Listening Meditation

In this episode I share a lesson and guided meditation I did on the Meditation and Mindfulness Discord Server (https://discord.gg/Fpz9Wu) on the practice of Listening Meditation. The practice of Mindful Listening has infinite depths and layers, but to start with, one must simply learn to rest the attention on the faculty of hearing, without entertaining perceptions and building conceptions on top of them, getting carried away in thought as we usually do. Chan Master Sheng Yen put it this way: "Let’s train ourselves so that our ears become like a sound absorbing board. Simply listen, listen, and listen… If the sound is loud, do not give rise to any resistance; if the sound is weak, do not strain yourself to listen to it. All you’re doing is just listening, accepting everything without any discrimination. Most importantly, do not give the sounds a name. You may hear a girl screaming, a boy cursing, a dog barking around the corner, or a cat meowing on the roof. It could also be that the sounds of birds, chicken, cows, or even sounds of cars, horns honking, televisions, radios, motorcycles, air-conditioners, all present themselves to you at once. Even then, you listen without naming them, without making any discrimination or distinction of the spectrum. Merely play your role as a sound absorbing board, without seeking or following anything, without echoing anything that rings in your ears." Try it out for yourself, by joining this guided practice.

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