Listening to the Thin Voice of Silence

Hans Ucko

Deep listening to the other doesn’t just provide space for the other to be who he or she really is. Listening to the other also provides space for the listener’s own religious wanderings and pilgrimage.

The duo Simon and Garfunkel is famous for many songs. One of them is entitled “The Sound of Silence:"

"And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening."

Most of us have noted the same. People talk but don’t communicate. People hear but are not listening. It’s not unusual, and we come across it, even in that which we refer to as dialogue. The realm of dialogue, where two or more people exchange ideas or opinions on a particular issue, is not always true to the inner meaning of the word. The word dialogue [διάλογος] itself is maybe to blame. The word is derived from the Greek words διά (diá), meaning “through,” and λόγος (logos), meaning “speech” or “discourse.” Dialogue thus means “through speech.” The word dialogue itself, from which of course the very concept of dialogue arises, may actually make us believe that listening is somehow subordinated to talking. It does not seem to offer space for listening, as if through speech alone we could dialogue.

Although there may be two or more in a room and one would imagine that dialogue would be the modus operandi, dialogue easily turns into monologue. The French call such exchanges “un dialogue des sourds,” a dialogue of the deaf. One doesn’t understand the other, and yet they both think they are on the same issue or topic. One knows what to say even before seeing or listening to the other. There is more talking than lis-tening. We don’t pay much attention to the implications of the saying that God created us with two ears but only one mouth. The mouth dominates and the ears shut themselves off as if they were not needed to understand the other, as if one already knew who the other is and what the other has to say. When hearing does not mean listening, perspectives become skewed. What you say matters less; it is how I can capitalize on it that matters. I hear what you say but only because I want to know when to jump in to say what I wanted to say already irrespective of what you would like to say. I want to project my own opinions. I wait for what I think is my cue line, the moment when I will mount and ride my hobbyhorse around the scene to present my case or arguments. In such conversations or dialogues, whether a dialogue among the highest religious leaders or ordinary people in everyday exchanges, the focus is locked on to the telling of my story, what I think, how I feel, how it should’ve been, how it’s always been. The other is instrumentalized, that is, turned into an instrument in order that my own goals are attained. One attends only to the surface of the words rather than listening to how they echo or how each word reflects. And people talk at each other but not with each other. Listening is absent. And one has forgotten “that every story needs a listener,” a key sentence in the work of the South African Institute for Healing of Memories.

Sometimes dialogue looks like dialogue but is not. It is, rather, a duet. There’s a difference between dialogue and duet. The end result of a duet is known before it has even begun. It has been composed. The beginning, the flow, and the end—they have all been put on a sheet of music. There are two voices, and the singers each have their part to sing. Sometimes they sing together. During the song they may part company, but at the end they join each other again. Two voices are heard in a way that reveals above all the inspiration, intention, and inventiveness of the composer. A dialogue is different. If it is a genuine encounter, it cannot be programmed, and there is always room for that which has not been said before. What is said is maybe not all that is said. If you listen carefully to the other, you will maybe hear more than what is said. Dialogue is not like a duet. There is something unpredictable about an encounter steeped in an attitude of dialogue.

To listen in dialogue is to admit the other and the universe of the other. You are willing to enter the world of the other, suspend judgment, and listen as you go along into that world. To listen means that you allow yourself to question your own presuppositions and assumptions. You may have to sacrifice assumptions. Are they biases and prejudices that you have just taken over without much reflection? How many calling for dialogue are not limiting themselves by their expectations of seeing the other accept their point of view? Dialogue is to open oneself up to walking next to the other in accompaniment. There is, therefore, something of a potential sacrifice involved in dialogue, a preparedness to be quiet and listen and to allow the other time and space, reading between the lines. Words are being said and declarations are being made, and through deep listening you may realize that this is not all that is being said.

Listening is not a passive or static activity but a way of being present without judgment. We let go of our inner clamoring and our usual assumptions and listen with respect for precisely what is being said. It is through listening that we will learn who the other is and, even more, who we are ourselves.

