after the last exploration, said, okay, I'm going to do it. And then realized that after the fact that you had meant to listen and you just completely spaced out or you got distracted or you got reactive and something happened or you just couldn't resist getting in what you wanted to say. It's such a habit to have Speaker 1 (5:24) wanting to put ourselves into a conversation that we don't often create a space. One writer, Fran Lebowitz, says, the opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting. We're waiting for somebody to be done so we can say our things. This is from Winnie the Pooh. Speaker 1 (5:48) If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear. I was going to rename these talks, Removing the Fluff, you know. So we do have this incessant inner dialogue. And the same training that we do in meditation to come really home to ourselves is the training we do for listening, coming back into presence so we can actually be here for others. One friend from Facebook says, What really helps me in listening better is to empty my own mind completely of any thoughts, expectations, fears, or judgments whenever I begin the process of listening. I try to become the space that is listening and not the self that is listening. Speaker 1 (6:47) That's beautiful and it's profoundly challenging. Martha Postle Wade, wonderful poet, reminds us to make a clearing in the dense forest of your life. Make a clearing in the dense forest of your life. And that's really what we're asked to do if we want to listen to each other, is to kind of make a clearing, make room for the other being to express. So it starts with becoming aware of the dense farce and not making that any sort of a judgment. Speaker 2 (7:24) That's Speaker 1 (7:25) why it's such a powerful phrase in a poem. And we all know that we get all clogged up. There's a lot of fluff. So the first step of training and listening is to start noticing, okay, it was pretty dense. There wasn't a whole lot of space for this other person. So our ongoing training and listening is a regular meditation practice. It's to be able to sit and then notice all the dizziness and start. It's not like the thoughts should go away, but just start being aware of how much is going on in your mind. And it's just the noticing of the thoughts that begins to create the space of freedom. You recognize you've gone off on a thought train. Okay, okay, thinking, thinking. And you kind of reopen it again and listen to the sounds that are right here and feel your breath again. Okay, I'm back. Now, while our emphasis is going to be listening more to each other, Speaker 1 (8:31) A powerful way to cultivate listening is by listening to sounds. It's one of the most beautiful ways you can practice with a meditationist, just to start really paying attention to the sounds that are there. Because as you listen to sounds, you start sensing the space they're happening in and the silence that's listening. Speaker 1 (8:58) A woman I know introduced meditation to Montessori school children. There were 7 to 11-year-olds. And one of the things she did was she had a gong and she said, here's what I want you to do. I want you to listen to the sound and just follow the sound and watch where it goes. Just bring an interest to that. And she says, if you watch or follow, you might get closer to God. Speaker 1 (9:28) Well, a young boy did it. He had that experience in class. And then he told his mother about the experience. And his mother then relayed to this teacher what he had said. And here's what the little boy had said. He said, well, when I watched and listened to where the sound went, I didn't get closer to God. I was God. Speaker 1 (9:54) It still gives me the goosebumps when I think of that, that we become the awareness itself that's listening. We become the silence that's listening. So if you'd like to close your eyes, you can experiment a little right here. So listen, and with interest, just watch where the sound goes. One of the beautiful things about listening to sounds. is that you begin to sense the space they're happening in so that if you continue to listen right now and sense even the most distant sounds and you might notice that they don't really seem like they're inside your body. It's hard to sense inside and outside. Noticing how sounds are just known by awareness. They're happening in the space of awareness. in that vastness. And that which knows sound is silence. It's a silence that's listening. So when we're really listening to each other, there's a deep quietness that's possible that makes a space. But often, as you know, the dense forest is there. So at first we have to just notice that that's happening and just have the intention of quieting. Even more than just what we call the dense forest, as we're listening to others, all the old habits of personality jump forward. We quickly get stirred up. So it's harder to rest in that really open, receptive being. And that's okay. In other words, the idea is not to judge ourselves for that, but just to get interested. What would it be like if we were more intentional about getting quiet and being the space, the silence, the presence for another person? Speaker 1 (13:48) Now if you'd like to open your eyes, you can. And the first question I'll bring up that I get very regularly is, I mean to listen, but I forget. How do I even remember to listen? That's about it. That's the most basic one. And that's where I think it's really useful to assume that on your path, on your spiritual path or whatever you consider your path, that listening... is a very central core commitment to both be able to listen inwardly and to others because it's the essence of intimacy. You cannot be intimate with yourself and another person if there's not some capacity to listen. So that's the first thing is just to choose it as an intention. This is part of what I'm practicing. In Asia, they call it my sadhana, my spiritual practice.