The Art of Listening

2005/12/27 Tsan-Kuang Lee

Preface

Thanks to the best-sellers, almost everybody today knows that listening plays an essential role in effective communication. However, being proficient in Martian and Venusian does not guarantee better understanding. While we try very hard to listen, we still hear something very different from what's intended or even what's said. How do we bridge the gap between theory and practice?

In this workshop, we will re-evaluate our listening ability and investigate the factors that hinder it. Then we will learn to establish new listening habits to break the cycle of bad communication habits.

Speaker: Tsan-Kuang Lee

Trained to be a scientist in high school, turning to literature in college, but ending up studying linguistics and computer science in graduate school, with several established musicians' help, Tsan-Kuang is now working as a composer/arranger and a software developer. In recent years, he has been learning to re-examine himself by means of Zen practice; he also has learned great lessons in communication and self-adjustment from the relationship with his families. He realizes that while those lessons may contain cliches, mastering them is never easy yet so crucial in all kinds of relationship.

Intro

Another 3-day workshop: Music, Language, Mind

The quoted word: "Spiritual" (心靈)

The layers and sequence of modern education: Outside-in

The natural process: Inside-out

Sitting Meditation Practice

3-to-5-minute sitting meditation (simply follow the instructions without judging)

• Outside the building (could be very far, to anywhere in the world)
• Background sounds inside the room
• Sounds of the person next to you
• Your own breathing, heartbeat, blood flow
• Inner voices (could be very deep)

Do you notice any judgments, doubts, or other emotions/thoughts?

Practice in Action

Refrain from taking notes or recording for now; practice listening in the present moment.

Personal experience: listening to music or lectures

Transformation in the present moment

Activity 1

Think for three minutes, then use 3 sentences (or 20 seconds) to express:

• The most difficult person to communicate with in your family (or among friends) (same sex or opposite sex)
• The most difficult thing to communicate about
• Why communication fails

Are we truly able to listen calmly, or are we only interested in what the speaker says, or worse, only interested in hearing our own voices (looking for a stage to perform)?

What Might Affect Listening?

• Special physical or mental states (too tired, sick)
• Nervousness (unintentionally caring only about oneself)
• Arrogance (intentionally caring only about oneself)
• Habitual distraction (inability to focus attention)
• Assuming you already know, thus paying less attention (test this: can you recall all the phenomena observed by others?)

What is Difficult About Listening?

• Impure intention (Attachment)
• Emotion (Anger/Aversion)
• False Judgment / interpretation, obsession (Ignorance)

Impure Intention (Attachment)

Different degrees of attention:

• Not listening at all
• Pretending to listen (looking elsewhere)
• Pretending to listen while merely waiting for your turn to speak (using communication as a guise to persuade or dictate)
• Half-listening (to find faults): a symptom of an unforgiving society (e.g., politicians catching each other's slips of the tongue) and a hallmark of arguments (getting angry that the other person doesn't want to understand and only wants to attack)
• Attentive listening (requires giving the other person and yourself ample time to fully express and fully digest); letting go of expectations for quick results (since the speaker is not perfect and will naturally have emotions)

Emotion (Aversion)

Your own emotions

• The ability to be aware of and acknowledge one's own emotions (emotions are also part of the facts) (there is no quick fix, but you can practice anytime; seize every opportunity to practice)
• Truly wanting to communicate (remember, communication is to help understand and help express); you must allow the other person to misspeak, and allow them to correct themselves (help make things clear): the story of the blind person (blinded by emotions or perspectives) crossing the street
• Understand your own ability and limits in controlling emotions; give the other person a signal to pause communication
• Anger / Emotion (Aversion)

The other person's emotions

• The other person's emotions are also part of the facts; the other person's perception of the facts is also part of the facts
• Give the other person ample space and time to fully express ("let me vent first"—then ask the audience about their immediate reactions and emotions: are they willing to allow people to get through the hardest emotional part first?)
• Communication becomes much more possible once emotions are fully expressed

Judgment / Obsession (Ignorance)

What is a fact? Is it on the surface of things? In words? Or in emotions?

What others express is their own perception; to the person involved, it is real; reacting before understanding their feelings will not help.

Listening with false assumptions is asking for trouble.

Many times we deliberately misinterpret the other person, choosing to believe they are intentionally hurting us -> why?

The least effective communication method is the intellectual approach (even an upright official has trouble resolving family disputes)

We often find it especially hard to accept different perspectives or methods regarding things we are already familiar with:

• Teaching methods
• The structure of "knowledge", "scientific method", "logic"
• Methodology

How to Practice: Practice in a Game

Game Rule: Paraphrase whatever is said by the person who speaks right before you. If they make a mistake in paraphrasing our speech, we paraphrase the mistake we observed before making any corrections. Before we speak, we give a gentle signal (e.g., bringing palms together).

Principles of paraphrasing: stick to semantics—no more, no less, no added emotions; no judging right or wrong.

Think before speaking; do not reply immediately. Give the other person time to think.

Activity 3

Paraphrasing rules apply here.

