3 : The Skills of Listening

There are cases in the Canon where several people listening to the same talk arrive at very different results: Some of them gain arahantship, others a lower noble attainment, others no noble attainment at all. This shows that the talk itself is not the only determining factor. The results are also determined by what the listeners bring to the talk.

This point is confirmed by several passages in the Canon that describe what is necessary for awakening to take place. Some of the passages deal with the noble attainments in general—i.e., regardless of whether they’re attained while listening to a talk—and others specifically with what a person needs to bring to a talk in order to gain a noble attainment while listening to it.

No single passage offers a complete, definitive picture of the factors that are needed. Instead, the various passages come at the issue from different angles, overlapping in some instances and offering distinctive details in others.

However, before we look at the passages, it’s important to note that the talk and what the listener brings to the talk are not always entirely separate. In some cases, listeners came to the Buddha’s Dhamma lacking in only one thing: the discernment that would bring about a noble attainment. All the other factors needed to open and steady their minds in a way that would support that discernment were already in place. Yet there were other cases where the supporting factors were also weak, but the Buddha or his disciples saw that they could inspire those factors in their listeners in an effective way. In cases like this, they faced two challenges:

• how to sense when these factors had the potential to be strengthened, and

• how to act and speak in a way that would strengthen them.

So, as we survey the passages describing these factors, try to view them from two perspectives: that of the speaker and that of the listener. From the speaker’s perspective, you’re looking to see how the Dhamma can be effectively presented. From the listener’s, you’re looking to see how to absorb the lessons of the Dhamma and apply them to the actions of your own mind.

The General Framework

The closest to an overall framework of qualities needed for gaining a noble attainment is provided by three passages that deal with the issue in general, regardless of whether you’re listening to a talk or meditating on your own. Two of the passages deal with mental qualities you have to develop in the present; one concerns your karmic background—past actions that would make you incapable of reaching any of the noble attainments in this lifetime.

Of the two passages that deal with mental qualities that have to be developed, the first lists the prerequisites for stream-entry, and thus for all the noble attainments.

“Association with people of integrity is a factor for stream-entry.

“Listening to the true Dhamma is a factor for stream-entry.

“Appropriate attention is a factor for stream-entry.

“Practice in accordance with the Dhamma is a factor for stream-entry. — SN 55:5

In this passage, what you bring to the practice falls under the last two of the four factors—appropriate attention and practice in accordance with the Dhamma—so we’ll focus on those.

Appropriate attention, as we noted in Chapter 1, means making an inquiry to see what you’re directly experiencing in the mind in terms of the four noble truths. It’s the focused activity of discernment. As we’ll see in the course of this book, the crucial feature of appropriate attention is the way it applies the framework of the noble truths to the problem of suffering, a framework that can be expressed in a variety of extended or succinct ways. In its shortest form, the framework comes down to origination and cessation: looking into the mind for the cause of suffering and for how suffering can be ended by ending the cause.

Practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma means to practice for the purpose of disenchantment, dispassion, and cessation (SN 12:67). It’s your motivation for developing discernment. The four suttas at SN 22:39–42 [§35] add that you arrive at disenchantment by regarding the five aggregates in terms of the three perceptions of inconstancy, stress, and not-self.

The fact that you’re aiming at disenchantment, dispassion, and cessation, means that you won’t be satisfied with the pleasures of concentration and discernment. In this, you follow the example set by the Buddha, who didn’t allow his mind to be overcome by any of the pleasures encountered on the path (MN 36), and who said that one of the secrets to his awakening was discontent with skillful qualities (AN 2:5). In other words, he aimed high, remaining heedful all along the path and not resting satisfied until he had reached total unbinding.

As we noted in Chapter 1, the path, as it develops, boils down to skillful use of attention and intention acting closely together. Appropriate attention is clearly an instance of skillful attention. The principle of practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma shows how attention and skillful intention are combined at this stage of the practice. Your intention is to arrive at the release that comes with disenchantment, dispassion, and cessation. You do that by applying appropriate attention to the aggregates, as we explained in Chapter 1.