A teacher told a student from Paris who was about to leave for London for some time, “Living in London for one year does not automatically imply that you will know all of London. But there will be parts of London that you had not seen before that will now add to your knowledge. In the light of the many surprises that you will have while dis-covering London, you will suddenly understand some of the deepest and most original features of Paris, those you did not know before and could not learn in any other way.” You had to go to London to discover Paris in depth.

Deep listening to the other may cause you to discover some of your own inner understandings, those you may not even have articulated to your-self. Such moments are sacred. There is something sacred in listening. You don’t see what it is, you have no idea beforehand; doors are opening to that which is beyond both you and the other. Listening may open doors into the sacredness of your own being, and you may suddenly sense something that is difficult to describe or define. Thoughts and perspectives overwhelm you, and you can’t find words to describe your feelings: is it an awareness of something that is holy or sacred? There is a feeling of humility, gratitude, and thanks-giving; a sense of something ineffable, and you don’t have any other word for it but calling it divine; there is a sense and awareness of limits and even powerlessness; there is a sense of the eternal and of fusion with the whole of the universe. Awe overwhelms you, this sentiment or feeling of reverence, wonder, and interconnectedness. It is this realization of the unfathomable, always beyond and yet inexplicably moving and overwhelmingly present. Words cannot express that which listening uncovers. We can only hint at what we think we fathom.

The words of Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet, scholar, and theologian, leave us with reverberations of what silence brings:

“A deep silence revives the listening and the speaking of those two who meet on the riverbank. Like the ground turning green in a spring wind. Like birdsong beginning inside the egg. Like this universe coming into existence, the lover wakes and whirls in a dancing joy, then kneels down in praise."

And yet awe is not necessarily connected to faith or religion. It may precede faith or be the root of faith. The sense of awe leaves me in bewilderment and confusion, and there is a question in the depth of me: “What is required of me? Something is asked of me. What am I to do with this feeling and sense of the mystery of living, what to do with the awe, wonder, or fear?” There is a sense of transcendent waiting, which is not immediately or even ever answered or given an interpretation. There is silence, and in this silence there is a presence, and this presence is not announced or preached or revealed or demonstrated in ostensible ways, colors, and sounds.

Elijah was a prophet in the northern kingdom of Israel, seeking God at Mount Horeb, another name for Mount Sinai, where the Ten Commandments had once been handed down to the people and the mountain was wrapped in smoke and shook violently. The Ten Commandments came with thunder and blasts of trumpets. Now it was Elijah who was at the same mountain, and he was told to go outside the cave and...

“...‘stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’...There was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks,...but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence.” (1 Kings 19:11–12).

And at the sound of sheer silence, Elijah wrapped his face in his mantle. The human quest for the divine or the numinous is sounding in this thin voice of silence. The trumpets and the fire and the smoke were visible and audible for everyone, even for those gathering a long distance away, but they didn’t count for Elijah. Everyone saw the fire and felt the ground shaking or smelled the smoke, but Elijah still waited. In the thin voice of silence, in this absolute stillness, there was the divine presence, there was the numinous, and it was perceptible only to the one who was silent and listened.

Deep listening to the other doesn’t just provide space for the other to be who he or she really is. Listening to the other also provides space for the listener’s own religious wanderings and pilgrimage. One is made aware of dimensions of one’s own faith seldom or never before visited. Through his or her religious tradition the other contributes to shedding light on dimensions in one’s faith that could become visible only through listening. We need the other for the sake of our own faith — someone who through her or his otherness will tell me over and over again: You are not arrived. There is more. There is still more. You cannot exhaust the divine or the absolute.

There is a risk when never being exposed to the other in his or her otherness. While it is a good thing to be strongly grounded and deeply rooted in your religious tradition or faith, there is a risk in thinking you can be self-sufficient in religion. While it may be a good thing to be unmovable and unshakable in your faith, you are at risk if it means becoming smug and conceited in your religion. You have it all. You know it all. You don’t need anyone. You can declare the truth, the true way, the only way. You can pontificate. It is a good thing when your faith enables you to stand up in confidence and hope, but there is a risk when it makes you insensitive to the presence of the other in his or her otherness, reducing the other to being only a recipient of what you confess or declare.

