Paper 04

Introduction

Listening is a skill that each one needs to develop for peace and a harmonious community. The peace and harmony of the community are largely attributed to the whole society. Although this skill has been a significant skill in human communication as well as in the preservation of Buddha's teachings, the academic education system does not widely provide it as a subject to learn. This paper attempts to state the most important dhamma for improving listening skills. The structure of this article will be divided into three subheadings: the meaning of listening, the contribution to listening, and the components of effective listening skills from the Pāli canon.

The meaning of listening

At the beginning, listening is a part of communication skills, which is defined as a difficult skill to develop. Firstly, these skills involve many factors. Previous research comparing hearing and listening has found that listening ability is key to obtaining information effectively and to combining it with psychological attention. This demonstrates that listening combines two things: hearing and mental focusing. Hearing should be focused. Only hearing without emphasizing to the speaker loses what the speaker wants the listener to hear. Thus, to comprehend what the sender said, this capability must be cultivated. The next reason for difficulty growing listening skills is based on dissimilar cultures. One study has classified three features: linguistic features, cultural features, and psychological features. For example, the results from earlier studies demonstrate a strong and consistent association between teachers and students from a Bangladesh school found that the reasons why students have poor listening skills are that they have not developed good listening skills from the primary level to the intermediate level, and the teachers do not teach them to become good listeners as well. Thus, the students do not want to improve their listening skills. This is observed in the cultural and psychological features because the students have not been practiced in listening since they were young, and listening culture was not widely applied. As a result, although listening is a powerful skill, it is difficult to develop.

Listening, besides being a difficult skill to develop, is a process of understanding. To comprehend the messages what are being sent should not be counted by only hearing, it must be used all the senses to listen. To listen well, one must use the six senses, such as seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and so on. In the cognitive process of Buddhism, understanding by the ears is caused by a few reasons. The Loka Sutta records that “Dependent on the ear and sounds there arises ear-consciousness. The meeting of the three is contact.” To know by ear, there are three categories in listening: Ear, Sound, and Contact. The Ear and the sound are matter (rUpa), which do not have any consciousness to know. Ear-consciousness arises when the three features are present in listening. Furthermore, several different factors contribute to the listening process. For instance, De Vito offers a new model for understanding listening skills with five components of the listening process: receiving, understanding, remembering, evaluating, and responding. All five must be processed while listening to somebody or something. And, a listener needs to focus on receiving the information that is given, to understand what is meant, to remember what the information is about, and before responding to the speaker, the listener has to evaluate the data correctly. Consequently, listening is a process of consciousness, which involves different components.

Again, listening is the gateway to comprehension. Understanding is the most important in human relationships, and it is one of the components of a successful interpersonal life. Biologically, we have two ears and one mouth. It naturally teaches us to listen more than speak. Thus, the authors highlight that possessing effective listening skills is considered important for success, and the one who masters it is always viewed as a positive. The one who wants success must master listening skills. Despite the fact that listening skills helps to have a successful life, the lack of listening skills leads to misunderstanding. Miscomprehension is the root of arising problems. Many problems arise from a lack of listening skills in an organization, state, business, and community. Hulbert (1989) addresses that “in business, the list of problems caused by poor listening is endless.” It is obviously shown that countless issues arise from poor listening. In addition, the problems that are relevant to poor listening skills are not only in business, it is larger than that. Previous investigations of listening skills have shown significant increases in poor listening skills, and that “lack of listening ability at all levels in organizations leads to work-related problems. Correspondingly, having poor listening capacity leads to hurt emotions in human relationships. Michael P. Nichols (2009) says that the most painful feeling is when the ones we value are not attentively listening to us. Therefore, poor listening ability creates various problems as well as hurts others’ emotions.

Additionally, attentive listening can be a form of respect. In a respectful manner, the Buddha also encourages the practice of attentive listening. Whenever the Dhamma sermon was given, listeners were always encouraged by the Buddha’s saying, “Bhikkhus, I shall teach you a discourse on the root of all things. Listen and attend closely to what I shall say.” Listening and paying close attention is what the Buddha often said whenever the Buddha was giving sermons. If not so, the listener can wrongly understand the Dhamma. Also, in the Canki Sutta, the requisites of effective listening skills are shown in a dialogue between the Buddha and a Brahmin.

