When friends offer advice, listen carefully
- February 26th, 2010
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This is an extract from OSHO:
“One of the great things to be learned is listening. Listen very silently. Just don’t listen indifferently. Don’t listen as if you want others to stop talking and you are just listening to be polite because they are your friends. In that case it is better to tell them not to say anything because you are not in the mood to listen. But when you are listening, really listen – be open, because your friends may be right. And even if they are wrong, listening to them will enrich you. You will learn more viewpoints, and it is always good to learn. So listen well, but always decide on your own.”
How often have we been guilty of not listening deeply? How often have we allowed our minds to ‘plan what we want to speak’ when the other person is speaking to us, and thus we were not fully present to listen? How often have we shut our minds from listening to others because of our ‘absolutist mentality’?
When we adopt an attitude of ‘absolutes’ we create a separation among ourselves, and this is where we see fighting among people because everyone claims the absolute truths. This attitude has crippled the whole earth.
To add to this discussion on listening, J. Krishnamurti said:
“Can one listen without any conclusion, without any comparison or judgment, just listen, as you would listen to music, to something which you really feel you love? Then listen not only with your mind, your intellect, but also with your heart, you listen with care, objectively, sanely, you listen with attention to find out.”
“There is an art of listening, which is to listen completely without any motive, because a motive in listening is a distraction. If you can listen with complete attention, then there is no resistance, either to your own thoughts or to what is being said – which does not mean you will be mesmerized by words. But it is only the very silent, quiet mind that finds out what is true, not a mind which is furiously active, thinking, resisting.”
Truth is vast. Nobody has any claim on it. It is nobody’s monopoly. Infinite are its facets and infinite are the ways to know it. What we know is limited; it is just one part.
Be open when we listen. There is so much to learn from one another, not just from your family and friends and people within your own community but from everyone.
Be amazed at what we discover and learn about ourselves and people when we open our hearts to listen…