Practice discussion: practice together first, then in groups (4-6 people per group)

During the whole-group practice, did anyone give up speaking out of fear, shyness, or disdain?

Discussion Topic 1: Gender in Language

Is gender a manufactured dimension in research?

Word frequency vs. pragmatic domains

• "My colleague and his wife adopted a five-year-old child; two years later, my colleague was sued for sexually assaulting this little girl." What is my colleague's gender?
• Assumptions about gender/race during communication: author/female author, poet/female poet, doctor/female doctor, nurse/male nurse, worker/female worker, street sweeper/female street sweeper? President/female president?
• Example: A very beautiful female author puts her photo on the book cover, but during interviews emphasizes she doesn't want her gender to be a selling point (vested interests vs. "social justice")

Are women really more likely than men to talk about topics belonging to the private sphere? Why?

"Gay talk": phonological differences are imperceptible; word choice and pronunciation are cultural and external phenomena (rather than phonological): "fabulous," "beautiful," "pretty." It has more to do with pop culture and subcultures. Example: Taiwanese vs. Mandarin pronunciations, "cultural level." It carries its own connotations; culture gives new meanings to words.

Views on tokens (doctors, professors): Do people serving as tokens feel they are only used because they are a minority? What is the right attitude?

The meaning of PC (political correctness)

• You "guys" / you "gals" (avoiding "girl"; what if avoiding "Miss"); what to do when unknown or mixed? He/she, you (male)/you (female); necessity of specific characters; s/he she/he her/his him/her...
• Grammatical gender (der/die/das in Indo-European languages); Japanese gendered forms of speech. Is this cultural? Neutral? Or inseparable?
• Symbols are just symbols; is any interpretation strictly external? Are there purely neutral, innocent symbols?
• Awareness for/of whom? Is it merely to show off one's own cultural and educational level?
• Having awareness without genuine respect: e.g., common mistakes in programming books awkwardly forcing the pronoun "she"; psychology textbooks using "she" to refer exclusively to patients.

Labov's research

• Women are generally less active in language change; however, working women are an exception.
• Sex/Gender and death are the topics that most easily spark interest.

Discussion Topic 2: Women's Roles in Religion

Oppressors from among women

• Mother-in-law and daughter-in-law dynamics; nuns in a convent (or Buddhist nuns).
• A (female) friend's example: easily thinks highly of men, yet is full of criticism towards successful women.

Buddhism

• Ani Tenzin Palmo's (practitioner) observation
• Female turning into male (or today, male turning into female); gender is merely the physical and psychological manifestation of a specific lifetime. It is ultimately just the nature of mind. (lesbian in a man's body (sisterhood))

Christianity

• Eve's fault?

Islam

Is listening enough?

What is the purpose of communication (successful communication)?

• Understanding each other's thoughts, emotions, and abilities: communication is needed precisely because of mutual misunderstanding; we must first admit this.
• Successful communication -> compromise, coordination, cooperation -> getting along, solving problems
• Without respect and sincerity, communication is very difficult

Listening techniques are just the fish; the fishing rod is awareness. Here, responding to a fast-paced society, we are just letting everyone quickly eat a few fish.

In communication, listening is only half the work; the other half (expressing, voicing) requires even stronger awareness (of the external situation and internal emotions).

Meditation, or any clear introspection method, can train this awareness.

How to Communicate

Prepare in advance (introducing tea Zen): content, mood, atmosphere

Keep the total length short: consider physical energy, attention span, and emotional capacity.

Learn to speak truthfully (no false speech); false speech harms oneself and benefits no one.

• Friend's example: showing off jargon (that even they don't fully understand) when feeling insecure, intentionally making the other person not understand -> why?

Establish good habits

• In long-term relationships, we constantly plant new karmic seeds; we gradually shape each other's communication habits and patterns (the balance scale analogy) (again, seize every opportunity to practice)
• Vows; act with the principle of not creating greater karma (which also creates karma for oneself). One's own underlying nature must be faced sooner or later, but one must carefully weigh one's own abilities.

Conclusion

Buddhist perspective

• Don't forget that Avalokiteśvara (Guan Yin) Bodhisattva saves sentient beings precisely by listening.
• "Learning" Buddhism: "learn about" or "learn from" Buddha?
• When we listen, if we bring compassion, we are better able to spend our energy helping others and transforming the current predicament, rather than wasting it on frustration and negative emotions.
• When Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva contemplates the sounds of the world, hearing many unreasonable demands, does anger arise?

Tools are meant to make life more beautiful, not to attack others. (Are we willing to let one edge of our double-edged sword be covered in blood when we die? Or let the water—which can carry or overturn a boat—be filled with corpses?)

• Example of my own first failed practice: you must have patience, and you must first show sincerity. Retreating to advance. Having a legitimate purpose.
• Friend's example: speaking English when angry to overwhelm the other person. Only backfires.
• Example of my own unkindness: enjoying bursting others' bubbles (why do we feel this is so satisfying? A "Judge Bao" complex? Don't forget even an upright official has trouble resolving family disputes)
• Attacking the other person's unrelated weaknesses during an argument is purely playing games with these tools.