These two factors show the challenges that faced the Buddha in bringing his listeners to the noble attainments. Appropriate attention conveys the good news that suffering can be ended, but it identifies the causes of suffering as coming from within. This means, on the one hand, that you don’t have to fight off outside forces to stop your suffering, but on the other hand it also means that you have to accept responsibility for your sufferings if you want to bring them to an end.

At the same time, the four noble truths show that you suffer because of things you hold dear, and even because of things you identify as your self. This means that the Buddha would have to convince his listeners to step back from their preferences, their habits, and even their self-identities, and to work at seeing the drawbacks of holding on to those things. In other words, he had to teach his listeners not only to be responsible but also to change their internal allegiances.

The need for his listeners to aim at disenchantment meant that the Buddha had to persuade them to aim high, just as he did. As we’ll see, this involved showing that he appreciated the pleasures offered by the world—he wasn’t a killjoy—but it also involved inspiring an acute sense of the dangers in resting satisfied with those pleasures.

Some of the steps by which the Buddha could accomplish these tasks are suggested in more detail in the second passage mentioned above and quoted below. This passage builds on the standard list of factors given in dependent co-arising. Unlike the standard list, though, it doesn’t stop with suffering and stress. Instead, it takes suffering and stress as the jumping-off point for a sequence of mental factors that should ideally be inspired by the experience of suffering and that culminate in the knowledge of ending—apparently, the ending of the effluents.

“Conviction has stress as its prerequisite.

“Joy has conviction as its prerequisite.

“Rapture has joy as its prerequisite.

“Calm has rapture as its prerequisite.

“Pleasure has calm as its prerequisite,

“Concentration has pleasure as its prerequisite.

“Knowledge & vision of things as they have come to be has concentration as its prerequisite.

“Disenchantment has knowledge & vision of things as they have come to be as its prerequisite.

“Dispassion has disenchantment as its prerequisite.

“Release has dispassion as its prerequisite.

“Knowledge of ending has release as its prerequisite.”

This sequence starts with the fact of dukkha: pain, suffering, stress. As the Buddha noted, the natural reaction to suffering is twofold: bewilderment as to why it’s happening, and a search for someone who might know how to put an end to it (AN 6:63).

The experience of pain, and the search for knowledge on how to end it, leads to conviction when you see a potential opportunity to end your pain that seems reliable. This means that the Buddha, when teaching his listeners, had to establish the fact that he was a reliable and trustworthy guide. As we’ll see in the following chapters, he had a variety of ways of doing this.

The Buddha explained conviction as meaning not only a sense of faith in him and the Dhamma, but also the act of putting the Dhamma into practice (SN 48:8; AN 10:92). In other words, conviction doesn’t mean just assenting to ideas. It also means acting on them. When you see that the Buddha’s instructions clear up obscure matters in the mind, and that following his recommendations gives results, the natural response is joy. You’ve found what you’ve instinctively been looking for. This joy gives rise to the rapture, pleasure, and calm that can provide the basis for concentration. Concentration then establishes the mind in a state where it’s more able and willing to see the steps by which it has been creating suffering and to stop following those steps. That’s what enables the mind to attain release.

So this passage shows not only what the listener has to do in order to attain a noble attainment, but also what the Buddha had to do in order to influence the listener in that direction: He had to inspire conviction in the listener and nurture the joy that would lead the listener to settle down in the type of concentration that could provide a good foundation for discernment to arise. This type of concentration, though, requires that the listener put aside all thoughts of sensuality. So the need to induce joy is also accompanied by a need to get the listener to put aside, for the time being at least, any fascination with sensual thoughts and fantasies. For some of his listeners this wouldn’t have been hard, but others would have required strong medicine.

The need to induce joy here raises two further issues. On the one hand, it shows that the Buddha’s reputation as a pessimist is extremely misguided. His listeners, if they were earnest in wanting to put an end to suffering, found his explanations a source of hope and relief. Again and again, they would exclaim that his teachings were magnificent in shining a light into the dark. The darkness they were referring to was probably the confusion and discouragement caused by the other teachings available in the Buddha’s time, many of which denied the power of human action to put an end to suffering (DN 2; AN 3:62). By proclaiming that human action could put an end to suffering, the Buddha’s teachings could be a source of genuine joy.