“But what, Master Gotama, is most helpful for hearing the Dhamma? We ask Master Gotama about the thing most helpful for hearing the Dhamma.”

“Giving ear is most helpful for hearing the Dhamma, Bharadvaja. If one does not give ear, one will not hear the Dhamma; but because one gives ear, one hears the Dhamma. That is why giving ear is most helpful for hearing the Dhamma.”

“But what, Master Gotama, is most helpful for giving ear? We ask Master Gotama about the thing most helpful for giving ear.”

“Paying respect is most helpful for giving ear, Bharadvaja. If one does not pay respect, one will not give ear; but because one pays respect, one gives ear. That is why paying respect is most helpful for giving ear.”

It is seen that listening is not hearing. It is directly translated from the Pali term as giving ear, which means to actively or effectively listen. Hence, giving ears and paying close attention to the speaker have been taught by the Buddha for many years as a form of respect for others.

Moreover, effective listening skills emphasize the different levels of attention. Attention to what the speaker says is the only job that the listener needs to do at present. By drawing on the concept of listening skills, Leonardo (2020) states that active listening is bodily and mentally active in paying full attention to the speaker in response to the message of the speaker and in making the speaker feel heard and understand their needs. What is more, effective listening is not to concentrate only on the message, but also to listen to behavior. Regarding to pay attention to gesture, it is suggested that “effective listening is conscious listening when the listener hears both verbal and non-verbal communications that are being transmitted by the sender.” This listening skill requests to pay attention to the message as well as the body language at the same time. Thus, the definition of effective listening is that the listener should be more attentive and more focused on verbal and non-verbal actions.

Listening contribution to learning

In addition, learning is defined as a process of gaining knowledge for the solution of problems; it is important to investigate how listening supports learning. If one does not lose hearing ability, half of the knowledge comes from listening skills. Before a child knows how to think and speak, the child has to learn by listening to parents and relatives to know the human language. In the SaṅgIti Sutta, it is recorded that there are “three more kinds of wisdom: based on thought, on learning (hearing), on mental development (meditation).” By this saying of the Buddha, learning relies much on listening. Human beings, however, are equipped with six senses interdependently. There is not much consideration given to teaching how to obtain knowledge from the nose, tongue, and body. Generally, it is often said that knowledge comes from listening, thinking, and meditating. Moreover, to become a good speaker, one needs to have excellent listening skills. Because listening supports the speech to be better. It is stated that “an excellent way to improve your own speeches is to listen attentively to the speeches of other people. Over and over, teachers find that the best speakers are usually the best listeners.” This suggests that improving listening skills is also a system for learning how to speak. Hence, having good listening skills is a much effective tool in learning to gain knowledge and also to become a good speaker.

Although listening is a process to gain wisdom and to become a good speaker, the education system still focuses on reading and writing. In school teaching programs, listening skills have not been provided for young people for many years. Instead of listening skills, reading and writing were taught as the most important skills that each student needs to master. One study reported that “few schools teach listening skills because these skills seem so simple, yet many researchers have opined that listening is too complex to become the subject of study.” Listening skills are difficult skills to acquire. This challenge became a cause that made students lose an opportunity to study this skill at school. Besides that, in school, students are encouraged to practice reading and writing because these two skills are considered the most crucial qualities to success in academic learning. It cannot deny that reading and writing are techniques to develop student’s critical and creative thinking skills as well. Listening skills are also equally important to develop because “over 60% of all misunderstandings come from poor listening and only 1% from poor reading.” This illustrates that listening skills are a significant capacity that all students need to develop while they are young. Hence, one should ensure to master this skill.

In ancient times, when reading and writing were not dominant, people used listening skills to learn knowledge. The obvious example of applying listening skills to seek knowledge was the Buddha’s followers. Buddhists, at that time, applied listening skills to understand the Dhamma. There are two techniques of listening that were utilized by Buddha’s followers. Firstly, Bhikkhus used listening skills to pay close attention to the Buddha with a desire to comprehend the Dhamma. While listening to the Dhamma, the monks realized the rising and passing away of the four elements of the body, the sensation, the mode of mind, and the object of mind because listening is perceived to cultivate meditation. It is suggested that “mindfully listening to chanting is a meditative exercise intended to arouse the factors of the eightfold path in the listener.” With this attentive listening, some of the listeners became stream enterers (sotApanna), once-returners (SakadAgAmi), non-returners (AnAgAmi), the arahant (Arahanta), and devotees of the Buddha as soon as the Dhamma talk was completed. This listening method is called in Burmese “Khandha-Nanyok”, which means ‘listening with the realization of the mind and the body.’ As a result, listening to realization is used to search for wisdom.

Besides listening with realization, listening to remember is another skill. At the time of the Buddha, the Buddhist monks committed to memorizing the teachings of the Buddha. Traditionally, the texts are passed by listening, learning, and reciting as a form of meditation practice (Samatha and Vipassanā) in recollection of the teachings of the Buddha. To be concerned with listening to Dhamma as a practice of meditation, the monks drew attention to what had been heard. Additionally, it is said that a monk who has heard the truth Dhamma sees the five aggregates as revulsion things. The bhikkhu who learned the Dhamma through listening is called ‘SutavA ariyasAvako’. Also, the most remarkable person who could remember all the teachings of the Buddha was Venerable Ananda. This venerable was just an ordinary monk (Puthujana) when the Buddha passed away. However, Ven. Ananda took responsibility for questioning the Suttas at the first Buddhist council. Before this council event, the venerable had been honored by the Buddha with five recognizing awards: “Bhikkhus, the foremost of my bhikkhus among those with good memory, with a quick grasp, among those personal attendants, those who are resolute and who are learned is Ananda.” With these recognized honors, Ananda was selected to be a questioner of the Dhamma. At the first Buddhist council, Ven. Ananda started to ask questions that always referred to the Buddha to acknowledge as “EvaM Me SutaM- That Have I Heard.” After saying this phrase, the venerable recited and questioned the suttas that had been heard from the Buddha. Therefore, listening to memory was useful in that period.

Despite memorizing, by the time reading and writing were not popular, listening and reciting rituals had already existed. According to the SaṅgIti Sutta, Venerable Sāriputta requested that “friends, this Dhamma has been well proclaimed by the lord, the fully Enlightened One. And so, we should all recite it together without disagreement.” This became the first evidence that the Buddha appreciated his followers for reciting the Dhamma. Traditionally, in the time of the Buddha, there was no specific group to take responsibility for learning and reciting the Dhamma. However, Buddhism, like other beliefs at that time, created an oral tradition after the passing away of the Buddha. One study provides that “After the Buddha's death, the teachings continued to be passed down orally within the monastic community, in keeping with an Indian oral tradition that long predated the Buddha.” Buddhist monks separated into various groups to keep Dhamma as an oral tradition. From there until the Tipitaka was written down on leaves, it was passed down through learning by listening from one generation to another. Thus, listening and chanting are the systems to restore knowledge.

Effective Listening Skills

Effective listening skills comprise several elements from different perspectives of study. One of the studies shows that “effective listening and listenable speaking ultimately converge into the communication perspective of listening behavior.” Putting the other point of view first is an excellent skill to build efficient communication. The ability to see other people’s perspectives is considered an effective capacity for a listener to understand the feelings of the speaker with an empathic attitude. What is more, having a determination to listen is a part of effective listening skills. The author of “Art of Active Listening" Younger, highlights that “until we commit to becoming more effective at listening to others, we’ll continue to erode our relationships and miss opportunities to build something greater, together.” According to this, poor listening to others is a reason for failure in human relationships. Because one is not determined to listen to another person effectively. Therefore, being determined to listen to comprehend another person's perspective is a component of effective listening skills.

Regarding the components of effective listening skills, it should be illustrated which listening elements are from the Pali canon. They are categorized into many components. However, this article only pays attention to two components: loving kindness (mettā) and compassion (karuṇā).

Loving-kindness (Mettā)

One of the four immeasurables is loving-kindness (mettA), which is translated as love, amity, sympathy, friendliness, and active interest in others. The opposite of mettA is hatred or anger (dosa). Instead of using mettA, there is another term that is used in Abhidhamma. It is no anger or hatred (adosa). Again, in the explanation of Buddhist psychology, hatred has its own mental factors. In the anger group, together with hatred, there are four members: “hatred, envy, avarice, and worry are found in the two types of consciousness associated with aversion.” These four factors are always there whenever anger arises in the mind. By removing hatred, the four factors are dispelled immediately. In doing so, one needs to cultivate loving-kindness. In the Pathisaṃbhidāmagga, it is said that cultivating loving-kindness is removing hatred (mettA bhAvetabba byApAda pahAnAya).

