Choosing to Listen
Fifteen years ago, my doctor told me that I would need hearing aids at a young age. Sitting in the dharma hall a few weeks ago, I realized that wearing them has changed my relationship to listening. I have used the saying “active listening” many times, but it now has additional meaning for me.
To my surprise, one of the interesting consequences of wearing hearing aids is that you get to make a choice about what you hear. We all have the capacity to tune out, but tuning out by turning off your ears is a different quality of silence. The flip side of this is that you can make an active choice to listen, to deeply attune to the words and tone of the speaker.
I had the great privilege of sitting in the dharma hall at BCBS and listening to five esteemed teachers — Joseph Goldstein, Guo Gu, Dhammadīpā, John Dunne, and Anne Klein — during the recent retreat Liberation: A Dialogue Across Traditions. They each came from a different lineage and had very different ways of presenting their perspectives. I had some familiarity with a few of the teachings, but others were novel to me. Joseph Goldstein wrote in his piece The Common Ground of Letting Go that “teaching and listening to the Dharma are acts of meditation,” and so I made an active choice to listen. I am glad that I did. The diversity in the hall reminded me of the importance of being open to the many ways that we each find peace in and with community.
I also had the great privilege of listening to participants at the retreat speak about how we can move forward, as a community, toward our goals of accessibility and sustainability. I once again appreciated the need for multiple perspectives. For example, others in the hall had a very different experience of the sound in the dharma hall than I did. If you are a sound engineer who can easily get to Barre, please reach out to me. We need your expertise so we can make it possible for all participants to hear clearly in the dharma hall.
With deep gratitude for this community,
Melissa
P.S. If you want another perspective on this retreat, read the piece by Sue Brown in this newsletter. The Dharma Resource section also includes links to the recordings.
P.P.S. I explored the distinction between being in and with community in the April issue of Sangha News.