That joy was strengthened by the fact that those teachings clearly delineated right and wrong ways of ending suffering. Here again, they provided a useful contrast with the teachings available during the Buddha’s time that denied that ideas of right and wrong, good and evil, had any objective reality (DN 2).

Here we confront another mistaken popular notion: that the Buddha was non-dualist in moral issues, that he refused to draw a line between right and wrong. Actually, he saw that a teacher has to provide students with a solid basis for deciding what actions should and shouldn’t be done. Only then can that teacher end the bewilderment that comes from suffering, and protect the students from causing further suffering for themselves and others (AN 3:62). When you understand his mature perspective, you can appreciate how ideas of right and wrong are not oppressive. When you sincerely want to end your suffering, learning how to distinguish between right and wrong ways of accomplishing that aim can excite joy.

The second issue related to the issue of joy deals with the fact that, as the Buddha noted, many of his listeners would respond only to harsh teachings—teachings that focused on the negative effects of unskillful actions more than on the positive effects of skillful ones (AN 4:111 [§30]). As we’ll see, there were at least two explicit cases where the Buddha’s listeners become arahants after he pointed out the terrifying aspects of saṁsāra and their complicity in the actions that make saṁsāra so dangerous. The fact that they would feel joy in having their complicity called out may seem paradoxical and even illogical, but it relates to two possibilities: One, they appreciated the fact that the Buddha was a straight-shooter, fearless enough to treat them frankly and honestly. Two, in being forced to recognize their complacency and to see its inherent dangers, they found joy in taking refuge in the only alternative that offers genuine safety: the deathless.

As for the phrase, “knowledge and vision of things as they have come to be,” that refers to insight into the processes by which suffering is caused and the processes by which it can be ended. In other words, this knowledge and vision is identical to a direct experience of the four noble truths.

Those are some of the general outlines of the qualities of mind that have to be brought to any noble attainment. It’s useful to note that these qualities fall under three headings: conviction, concentration, and discernment.

• Under conviction there’s joy.

• Under concentration there’s rapture, pleasure, and calm.

• Under discernment there’s appropriate attention, practicing the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma, and knowledge and vision of things as they have come to be.

When we consider that, in the noble eightfold path, training in concentration also includes right effort and right mindfulness, we can see that the qualities needed for any noble attainment require all of the five faculties: conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. This point is supported by SN 46:38 [§29], which notes that all seven factors for awakening—which cover the same ground as the last four of the faculties—go to the completion of their development when a disciple of the noble ones listens to the Dhamma, “receptive, attentive, focusing his entire awareness, lending ear.”

However, there’s a certain logic to the way in which the passages we have cited above emphasize conviction, concentration, and discernment: Discernment is the crucial factor that does the work in gaining an opening to the deathless; conviction is needed to open the mind to the Dhamma that will spark that discernment; and concentration is needed to steady the mind so that discernment can see how the lessons of the Dhamma apply to subtle movements actually going on in the mind.

The remaining qualities listed in SN 12:23 after knowledge and vision of things as they have come to be, by the way, are results. You don’t bring them to the noble attainments. You take them away.

As for the karmic background you bring to the Buddha’s teachings, AN 5:129 states that there are five types of inhabitants of hell who are in agony and incurable—in other words, they have to complete the lifespan of that particular hell before they can be released from it. Cv.VII.5.4 says that a person who has, in this lifetime, committed one of the five acts listed here—he has caused a schism in the Saṅgha—is destined to boil in hell for an eon. This means that the noble attainments are entirely off-limits to him in this lifetime in any circumstances. DN 2 makes a similar point: A person who has killed his father can’t gain a noble attainment, and the same point would apparently apply to the other actions mentioned here as well:

“There are these five inhabitants of the states of deprivation, inhabitants of hell, who are in agony & incurable. Which five? One who has killed one’s mother, one who has killed one’s father, one who has killed an arahant, one who—with a corrupted mind—has caused the blood of a Tathāgata to flow, and one who has caused a split in the Saṅgha.” — AN 5:129

