Listen for Love

If you listen,
not to the pages or preachers
but to the smallest flower
growing from a crack in your heart,
you will hear a great song
moving across a wide ocean
whose water is the music
connecting all the islands
of the universe together,
and touching all
you will feel it
touching you
around you...
embracing you
with light.
It is in that light
that everything lives
and will always be alive.

John Squadra

John Squadra. "This Ecstasy." Hermes Press, Brooks Maine, 1996.

Lawren Harris

Meditative Awareness

     "Meditative awareness is more akin to hearing well than seeing clearly. When looking intently at a visual object, we tend to aim a narrow beam of attention onto something outside of ourselves. But when we listen mindfully, we open our awareness in all directions in order to receive the sounds that pour in. Just as one develops a meditative ability to discern ever subtler tones and harmonies in this polyphony, so one can refine an empathic ability to detect ever finer nuances in the other's plea. As the deafening chatter of self-centeredness subsides, one recovers that silence wherein one hears more sharply the cries of the world."

     Stephen Batchelor. "Living with the Devil. A meditation on good and evil." Riverhead Books, NY, 2004.

Heart-Mind

     “When we believe our thoughts, we obstruct the heart’s message of oneness. The mind blocks the heart through the words of separation.”

       Smith R. "Stepping out of self-deception. The Buddha's liberating teaching of no-self." Shambhala, Boston, 2010.

On the Nature of Dialogue

          * Dialogue starts from a willingness to be tentative about what you know.
          * The focus of dialogue is on what is, rather than on ideas and opinions. 
          * You can participate by verbally or silently sharing perceptions.
          * Dialogue is letting the issue unfold in affection and mutual respect.
          * When a reaction arises, neither suppress it nor defend it, but suspend it in the mind and in the group, keeping it constantly available for observation and questioning.
          * Dialogue is being together and seeing together in an unfolding relationship.

          Krishnamurti Foundation of America                               www.kfa.org

Monet's Flowers

Beyond Self & Self-talk

      "... silence and solitude are the very basis for our engagement with the world. They are expressed in the experiences of inquiry and listening, nonviolence and nonduality, patience and concentration, connectedness and intimacy, authenticity and stillness, understanding and compassion, and seeing beyond language and intuition.”

        Halifax J. “Fruitful darkness. Reconnecting with the body of the earth.” HarperSanFrancisco, NY, 1993. 

Nicolas Marino   www.dpreview.com

Be Quiet, LISTEN & Learn

     In our "culture, where language is associated only with vocalization and speech, we fall within a 'discursive rationality' which makes the world amenable to linguistic and discursive ordering, molding, & systematization. Any speech act is 'potentially normative,' ... as 'the speech act selects an aspect of reality simply by speaking about it, and whatever is said is then transformed into the statutory basis of a discourse' which 'can ultimately result in constraint and epistemic control'. In a culture of 'discursive rationality,' the dominant form of knowledge is one that objectifies, organises, conceptualises, normalizes, & dictates. To 'know' the world, we categorize what we see and experience in the world – things, people – into concepts & ideas. Instead of being open to the rich moment-to-moment experiences in our encounters with people and things, we 'know' & relate to them primarily through our presumed concepts about them. Such orientation produces a sense of cognitive order & control in our relations to the world. A well-known example is the European empires’ extensive categorizing & detailed mapping of the geography, fauna, flora, habitat, & people of their colonies in their effort to rule & control them.
     'Listening rationality,' on the other hand, functions in the context of 'silence.' It quiets our mind, takes away our (illusory) sense of security & control, and opens us to the untidiness, contradictions, & richness of being which cannot be bound by conceptual ordering. It invites us to the openness of not knowing and the 'risk' of growth. Silence can be 'a very fertile way of relating, (as it) might indicate a healthy desire to set aside certain automatic defenses that are only intended to fill emotional vacuums' and 'a desire to abandon automatic verbal sequences that fill our games (of social interactions). The highest function of silence,' therefore, 'is revealed in the creation of a co-existential space which permits dialogue to come along'. Listening in the context of silence involves 'the renunciation of a predominantly molding & ordering activity' and represents 'the readiness to tear away ideologizing modes of reflection which define & constrict the ways of coexistence'. It can be 'a support to the hermeneutic effort whereby we seek to establish a relationship between our world and a different "world," between our own attitude and a different attitude'.  
     Listening is also 'the attitude which can unblock the creative resources immobilized by the rigidity of traditional "logical" education'. It requires considerable 'dialogic patience' to give space to the 'inexpressible,' so that 'the inner experience which is less suited to being "spoken" can be expressed in some way'. In 'listening rationality,' the person who knows is someone who transforms him/herself in order to know, rather than objectifies the world in order to recognize her/himself in his/her cognitive conceptual immobility. To reach the 'highest function of listening silence' for coexistence to be possible, therefore, it is important that we are not confined by the conceptual mind and dominant discourses which categorize, normalize, & exclude. bell hooks proposes education as 'the practice of freedom.' I suggest that is also what critical social work education is about: the practice of freedom from the predominant order of things, that is, 'to transgress' the mode of 'discursive rationality' which privileges the mind and has been governing our production of knowledge & our relations to the world."

       Wong Y-L.R. "Knowing Through Discomfort: A Mindfulness-based Critical Social Work Pedagogy." Critical Social Work 2004; 5:(1) http://www1.uwindsor.ca/criticalsocialwork/knowing-through-discomfort-a-mindfulness-based-critical-social-work-pedagogy

cgravel   www.dpreview.com

Sitting

sitting suspended
between earth and sky
between heart and all directions
expanding vertically
radiating warmth all around
listening to the silence
the ground of all things



     "A person is neither a thing nor a process, but an opening or a clearing through which the Absolute can manifest."                    Ken Wilber

Nik2   www.dpreview.com

Listening Attitude to Life

     "Listening is an interesting attitude. Just stopping and listening - there's something very profound about that. It takes effort to listen, but it's not willful in the sense of trying to do something, to become something. Listening is a form of empathy. You're allowing the experience of sound to come into you and then understanding it, not intellectually, not as an idea, but as a felt experience. You can apply that same quality of inner listening to your fears and desires, hopes and expectations, and disappointments - to your personality and all the rest of the business of being human."

       Ajahn Viradhammo, Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly, Summer 2013
http://tisarana.ca/

     More on listening: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=listening

Vittorio Fracassi   http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/

Listening

     "To listen" in Chinese

     "The characters in 'ting' represent the eyes, the ears, the heart, (the total being) and undivided attention. ... Listening requires the whole being to be involved when trying to understand what is being communicated. And the concept of undivided attention is crucial. ... one listens with the whole being."

        Beall ML. Perspectives on intercultural listening. in Wolvin AD ed. Listening and human communication in the 21st century. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2010.

     You may wish to see: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/01/mystery-essence-of-all-life.html

Blossoming in Silence

     "The emergence and blossoming of understanding, love and intelligence has nothing to do with any tradition, no matter how ancient or impressive - it has nothing to do with time. It happens completely on its own when a human being questions, wonders, listens and looks without getting stuck in fear, pleasure and pain. When self concern is quiet, in abeyance, heaven and earth are open. The mystery, the essence of life is not separate from the silent openness of simple listening."                                                                  Toni Packer

eaa   www.dpreview.com