The Christian creed sounds magnificent and can be accompanied by beautifully sounding trumpets, horns, and kettledrums. It reflects conviction and commitment. Christians can stand up and solemnly declare the creed in unison: “Credo in unum Deum” (I believe in one God), but there is a risk of being heard only as a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. Leaving space and waiting for the sound of silence in your creed, making your creed also a moment of listening, may be more beneficial to the world of many voices and songs and hopes and dreams. Maybe there is wisdom in the Jewish prayer Sh’ma Yisrael, which functions as the equivalent to the Christian creed: “Hear, Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone.” There is in this prayer or creed an invitation to listen while confessing, to leave a space for silence, for listening into the silence while praising God, which may make you more sensitive to the presence of the other in his or her otherness, who is walking with you along many of the roads you’re walking.

We all come from somewhere and have attachments that can close us off to what is transpiring in the moment of here and now. Listening is conditioned by attachments. In listening we need to be able to hear afresh, even if we’ve heard it before. That which we’ve heard before easily fuses into that stream of earlier learning and prior experiences and easily disappears exactly because we’ve heard it before and we are convinced that we know all of its ins and outs. And then, on the other hand, that which we haven’t heard before may often appear so strange that we feel we don’t have a place for it. We have no receptors to receive what we’ve heard.

The Buddhist tradition is rich in education about the importance of listening. It’s not for nothing that the Buddha’s first disciples were called śrāvakas, or “hearers,” those who actually heard the Buddha speak. The Buddha knew that listening is an essential factor in education. He said:

“There are five advantages of listening to the Dhamma. What five? One hears things not heard before, clarifies things heard before, dispels doubts, straightens one’s ideas, and one’s mind is delighted.”

The Buddhist tradition is for me a catalyst in interfaith listening, and it is in its relations with other religions a genuine challenge to the Western Hemisphere, the Judeo-Christian traditions, and the heritage of the Abrahamic religions. As long as I find myself in the context of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, I know where to go and I know what to hear, and I may not hear what I hear. There is something of conditioned responses, which at times may be to the detriment of my listening. When I take for granted Abrahamic monotheism as the overall given and accepted perspective or world-view, the Buddhist nontheistic tradition takes me with great carefulness out of my theological comfort zone into the open field of amazement, obliging me to put aside for a moment my conditioned responses to listen afresh, asking myself if there’s anything like unconditioned responses, and if so, where they would take me. We need, as religious people — and this is what interfaith dialogue and interfaith listening are really all about — the overwhelming surprise of awe and wonder when hearing things not heard before, enabling us to revisit and rediscover things heard before and be for a moment stunned and ultimately able to reconsider and to straighten the way ahead.
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Hans Ucko is a pastor of the Church of Sweden and did his doctoral studies in India. He has been extensively involved in interfaith dialogue, particularly between Christians and Jews, and has written a number of books on the subject. He has served as the Program Executive of the Offi ce on Interreligious Relations and Dialogue of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and as President of Religions for Peace Europe. He is the President of the Nordic Gülen Institute and is since many years an interfaith adviser to Arigatou International.
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Source: Dharma World (October–December 2016, VOL. 43). Dharma World presents Buddhism as a practical living religion and promotes interreligious dialogue for world peace. It espouses views that emphasize the dignity of life, seeks to rediscover our inner nature and bring our lives more in accord with it, and investigates causes of human suff ering. It tries to show how religious principles help solve problems in daily life and how the least application of such principles has wholesome eff ects on the world around us. It seeks to demonstrate truths that are fundamental to all religions, truths on which all people can act. Dharma World is published quarterly by Rissho Kosei-kai International, 2-11-1 Wada, Suginami-ku, Tokyo 166-8537. E-mail: pub@kosei-kai.or.jp. Copyright © 2016 by Rissho Kosei-kai International. All rights reserved.

Image: Insight Dialogue Community. AWIP: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/spiritual-matters/aI05