Listening
by Zen Master Dae Gak

"I've been studying Chinese characters. There is something disheartening about studying Chinese characters at age fifty-one. I studied fifty-five characters in a book, turned the page, and it said, "End of first grade." I was proud of my accomplishment--I had achieved first grade level.

The character for "listening attentively" consists of five characters: the character for ear, the character for standing still, the character for ten, the character for eye, and the character for heart or mind. Chinese characters are really picturegrams: they are pictures that have evolved to describe a certain situation. This picturegram for listening attentively means: "When in stillness, one listens with the heart. The ear is worth ten eyes."

The character for sacred, holy, or saint is made up of three characters: the character for ear, the character for hole (which is taken phonetically to mean clear), and the character for standing still. Thus, a saint is one who, in stillness, hears clearly; or, what is holy or sacred is being able to hear clearly, which evolves to being able to hear the word of God or being able to hear the sound of Buddha's voice.

Listening is fundamental to our practice. Our school is called the Kwan Um School of Zen. "Kwan Um" means "perceive sound," or to listen. Kwan Seum Bosal, the bodhisattva of compassion, realized her enlightenment by hearing the sound of human suffering--through listening, through this human practice of hearing.

In our own lives, we know that we hear clearly relative to the clarity of our mind. When our mind is cluttered or troubled, our hearing is distorted. Indeed all sense data becomes distorted with an unclear mind. There is a psychological practice, a game, where you sit with ten or fifteen people. One person whispers something in the ear of the first person, and the whispering goes all the way around. When it comes out at the other end, it is very unlike what was said initially. Our practice is to clear the mind in such a way that we can hear clearly. We want to hear clearly so that we can function correctly.

In our Korean tradition, Chinul talks about tracing the radiance back. This is the practice of listening to the very sound of listening itself: to be able to sit with one's own mind, not following the mind and all of the tangents that it offers, but to sit quietly and listen. At first, we sit down and our minds begin to settle like dirt settles on a dirt road after a car goes by. There is some clarity. Then we begin to listen to our own fundamental nature. Having heard our own fundamental nature, we begin to listen to our friend, whoever that is. Listening to our friend is not complete without some action, some response. There is no true listening if our listening is limited to our own particular experience. The true practice of listening requires some kind of compassionate action."



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