Listening

Ann Marie sent me some materials from a workshop put together by the Collective Leadership Institute whose mission is to build competence for sustainability.

I was struck by this quote and I'm still thinking about it. What does he mean by 'silence?'

“I don’t know if you have ever examined how you listen, it doesn’t matter to what, whether to a bird, to the wind in the leaves, to the rushing waters, or how you listen in a dialogue with yourself, to your conversation in various relationships with your intimate friends, your wife or husband…If we try to listen we find it extraordinarily difficult, because we are always projecting our opinions and ideas, our prejudices, our background, our inclinations, our impulses: when they dominate we hardly listen at all to what is being said…In that state there is no value at all. One listens and therefore learns, only in a state of attention, a state of silence, in which this whole background is in abeyance, is quiet; then, it seems to me, it is possible to
communicate…..real communication can only take place where there is silence.”

Krishnamurti