Listen

Close your eyes
Listen
(Listen, listen, listen, listen...)

Well now
The easiest way to get into the meditative state
Is to begin by listening
If you simply close your eyes
And allow yourself to hear
All the sounds that are going on around you
Just listen to the general hum and buzz of the world
As if you were listening to music
Don't try to identify the sounds you are hearing
Don't put names on them
Simply allow them to play with your eardrums
And let them go
In other words, you could put it
Let your ears hear whatever they want to hear
Don't judge the sounds
There are no, as it were, proper sounds or improper sounds
And it doesn't matter is somebody coughs or sneezes
Or drops something
It's all just sound
And if I am talking to you right now and you are doing this
I want you to listen to the sound of my voice
Just as if it were noise
Don't try to make any sense out of what I am saying
Because your brain will take care of that automatically
You don't have to try to understand anything
Just listen to the sound
As you pursue that experiment
You will very naturally find
That you can't help
Naming sounds, identifying them
That you will go on thinking
That is to say talking to yourself inside your head, automatically
But it's important you don't try to repress those thoughts
By forcing them out of your mind
Because that will have precisely the same effect
As if you were trying to smooth rough water with a flat iron
You're just going to disturb it all the more
What you do is this
As you hear sounds coming up in your head
Thoughts
You simply listen to them as part of the general noise going on
Just as you would be listening to the sound of my voice
Or just as you would be listening to cars going by
Or to birds chattering outside the window

So look at your own thoughts
As just noises
And soon you will find
That the so called outside world and the so called inside world
Come together, they are a happening
Your thoughts are a happening
Just like the sounds going on outside
And everything is simply a happening
And all you're doing is watching it

Can you hear the past?
Can you hear the future?
Can you hear the listener?

Where do the sounds come from?
Let them tell you the truth
(Truth, truth, truth, truth...)

Now in this process
Another thing that is happening that is very important
Is that you are breathing
And as you start meditation
You allow your breath to run
Just as it wills
In other words don't do, at first, any breathing exercise
But just watch your breath breathing the way it wants to breathe

And notice a curious thing about this
You say in the ordinary way 'I breathe'
Because you feel that breathing is something that you are doing voluntarily
Just in the same way as you might be walking, or talking
But you will also notice that when you are not thinking about breathing
Your breathing goes on just the same
So the curious thing about breath
Is that it can be looked at both as a voluntary and an involuntary action
You can feel on the one hand I am doing it
And on the other hand it is happening to me
And that is why breathing is a most important part of meditation
Because it is going to show you
As you become aware of your breath
That the hard and fast division that we make
Between what we do on the one hand
And what happens to us on the other
Is arbitrary

So that as you watch your breathing
You will become aware
That both the voluntary and the involuntary aspects of your experience
Are all one happening
Now that may at first seem a little scary
Because you may think
Well am I just the puppet of a happening
The mere passive witness of something that's going on completely beyond my control
Or, on the other hand, am I really doing everything that's going along?
Well if I were I should be God
And that would be very embarrassing
Because I would be in charge of everything
That would be a terribly responsible position
The truth of the matter as you will see it
Is that both things are true
You can see it that everything is happening to you
And on the other hand you are doing everything
For example, it's your eyes that are turning the sun into light
It's the nerve ends in your skin that are turning
Electric vibrations in the air into heat and temperature
It's your eardrums that are turning vibrations in the air into sound
And in that way you are creating the world
But when we are not talking about it
When we are not philosophising about it
Then there is just this happening
This er
And we won't give it a name

Now then
When you breathe for a while
Just letting it happen
And not forcing it in any way
You will discover a curious thing
That without making any effort
You can breathe more and more deeply
In other words
Supposing you simply are breathing out
And breathing out is important because it is the breath of relaxation
That's when we say phew
And heave a sigh of relief
So when you are breathing out
You get the sensation that your breath is falling out
Dropping, dropping, dropping out
The same sort of feeling you have as if you were settling down into and extremely comfortable bed
And you just get as heavy as possible
And let yourself go
And let your breath go out in just that way
And when it's thoroughly, comfortably out
And it feels like coming back again
You don't pull it back in
You let it fall back in
Letting your lungs expand, expand, expand
Until they feel very comfortably full
And you wait a moment
And let it stay there
And then, once again, you let it fall out
So in this way
You'll discover that your breath gets quite naturally
Easier and easier and slower and slower
And more and more powerful

So that with these
Various aids
Listening to sound
Listening to your own interior feelings and thoughts
Just as if they were something going on
Not something you are doing but just happenings
And watching your breath as a happening
That is neither voluntary nor involuntary
You are simply aware of these basic sensations
Then you'll begin to be in the state of meditation
But don't hurry anything
Don't worry about the future
Don't worry about what progress you're making
Just be entirely content to be aware
Of what is