Listening with the Heart
In Japanese, the word shin refers to the heart-mind. There is a growing tendency in spiritual communities that has categorised the mind as being some insensitive faculty, but I want to imprint this distinction: the infinite, beautiful, silent, and radiant mind is anything but that. Perhaps the reference is more aptly and solely “the head,” meaning the rational intellect, as opposed to the mind itself.
The rationalising and philosophising intellect that wants to put things in boxes, have them figured out, fixed, and neatly wrapped with a little ribbon on top is also the seat of the sense of self that is divided. It ‘others’—it sees me and my needs here, and you and yours over there. If it is based on unsettled instinctual patterns, then it goes to war daily, not just with itself but against its neighbour, forgetting the golden rule. And guess what? Everyone and everything is your neighbour.
To incorporate the heart is to incorporate the body, the soul, the feeling, the intuition—not just of the individual, but of the collective. Just as the mind presents itself as an undivided infinite space, so too does the heart expand, giving us the great capacity to embrace all things with love.
The means to expand the capacity of our embrace is directly related to our relationship with compassion, which, in turn, is associated with our relationships.
We could conceive of the spiritual path as that of a hermit living in solitude on some mountainside somewhere, not speaking a word, etching nature’s poems upon his skin, living minimally to maximise the quality of listening. This rare and romantic idea is not a reality for most of us who live in the world—in community, in family, in partnership, in relationship.
Even the reclusive hermit communes relationally with her environment, just as we do every day with the beings who inhabit our lives. To listen to others is to commune with them; to commune with them is to understand them. To understand is to find a shared humanity and compassion in your experiences, and to have that is to have love.
Listening, then, is love and a path of love. To listen with love is to listen with the heart, and when we listen with the heart, we enter into the heart, which is an open space free from agenda and divisiveness. This is not a transactional love, romantic love, or even brotherly love that I’m talking about. Here, I am speaking of agape—divine love.
This divine love comes through our communication, through the way of dialogue. Dia logos—the way of God. When we enter into dialogue, a third element enters: an extra presence, another being—it is the being of presence.
If we are doing justice to our discoveries in listening, then I could call it many things, and you would not be thrown if I were to call it a holy and sanctified presence. This sense of the sacred enters when we are in communion with one another through dialogue. The creative and Holy Spirit of wisdom is present, and we are kicked off the treadmills of stories, niceties, and small talk that we usually regurgitate.
Instead, it is as if we are riding the edge of a wave, not knowing where it goes or where it comes from. There is discovery in the word, in the act of speaking, in the act of listening, and in reflecting and deepening the dialogue, drawing something mysterious and previously unknown out into the open field of exploration, discovery, and learning together.
Task:
Listen to the people around you in a way that sees not only their humanity, but also your own. Let this lead to greater patience, humility, sincerity, respect, kindness, and compassion for yourself and others.
When engaged in conversation, see if you can listen with your full awareness—not just by silently reflecting. but by verbally reflecting: responding with questions that further prompt the speaker and demonstrate your engagement. Sometimes it can be helpful to repeat phrases that the speaker has said in order to further reflect and allow the impact of the words to reverberate.
Engage in dialogue where the listening and attentiveness resolve into a kind of creative, harmonic spring of new ideas. This can be done when working through personal issues, such as big decisions or mistakes. It can be especially meaningful when revolving around sacred, spiritual, and religious topics that are salient and resonant for you and the other person. If you want to engage in deeper dialogue but don’t know where to start, begin with one of the virtues and see how much there is to learn by communing with another while exploring topics of the sacred and meaningful.
When you see suffering, notice the small hole of compassion that opens and reaches out its hand in kindness and charity for our shared humanity.
Practice compassion deeply by recognising when it is present and personifying it as an ancient ally that has walked with and beside the great masters throughout the centuries.
Use compassion as a bridge to the heart and as a vehicle to listen with the heart.
Nothing is worth closing your heart over.