excerpts

It is very important to know how to listen, because most of us never listen at all. Listening is in itself an action of liberation; it frees the mind.

But when you do listen, what actually happens. If you observe your own mind you will see that you are comparing what is being said either with what you know, or with some authority whom you respect.

You are always comparing or interpreting, aren't you? Therefore the mind is not in a state of listening at all. To listen you must give your total attention, and total attention is denied when you are comparing or interpreting. When you say that you see a correspondence between what is being said here and the teachings of Shankara or Buddha, that is a lazy man's way of listening.

But if you really want to learn the truth about yourself, then you are bound to listen without comparing, without a calculated interest. And I say in that very act of listening without comparison or interpretation you will discover for yourself that in the state of learning the mind is not accumulating. But when the mind has learnt, it obviously ceases to learn, because it is always interpreting the new in terms of the old.

So listening is an extraordinary thing, because if you are really capable of listening, it frees the mind from all influence. Then the mind is clear, sharp - and such a mind is necessary to find out what is true.

If you decide to do something, your action is born of choice, and that action will invariably create its own opposite; therefore you are caught in contradiction. So what are you to do? I say there is a total action in which there is no contradiction at all.