How to Listen

As for the various passages that deal specifically with the attitudes and karmic background a listener has to bring to the act of listening to a Dhamma talk so as to reach a noble attainment, they tend to be fairly patchwork. Each passage focuses on some of the details listed in SN 55:5 and SN 12:23, omitting some points and expanding on others. The passages in question, which overlap with one another to some extent, are AN 5:151; AN 5:152; AN 6:86; AN 6:87; and AN 6:88 [§§24–28]. When we collate their points, we come up with the following lists.

The points dealing with your karmic background focus on the fact that you haven’t committed any of the five acts mentioned above in AN 5:129 that would obstruct an attainment in this lifetime, and that you’re discerning: In the words of AN 5:152, you’re “neither dim-witted nor a drooling idiot.”

As for the attitudes you have to bring to the act of listening, they fall under the same three headings that, as we just saw, apply to gaining the noble attainments in general: conviction, concentration, and discernment.

• First, conviction:

You don’t hold the talk in contempt.

You don’t hold the speaker in contempt.

You don’t hold yourself in contempt.

Your mind isn’t obstructed by defilement.

You’re endowed with the patience [or: preference] to comply with the teaching.

Some of these points require very little explanation. If you have contempt for the talk or for the speaker, you’re not going to listen carefully or with an open heart, so you won’t be able to absorb the message. If your mind is obscured by defilement—such as greed, aversion, or sensuality—you won’t be paying proper attention.

The factor of patience to comply with the teaching is an issue of willingness. Convinced of the value of the Buddha’s message, you’re willing to give his teaching a try. This point reflects the Buddha’s discussion of what conviction means: You not only give intellectual assent to what he has to say, but you also believe in it enough to try putting it into practice.

Especially interesting is the need not to feel contempt for yourself. To get the most out of the talk, you have to apply its message to what’s going on in your mind—in the Buddha’s terms, “seeing what has come to be as come to be”—and then responding appropriately. For this, you need to believe that you’re capable of understanding the Buddha’s message, that it applies to what’s going on in your mind right then and there, that you’re capable of applying his lessons to direct what your mind is doing, and that you’ll benefit when you do. If you believe that you’re incapable of doing these things, the most crucial element of gaining a noble attainment while listening will be missing.

It’s for this reason that Ven. Ānanda recommended a healthy level of conceit on the path:

“The thought occurs to one: ‘The monk named such-&-such, they say, through the ending of the effluents, has entered & remains in the effluent-free awareness-release & discernment-release, having directly known & realized them for himself right in the here & now. Then why not me?’ Then, at a later time, one abandons conceit, having relied on conceit.” — AN 4:159

• The second set of attitudes you need to bring to the act of listening has to do with concentration:

• You have desire.

• You listen well.

• You give ear.

• You listen to the Dhamma with an unscattered mind, a mind gathered into one [ek’agga-citto].

Here, two points are worthy of note.

The first is that desire is necessary to get the most out of listening. You have to want to listen, you have to want to get the mind into concentration, and—as we’ll see in the next set—you have to want to go beyond concentration for the discernment that’s needed for awakening to arise. If you’re satisfied with where you are, you may decide that you’re exercising discernment in simply accepting and being present for what is. You won’t get any further on the path.

This is a point that’s widely misunderstood. Some people, on seeing that the three forms of craving are the cause of suffering, assume that all craving has to be put aside to follow the path. But the path isn’t something that happens on its own. You have to do it—and to muster the effort to do it, you have to want to do it.

