The Delicate Art of Listening

If there is one aspect of nature which is common to all us, it is that each one of us considers himself/herself to be the center of the universe. It is always our ideas, our perceptions, our opinions and our worlds that are the most important. Given this view of the world and ourselves, how can we expect anybody to spend time listening to others.

As Stephen Covey says in “Seven habits of highly effective people”, that we have to “learn to understand, before wanting to be understood”. That is we need to listen to others actively and effectively. There is a lot of finesse required in the delicate art of listening. We need to be “all ears” whenever we are listening and pay complete attention to others when listening.

There are many ways of listening to others. Depending on the situation we need to listen differently. We have to be certainly empathetic in our listening. Some of the ways of listening are

The Silent Listener: In this type of conversation we are expected only to listen and appropriately nod our heads as and when the situation demands. In this case the person doing the talking is not expecting any opinions or judgments from us. They want to pour their innermost feelings of joy or sadness. They want to share their emotions with us. In this case we should neither judge nor voice our opinions. We should encourage the other person to come out fully with their feelings. If we do this the other person will experience a sense of relief and lightness.

The Active Listener: In this situation again we are not expected to voice our opinions based on our own perceptions of what is right or wrong. The person is just expecting somebody to look at the world through their eyes. While our initial reaction may be to correct the other person’s misconception we should not be too brutal and interrupt their outpouring of their emotions. In this type of listening it is “more important to be kind than to be correct”. Though we may feel that the other person may be mistaken it sometimes helps to soften the truth by initially agreeing with the thoughts of the person. We need to aware of the verbal, facial and emotional cues and just allow the person to empty his feelings to us. We may be later try to help think through the situation.

The Participatory Listener: This is another type of listening where we are expected to help the speaker with his/her own thoughts. In these situations the person is having some serious problem or crises in life and is unable to cope with the situation. Here we sincerely need to help the person by thinking and voicing our thoughts to them. We need to help them look at the situation more objectively and in more ways enabling them to come towards a conclusion. In other words we need to help the other person think through the problem.

Hence there are different ways of listening and it is an art that needs to be constantly practiced. For one we need to have a genuine concern for the other person and try to look at the world through their eyes. In empathetic listening the speaker can definitely unburden himself and the listener comes away feeling that he has truly helped the other person.

Me and the Atman

Central to Hindu philosophy is the concept of the Self or the Atman which is the unchanging phenomenon behind the changeable universe. The Atman is supposed to be changeless, formless, colorless and immanent, indestructible and so on. Knowledge of the Atman, the sages say, will enable us to transcend the dualities of this world.
However, any attempt to know and understand this phenomenon is a difficult task and is fraught with dangers. We can easily start hallucinating or imagining things that are not true. As the Gita says that only a true yogi who is completely disciplined in mind, body and spirit can probably attempt such profound knowledge.

However closer to the earth, we mortals can definitely attempt to understand ourselves better. We have to look inward into ourselves. We need to understand why we react the way we react. We need to look into ourselves and find out what is it that causes us to be impatient, to be intolerant, to get angry, or makes us swell with pride or conceit.

Rather than chasing some difficult concept as the Atman, Brahman we need to get down to earth into the journey into ourselves. Why are we so proud? Why do we crave for attention? What makes us sad?

These are questions for which the answers only we have. It is all based on our inner beliefs, our convictions and our view of what is right and what is beautiful. Before judging somebody we need to look into ourselves and look at our beliefs of what is it that is correct behavior. While it is likely that the other person had transgressed, it is equally likely that our understanding of what is correct behavior in the given circumstances could be wrong.

Hence we have a lot of answers within ourselves. Sometimes we have to correct our view of the world. Once we understand ourselves better, and on why we behave the way we do we can understand the world better and why people behave the way they do.

The Impossibility of Being Good

Being good under all circumstances is next to impossible, We can be good in bits and pieces. We may have understood difficult philosophical ideas, We may also be able to expound esoteric concepts and abstruse ideas. But under certain situations our baser feelings and emotions predominate.Try as we may we cannot get rid of our feelings of pride, the need for validation, the temptation of desire and the all consuming power of hatred or anger.

Every little act of charity and kindness we do is temporary . We think such acts and such benevolence will increase the amount of goodwill in our kitty. Sometimes the acts of charity are our amends for our bouts of bestiality.

Somehow it is almost impossible to really good, to always be uniform in our reactions to others. There is extraordinary difficulty in being compassionate, humble and honest. Unless one has renounced life and lives in a convent, monastery or a ashram trying to be good at all times in daily life is truly the greatest achievement. There are probably only a countable few in the world who really achieve such greatness.

In fact, while fully participating in worldly affairs, it is "easy to be wise but impossible to be good".

