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

Please visit our website at adioderma.org.

So good morning, everyone, and welcome. Can you hear me okay?

So last week I talked about mindfulness of speaking, and so to follow up, this week I'd like

to talk about mindfulness of listening. And listening is such a, has not so much overlap with mindfulness that sometimes I think that if you can't

be mindful, listen. And or if you can't meditate, if you can't learn to meditate, learn to listen.

There's a little story that I made up, the ones of this person who lived next to the,

who was visiting from another country for a year, and was living next to the monastery.

And she started going visiting regularly and was taught to some introduction

to meditation and did some meditation and really was taken by this but then her family was going to

move back to her home country where there was no Buddhism and no meditation so she went to the abbess of the monastery and said,

what do I do when I get home? Who is going to teach me to meditate?

And the abbess said, ask around for the person who's the best listener

and then ask them to teach you how to listen.

So to listen, well, as a form of mindfulness or substitute for mindfulness.

But ideally, you do both.

Learn to be mindful and learn to listen.

Learn to be mindful as you're listening.

Learn to listen as you're mindful. There's tremendous value in listening. It's been said that some people have trouble listening

because it involves a lack of control.

And I suppose it does.

You don't control the people around you if you just listen.

...