THE ART OF LISTENING
“Your mind is continuously bombarded from all sides by all kinds of thoughts. To protect itself, each mind has created a subtle wall of buffers so those thoughts are turned back, they don’t enter your mind. It is basically good, but then slowly those buffers have grown so much that now they don’t allow anything in. Even if you want, they are no longer in your control. And the only way to break them is the same way as breaking your own thoughts.
“Just become a witness of your thoughts. And as your thoughts start disappearing, the need for the buffers to protect those thoughts will not be there; those buffers will start falling. These are all abstract phenomena, so you cannot see them, but their effects are there.
“Only the man who knows how to meditate knows how to listen, or vice-versa. The man who knows how to listen knows how to meditate, because it is the same thing.”
Step 1: Sit by the side of a tree, on your bed, anywhere — just try to listen to the traffic noise, but intensely and totally, with no judgment that it is good or bad.
“Your thoughts will drop, and with that your buffers will drop, and suddenly a gap opens up which leads you into silence and peace.
“For centuries this has been the only way for anyone to come close to the reality of his own being and the mystery of existence. And as you come closer, you start feeling cooler, you start feeling happier; you start feeling fulfilled, contented, blissful. A point comes where you are so full of bliss that you can share with the whole world; still your blissfulness will remain the same. You can go on giving, but there is no way to exhaust it.
“Here you can only learn the method; then you have to use that method whenever you can, wherever you can. And you have so much time — standing in a bus, sitting in a train, lying down on the bed….”
