Simply Listening

I recall my last sitting. I awoke the other night; my wife and daughter were fast asleep. Let me describe the experience to you. This exercise was motivated by a desire to approach this—whatever word we’re using to describe it—with more intentionality. This intentionality colors what follows.

I chose to sit in the backroom of our house; it’s a multifunctional room, primarily the dining room, secondarily my wife’s office. I believed it was the quietest room in the house. I don’t think that anymore. When you’re really listening, just sitting for a moment, the fact that your house is in North Carolina becomes abundantly evident. You hear the cicadas, which ordinarily disappear into the background. They are undeniably present.

I was sitting on my Amazon-purchased meditation pillow on a rainy and windy night. Those were the second and third most prevalent sounds: the rain on the roof and the wind blowing through the conifers, occasionally causing the house to creak. In this backroom sits our secondary freezer, which clicks on every 10 to 15 minutes. What is usually a quiet, almost imperceptible sound, generally dissolves into the background. In this moment, it roared through the room, accompanied by a high-pitched electronic whine. I attempted to accept this irritating noise, ultimately unsuccessfully.

When I managed to look past these “external” sounds, my thoughts came to mind. And so I listened. When I write of listening, I mean it in the broadest sense—not just audible sensations, but everything. We often distinguish between exterior sensations from our senses and our interior world of thoughts and raw experience. However, in the way it comes to us, I don’t think such a distinction can be made. There is nothing other than our unified field of experience, and it is to this that we listen.

Thoughts came across the field of my experience: the rain, the wind, and a deeper sense of frustration. I came to this backroom specifically because I desired to get something out of this experience. There was an underlying frustration because I had not yet arrived, had not yet sucked the marrow out of existence, had not yet lived. There was an obvious, aching lack, an instinctive reaction for a resolution, and then there was just this—a yawning nothing that always responds.

I’m sitting in my backroom. My thoughts concern my predilections, cultural matters, politics, but then more substantively, that I should remove the second freezer from this room, that I should rearrange the room entirely. I should experiment with different room layouts to maximize the space’s potential for my spiritual practice. There’s an absurdity to this, an incessant draw pulling my focus away from where it ought to be. Where it ought? What ought?

I need to “listen.” I need to listen in a way that does not pre-judge—a listening devoid of an ought. A listening without objective, preference, or need—a simple listening. So often, I am arrested by the sense that I need to meditate to become spiritually advanced, the Jedi master I aspire to become. Again, obviously an absurd notion. Absurd, but I don’t think I’m alone in this. I think it is difficult for our egos to give ourselves over to almost anything without entertaining the notion that we may become proficient in it, maybe even an authority on the matter. They will surely circle the block in search of our oh-so-great wisdom.

I’m sitting in the backroom. Let’s not call it meditation. The trouble with that word is that everyone thinks it requires doing something, like emptying the mind or reciting some mantra. I prefer the term sitting, not so open to misinterpretation. There is no technique, nothing to know. All there is, is sitting and listening.

Thoughts arise, and after a moment of wandering, my thoughts return to the realization that I’m currently sitting here. That’s not something you have to do; your thoughts wander back to your present reality without forethought. Some thoughts plague us with greater persistence, perhaps irritating or even enraging. Even the most mundane nothing of thoughts can induce a sort of rage, clouding the way after whatever we ought to be after. You can’t run from these thoughts; you probably can’t even breathe or mantra your way out of them. It’s far better to just listen. