HEARING

Old pond,

frog jumps in—

splash.

BASHO (1644–1694)

Heavy early-morning mid-November rain is hitting the roof in the darkness above my head. Every moment, there is the sound of it. Can I hear it… beyond my thoughts about the rain, even for one moment? Can I “receive” these sounds as they are, with no concepts whatsoever, including the concept of sound? I notice that hearing happens effortlessly. I don’t have to do anything. There is nothing to do. In fact, in order to really hear, “I” have to get out of the way. My “I” is extra. There is no need for a “me” that is hearing, or looking out for the sounds, that is, listening. In fact, I notice, that is precisely where all the thinking is spouting from, from expectations, from ideas about my experience.

I experiment: Can I simply let sound come and meet the “ear consciousness” that arises in the bare experience of hearing, as is already happening in any and every moment? Is it actually possible to get out of my own way and just let there be hearing, to let the sounds come to the ear, be in the ear, in the air, in a moment, without any embellishment, without any trying? Just hearing what is here to be heard, since the sounds are already rapping at the gateway of the ears. Being with hearing in the stillness of open attending. Drip, drip, drip, gurgle, gurgle, gurgle, swirl, swirl, swirl… the air filled with sound. The body bathed in sound. In utter stillness, there is only the rain on the roof, whipped sometimes by the wind into sheets spattering on the windows, pure sound in the ears, filling the room.

In this moment, somewhere, far in the background, there is the knowing that I am sitting here, that rain is falling, but the experience “before thinking,” behind any thoughts that do secrete themselves, is one of pure sound, just hearing, no longer a separate hearer and what is being heard. There is only hearing, hearing, hearing… And in the hearing, the knowing of sound, beyond words like “rain,” beyond concepts like “me” and “hearing.” The knowing rests in the hearing. For now, they are one.

This rain is so forceful this morning, so compelling, so absorbing, that attention sustains itself effortlessly. The experiencing of sound has in this moment trumped the conceptual mind. This is not always or even usually the case. It is so easy to be carried into thinking. It is so easy to distract myself, to be carried so far away from the ears that I do not even hear the rain anymore, no matter how forceful, even though the body and the ears are still just as bathed in its sounds as the moment before, when there was only “just this…”

So, an elemental challenge of mindfulness is to rest in the awareness of hearing, hearing only what is here, moment by moment by moment, sounds arising, passing, silence inside and underneath sounds, beyond interpreting the momentary experience as either pleasant or unpleasant or neutral, beyond all identifiers and judgments, beyond all thoughts about anything, just this giving myself over to sitting, hearing, breathing, knowing.…

In the hearing, there is momentary freedom from any “me” hearing, and from what is heard, from both a knower and what is known. Nothing is missing. A moment of original mind, empty, knowing, vast. For a brief moment perhaps, we have actually come to, arrived at, our senses. Can we abide here for a time? Can we live here? What would we lose? What might be gained? Recovered? When are sounds and the spaces between sounds not present for us? When are sights not present to us? Are we here for them? Can we be here with them? Can we be the knowing, rest in the knowing, act out of the knowing, fully present with what already is? What is the feeling tone of such a moment?

Trying is not the answer. We do not have to try to hear. But the mind is devious. Can we know it? Can we know it?

Even in Kyoto—

hearing the cuckoo’s cry—

I long for Kyoto.

BASHO

Be a person here. Stand by the river, invoke

the owls. Invoke winter, then spring.

Let any season that wants to come here to make its own

call. After that sound goes away, wait.

A slow bubble rises through the earth

and begins to include sky, stars, all space,

even the outracing, expanding thought.

Come back and hear the little sound again.

Suddenly this dream you are having matches

everyone’s dream, and the result is the world.

If a different call came there wouldn’t be any

world, or you, or the river, or the owls calling.

How you stand here is important. How you

listen for the next things to happen. How you breathe.

WILLIAM STAFFORD, “Being a Person”