In cultivating mettA, one needs to have faith (saddhā). Confidence is the root of all things. In MilindapaGhA, Ven. Nagasena answered that “the rain-cloud makes all seeds grow; even so, sire, the one who is devoted to mental training, having in all beings generated faith, should sow the seed of faith for (achieving) the three attainments of the blissful deva and human attainments and the attainment of the bliss of NibbhAna, the ultimate goal.” This shows that the root of all wholesome things is trust. Those who want to fulfill the three trainings (TisikkhA), at the beginning, should believe that the three practices are the only ways to attain true happiness. The Anaṅgaṇa Sutta records that “there are clansmen who have gone forth out of faith from the home life into homelessness, … established themselves in the wholesome.” Besides that, trust is the most important thing in communication skills. The fundamental theory, which is applied in marketing to earn trust from the customer, is ‘customer first’. Thus, trust is the foundation of cultivating mettA, which can destroy hatred with its factors.

Trust (saddhā)

Furthermore, the effective listening skills from the teachings of the Buddha are trust (faith, confidence, belief) (saddhA). Trust is believed to be a component that motivates the speaker to express thoughts and feelings. Tuhovsky (2015) suggests that listening creates trust, and the more listening to others, the more one gains trust from others. It is no doubt that someone would like to speak to those who are trusted. Without trust, it is impossible to openly discuss. Research has shown that “trust is an essential feature of social life. It is crucial for the health, harmony, and growth of any organization.” Numerous communities and organizations come together based on trust. When two or more people trust each other, it is a positive development of well-being and humility. Trust in Buddhism is related to faith in superiority. Then, how does trust become a component in social development, such as effective listening skills? For this, one needs to understand the Buddhist theory; obviously, the theory from the KAlama Sutta explains that trust should not arise from hearing and thinking. One should not believe in what one has heard and logically thought. The knowledge from hearing and thinking is not guaranteed, although one believes in it. As long as one does not apply and experience one's own self, the knowledge that one obtains from both hearing and thinking is not trustworthy. Trust must come from individual experiences. Similarly, the trust between organizations and human society must be developed based on the experiences of each individual. Thus, trust is a supporting tool for listening to a speaker to express.

Apart from cultivating loving kindness (mettā) as a factor of effective listening skill, compassion is believed to be the foundation for understanding and connecting with others. And, compassion is also interpreted as being interested in other people's problems. Being keen on others’ difficulties leads to forget invidual issues. For example, the Mahākapi Jātaka demonstrates that the Bodhisatta examined the difficult situation of his fellow monkeys. As a leader, Bodhisatta forgot to take care of himself. On the other hand, with help from the leader, all of his fellow monkeys felt connected and understood their leader. Similarly, to develop community, it is important to listen to understand. Dr. Bradford (2020), from Ohio State College of Medicine, quoted a founder of the International Listening Association (ILA), Dr. Ralph G. Nichols, saying that “the most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.” It shows that listening is the only thing that one can use to build a deeper understanding. Ward further suggests, “you need compassion to understand people's emotions, and you need it to stay in sync with how they feel.” Thus, compassion is believed to be the foundational element to create a better understanding among people. Additionally, compassionate listening is a form of connection. Many people feel disconnected. Dr. Rakel (2018) studied the human connection with his patient and concluded that “compassionate listening changed the dynamic between me and Martha and set her on a course that not only validated her experiences but also allowed her to design the next steps in her recovery.” Some illnesses are not caused by external factors, it is from the internal elements that one always perceives as a sick person. In this case, compassionate listening can help to cover it. Therefore, compassionate listening is not only a root element of understanding but also a factor for human connection.

Conclusion

Listening is the most essential skill that should be improved as a capacity for the development of community. Although this skill does not accumulate easily, each one can develop. In order to grow it, this article has demonstrated the interpretation of listening from various perspectives. In addition, this shows the contribution of listening to learning, such as achieving knowledge and becoming a good speaker. It has discussed listening and ritual recitation. Furthermore, loving kindness and compassion are pointed to as the most effective listening skills in the Pāli literature. Mettā is found to overcome hatred and improve trust, while Karunā shows understanding and connectedness. These effective factors must be applied for community development.

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