How to Listen (Mindfulness Essentials)

How to Listen (Mindfulness Essentials)

Listening with compassion can solve our most pressing issues—across global politics and interpersonal relationships and within our own hearts and minds. In How to Listen , Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh demonstrates how deep listening is a fundamental building block of good communication. But perhaps more fundamentally, listening is central to our practice, a basic ingredient to strengthen our capacity for mindfulness, concentration, insight, and compassion. Learning how to listen with equanimity to life itself, we generate insight into the true nature of our deep connection to all things. And from this place of understanding—when we know that we aren’t separate—our capacity to listen deepens even further. With clear and gentle guidance from Thich Nhat Hanh, we learn how truly listening—to ourselves, to each other, to Mother Earth, and to the many “bells of mindfulness” that are available to us in each moment—is the foundation of our practice, an expression of love, and a solution to our deepest and most urgent large-scale conflicts. All Mindfulness Essentials books are illustrated with playful sumi-ink drawings by California artist Jason DeAntonis. "We have here another quiet, useful publication in “The Mindfulness Essentials Series” of small books by Thich Nhat Hanh, produced by the nonprofit publishing house founded decades ago by the Zen master. ... This book is organized into very short chapters — each one or two pages of a pocket-sized paperback. The second of these is titled, “We Need to Train” and includes this explanation of how important and elusive true listening can be in our lives: We must listen to the other person so that they have a chance to express themselves. We try our best to listen, but after a few minutes we can no longer continue; their speech touches the pain, violence, and anger in us. At first, we vow that we will give the other person a chance, even if what they say is unjust or difficult to listen to. But because of the violence, fear, pain, and anger in ourselves, we cannot listen for more than five minutes; we want to react, shout back, or run away. We have lost our capacity to listen with compassion, and we need to train so that we can listen again. This sets the stage for all that follows, including teachings on understanding our suffering, paying attention, “transforming habit energies,” looking carefully at what we are taking in, and a teaching that Thay often offered from Buddhist psychology about how we are always “watering seeds” in us, sometimes without awareness. There are seeds of anger and fear and despair that often get watered; instead, with purpose, we can water seeds that “are beneficial seeds of love, compassion, joy, forgiveness.” A final short section focuses on practices for listening with compassion." —Jon M. Sweeney, Spirituality & Practice Thich Nhat Hanh was a world-renowned spiritual teacher and peace activist. Born in Vietnam in 1926, he became a Zen Buddhist monk at the age of sixteen. Over seven decades of teaching, he published more than 100 books, which have sold more than four million copies in the United States alone. Exiled from Vietnam in 1966 for promoting peace, his teachings on Buddhism as a path to social and political transformation are responsible for bringing the mindfulness movement to Western culture. He established the international Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism in France, now the largest Buddhist monastery in Europe and the heart of a growing community of mindfulness practice centers around the world. He passed away in 2022 at the age of 95 at his root temple, Tu Hieu, in Hue, Vietnam. Jason DeAntonis is a professional artist, designer, and builder with three decades of experience in various mediums. The Power of Listening Listening deeply to another is a form of meditation. We follow our breathing and practice concentration and we learn things about the other person that we never knew before. When we practice deep listening, we can help the person we’re listening to remove the perceptions that are making them suffer. We can restore harmony in our partnerships, our friendships, our family, our community, our nation, and between nations. It is that powerful. We Need to Train We must listen to the other person so that they have a chance to express themselves. We try our best to listen, but after a few minutes we can no longer continue; their speech touches the pain, violence, and anger in us. At first, we vow that we will give the other person a chance, even if what they say is unjust or difficult to listen to. But because of the violence, fear, pain, and anger in ourselves, we cannot listen for more than five minutes; we want to react, shout back, or run away. We have lost our capacity to listen with compassion, and we need to train so that we can listen again. Listening to Ourselves Before we can listen to another person well, we need to spend time listening to ourselves. Sometimes when we attempt to liste