Ven. Ānanda: “‘This body comes into being through craving. And yet it is by relying on craving that craving is to be abandoned.’ Thus it was said. And in reference to what was it said? There is the case, sister, where a monk hears, ‘The monk named such-&-such, they say, through the ending of the effluents, has entered & remains in the effluent-free awareness-release & discernment-release, having known & realized them for himself in the here & now.’ The thought occurs to him, ‘I hope that I, too, will—through the ending of the effluents—enter & remain in the effluent-free awareness-release & discernment-release, having directly known & realized them for myself right in the here & now.’ Then, at a later time, he abandons craving, having relied on craving.” — AN 4:159

The important role of craving on the path—which the Buddha equates with desire—is underlined by the fact that desire is an integral part of the path factor of right effort. This is also why Ven. Ānanda made the comparison: To get to a park, you have to desire to get to the park. When you’ve arrived, you can put that desire aside (SN 51:15).

The second point of interest under the heading of concentration is the word the Buddha uses to describe the mind state that’s fully concentrated on listening: ek’agga. This is sometimes translated as “one-pointed,” and because this term is used to define the state of mind in concentration, this translation is often cited to argue that a mind in right concentration has to be reduced to a single, narrow point of concentration—so extremely narrow that you have no awareness of your body or of the other physical senses, and no ability to think.

There are two ways of showing that this interpretation is wrong. The first is to look at the term ek’agga itself. It’s a compound of two words, eka and agga. Eka means “one” or “single.” Agga has two primary clusters of meanings, in neither of which is “point” the central focus.

The first cluster centers on the fact that a summit of a mountain is called its agga. Clustered around this meaning are ideas of agga as the topmost part of something (such as the ridge of a roof), the tip of something (such as the tip of a blade of grass), and the best or supreme example of something (such as the Buddha as the agga of all beings). AN 5:80 plays with these meanings of agga when it criticizes monks of the future who will “search for the tiptop flavors (ras’agga) with the tip of the tongue (jivh’agga).”

The second cluster of meanings for agga centers on the idea of “meeting place.” A hall where monks gather for the uposatha, for example, is called an uposath’agga. The spot where they gather for their meals is called a bhatt’agga.

Given that the object of concentration is said to be a dwelling (vihāra), and that a person enters and dwells (viharati) in the levels of jhāna, this second cluster of meanings seems to be the more relevant one here. A mind with a single agga, in this case, would simply be a mind gathered around one object or activity, and need not be reduced to a single point.

Moving from the term ek’agga to the more general context of the Canon as a whole, we’ve seen that the similes used by the Buddha to illustrate the practice of right concentration all point to a full-body awareness. If right concentration were so narrow that you couldn’t experience the body at all, the similes would be misleading, and probably wouldn’t have occurred to the Buddha in the first place.

But perhaps a more relevant way to show that ek’agga can’t mean so narrowly focused that you can’t think or hear is this: Such a meaning would make no sense in the context we’re considering here. In AN 5:151 [§27], from which we’ve taken this term, your mind is said to ideally be ek’agga while listening to the talk, and at the same time you’re engaged in appropriate attention. If ek’agga meant so one-pointed that you can’t hear or think, that would defeat the purpose of listening. You wouldn’t be able to hear what the speaker is saying, and you wouldn’t be able to observe the mind on the path in real time. If you were in the first jhāna while listening, there would be no way that you could observe, as it’s actually happening, that “This is the path to the cessation of stress.”

So the translation for ek’agga we’ve given here—“gathered into one”—seems more warranted than “one-pointed”: You’re single-mindedly focused while listening to the talk.

However, your focus is not just on listening. To apply appropriate attention, you have to focus on applying the lessons of the talk to the mind—to get it into concentration and then to observe the mind in concentration, in line with the duties of the four noble truths. In other words, you have to bring attention and intention together in a skillful way.

• This is how the second set of attitudes you need to bring to the act of listening melds into the third, which has to do with discernment.

• You set your mind on gnosis.

• You attend appropriately.

• Not understanding, you don’t assume you understand.

• You reject what’s worthless.

• You grab hold of what’s worthwhile.

The factor of setting your mind on gnosis means aiming at the knowledge of total liberation. It’s primarily an act of intention, one that’s needed to give rise to appropriate attention on the ultimate level. In other words, here we have another example of how intention and attention have to work together in giving rise to liberating discernment. As we noted above when considering what it means to practice the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma, you have to aim high if you’re going to develop the discernment that will lead to release. The level of attention required to gain that discernment has to be highly motivated.

