The following talk was given at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.

Please visit our website at audiodharma.org.

So welcome to this fourth talk on wise listening.

And so the fourth topic is to listen so that it's beneficial.

To listen for what's the most helpful for others.

The ancient language in terms of speech, the fourth criteria is to speak what is beneficial.

But the word that's being given for beneficial is atta, which means also the goal.

And the goal is freedom. The goal is to be free of suffering, in the classically in Buddhism.

And so we apply this to listening is to listen from a place of freedom, the best that we have.

From a place of listening from a place where the benefits we received from meditation, maybe the best benefits we received, becomes a reference point to how to listen to others.

And so, like for example for me, there are a few times, maybe I'm having to go someplace a little bit late, but someone wants to talk to me.

And I can feel inside, I'm impatient.

And I've learned to recognize that my impatient is my own.

And not to an any kind of way, project that onto the others, like other people.

And somehow think poorly of them or think the problem is with them.

But rather, I've learned that my impatience harms me.

My impatience is unfortunate that I should lose a subtle place.

So I make it my practice then to return to a place of subtleness or openness or freedom where I'm not caught in the impatience.

The byproduct of that is then I can listen without that impatience, which is a much better way to listen.

And now, so I'm listening with the highest benefit for myself as a reference point.

And as I practice with that, then I, you know, with a little bit of luck, can be available without that hindrance and just be there listening to others.

So that pattern of checking in with myself, what the hindrances I have and freeing them myself of it, means that I'm not trying to be impatient, act impatient, or really what's happening is I'm impatient.

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