Hearing or Listening, What's the Difference?

For me, there's a wide gulf between hearing and listening. Hearing can be impersonal. It's usually hearing and collecting information, frequently coming back with a sort of yes or no. I have found that "hearing," also lends itself to being rather judgmental. It can been analytical process that is looking for the error, the flaw, the discrepancy. In the end hearing has the capacity to create gaps and keep people, places and things at a distance. It's because we are picking people and/or situations apart.

In my experience "Listening," has a much more intimate connotation. Listening happens with our entire being, seeking to make a deep connection and understanding wherein there is no gap or distance. It's also possible that there is no sense of even time itself. It is looking and feeling between the lines. It can be gray, not just black and white.

What determines if I am "Listening," or "Hearing," is the attitude I am embracing at the given moment. And that is where the work happens for me. If I'm in a state where I am self-absorbed, distracted, have my thinking fixed on a particular thing, it can be extremely difficult to break-through the moment and listen.

One of my friends named Tony is famous for telling people (including himself), "Get over yourself." It's his way of saying, "Wake-up and pay attention! Are you present? Are you with the moment that's happening right now or are you somewhere else? Show up for the moment." And being a so-called "Good-listener," is about having the capacity to be in the present moment, get out of my head, get over myself and into my heart-of-being. It's then that everything can be available and open.

Genjo Marinello Osho once said, "All the pieces are on the table," [waiting for us to put them together]. Maybe it would be good to note here that "Cho Bo Zen Ji," the temple that I visit and train at translates as "Listening to the Dharma Zen Temple." I don't think that finding a (spiritual and emotional) home there is a coincidence.

Mindful Zen practice helps to prepare the ground, laying a foundation so that We can move from hearing to listening, having connected those pieces. It's not intellectual. Real "Listening," is intuitive, interconnected, synthesizing, nonlinear, nonsequential and is paradoxically non or pre-verbal. In other words, very "Right-Brain." I find it fortunate that we have a life and body that is fully designed to listen as opposed to just hearing.

Namaste',

Jaye Seiho Morris, Curator
digitalZENDO

Comments

[Anonymous]

mu!