We’ve already seen, in Chapter 1, one way of attending appropriately: regarding the five clinging-aggregates in line with the eleven perceptions listed in SN 22:122 [§34]. AN 9:36 [§17] shows how you can do that while the mind is properly concentrated even in the levels of jhāna. While you’re listening to a talk, appropriate attention means asking the right questions as to how the talk applies to what’s going on in the mind, noticing the four noble truths as they appear internally, and following the appropriate duties to each instance as it appears. In other words, you develop concentration and discernment so as to comprehend the clinging-aggregates as you detect them in the concentration. Then you further develop discernment to abandon any craving for those objects of clinging and to realize the cessation that results.

The factor of not assuming that you understand when you don’t is especially interesting. It relates to the Buddha’s characterization of his style of teaching: He said that he trained his following, not in bombast, but in cross-questioning (AN 2:46). Training in bombast means teaching elegant concepts but being unwilling to answer questions about the meaning of the terms you use. Training in cross-questioning is the opposite: You teach in terms connected to the path leading to the goal, and you answer questions to make their meaning plain.

What the Buddha is suggesting when he says you shouldn’t assume you understand when you don’t is that if you have any doubts, you should feel free to ask questions. He himself embodies this principle in practice by freely asking questions of his listeners. In fact, it’s noteworthy, in the talks where his listeners gain awakening while listening to the talk, how often he questions them and expects them to give answers. But it’s also noteworthy that, of these talks, there are only four where listeners ask questions of the Buddha (DN 21; SN 46:56; MN 109; SN 22:89 [§§42–43; §§55–56]).

However, as we’ll see, there was one talk—the graduated discourse—that the Buddha used frequently to prepare his listeners to best benefit from learning the four noble truths. We have only the bare outline of the talk, and never a full text. Because he gave the talk to a wide variety of people, he probably tailored the general outline to the specific needs of those he was talking to. This means that he may have answered his listeners’ questions in the course of this talk, establishing the atmosphere of openness and helpfulness that his training in cross-questioning could provide, but we simply don’t have a record of what those questions and answers were.

Finally, the factor of rejecting what’s worthless and grabbing hold of what’s worthwhile means, basically, that you’re wise in following through with the duties of the four noble truths as you approach events in your own mind with appropriate attention. You reject the causes of suffering, along with any attitudes that would foster those causes, and instead grab hold of the path—until you reach the point where you have to let go of that, too.

This factor shows the direct connection among discernment, right effort, and the sub-factor of ardency in the practice of right mindfulness: Discernment means not just seeing things as they are, but seeing them as they function, and how their way of functioning can be directed to putting an end to suffering.

So, all in all, the qualities you have to bring to listening to the Dhamma so as to reach a noble attainment while listening fall under the three headings of conviction, concentration, and discernment. When we review them, we can see that they follow—and in some cases expand on—the Buddha’s observations on what’s needed to gain a noble attainment in general: opening the mind, steadying it, observing it while applying the lessons of the Dhamma to it. We can also see the challenges faced by the Buddha if he wanted to induce his listeners to gain a noble attainment while listening to him speak.

Of course, these challenges would have varied from case to case. In some instances—as when he was teaching lepers and outcastes—he had to emphasize the point that they not hold themselves in contempt. In other instances—as when teaching lay people in general—he had to get their minds away from sensual thoughts, establish them in concentration, and inspire them to aim high.

In every case, though, he would have to teach his listeners how to foster their discernment, because that was what even those endowed with strong conviction and concentration would still be lacking. But even here, his task would vary depending on the individual. Some people needed to have the four noble truths explained in detail. Others—such as Bāhiya, Sāriputta, and Moggallāna—needed only brief hints of the principles and the framework underlying the truths, and they were able not only to penetrate the implications of those truths but also to put their duties into practice then and there.

So, keeping in mind the general principles of what attitudes a listener needs to bring to a talk in order to reach a noble attainment while listening to it, we can now turn to specific examples of how the Buddha and his disciples nurtured those attitudes in the hearts and minds of their listeners in actual practice.