Avoiding Mental Traps

In life there are many things that are not to our taste and our liking. There are many things that we would like to be different and work differently. However these things are beyond our control. We may dislike our job, our boss, habits of our friends or spouse. But it is better that we accept things the way they are and move on in life.

However the danger is that we quickly form opinions and make judgments on others and our state of affairs. The issue is that we tend to put ourselves into mental traps of our own making. We tend to base our actions and decisions on malformed opinions in our mind. The mind is goal seeking and tries to substantiate our own false ideas and ill-formed judgments. The mind tends to distort reality in order to substantiate our biases. We are led deeper and deeper into erroneous thinking. In fact, we can end up deceiving ourselves completely in the web of our thoughts which are based on completely wrong ideas. It is imperative that we identify the error in our thinking and remove any pre-conceived notions we may have about things.

We should not let our mind drag us into the quicksand of hatred, contempt or jealousy based on biases that we have in our mind. We should rise above pettiness in life and move ahead in life. We really need to understand the workings of our mind and be able to overcome emotions of anger, envy, contempt and excessive desire.
Being able to transcend our own pettiness in life is one of the most difficult things in life. While we may be capable of thinking lofty thoughts, if we drop our guard we can be very quickly deceived by our minds.

We need to mentally alert all the time and channelize our mental energies into creative and problem solving activities then we are truly on the road to real wisdom.

The State of Perfection

Who is the perfect human being? How does one achieve perfection in life? To reach a state of perfection one does not require the ability to understand esoteric concepts of the soul, atman, Brahman or to understand how one can unite with the Universal Consciousness. Neither does it require the practice of austerities nor the mindless chants of hymns or prayers.

What is required of everyone is to understand the import of philosophy and the need to understand the principle behind the unalloyed devotion to God. The end of all philosophy is that we become better human beings. Whether one understands the higher flights of philosophic thought or whether one performs rituals daily is not important. What is more important is the need to be a more compassionate, kind and an understanding person. We need to be able to perform our duties with integrity, to be charitable and to be forgiving. We need not indulge in intellectual understanding of philosophy but we definitely should make ourselves a better person. In fact it is harder to be devoid of hate, pride and envy than it is to mouth philosophical cliché’s. This is the most important learning that all of us should take away.

In fact, in the Mahabharata, there is the story of the sage who through the practices of extreme austerities is able to achieve great powers. In a fit of rage he is able to burn two birds just by his look. This sage goes to a village to beg for some food. He goes to a house and is asked to wait by the housewife. The sage thinks to himself “how dare this woman ask me to wait. She does not know my powers yet”. While he is in the midst of his thoughts the woman tells him from inside the house not to mistake her for the two birds he burnt in the forest. The sage is amazed and asks the woman how she knew what the sage was thinking. To which the housewife replies that she is just an ordinary housewife performing her duties to her husband and to her family. She also tells him to meet a “vyadha” or a butcher in the village if he wants to really wants to learn philosophy and dharma. The sage then meets the vyadha who expounds the meaning of dharma and the importance of ahimsa (non-violence) and satya (truth) . This is known as the “Vyadha Gita” and contains profound philosophic thought.

Hence achieving perfection does not depend on comprehending neither abstruse philosophical concepts nor the observance of rituals but the need to perform one’s duties with the absence of hatred and envy. We are also required to be forgiving, charitable and magnanimous to others. This is truly a state of perfection worthy of being achieved by all of us.

Uncovering morality through the Mahabharata - Part 3

The tragedy of Karna

The tale of Karna in the Mahabharata is really tragic. Karna is the illegitimate son of Kunti who disowns him at birth. Despite being born a Kshatriya or a warrior he is raised by a charioteer. During Draupadi's Swayamvara though Karna wants to participate and prove his skills in archery, Draupadi he is barred from entering the competition since it is assumed that he is a charioteer's son To add insult to injury Draupadi scorns his lowly birth.

Karna is also truly selfless. In fact his largesse and magnanimity becomes his undoing. Karna being the son of Surya is born with an armor and earrings which make him invincible. But Indra comes in the guise of a brahmin and asks Karna to part with his armor and earrings.

Similarly Kunti asks Karna to vow that he will not harm the Pandavas who are in the enemy ranks. Karna immediately obliges. Though he could have slain the Pandavas he upholds his vow to his mother.

Finally Karna is slain by an arrow by Arjuna when Karna is trying to lift the wheel of his chariot which is stuck in the mud.

So the question that arises as to what extent can one be selfless in one's deeds. In fact the tragic story of Karna brings back the ethical question of the Greeks "Is it better to be strong or is it better to be good ?".

Karna was both good and strong but his excessive selfless goodness proved to be his undoing. As somebody said 'Don't compromise on yourself, you are all you got."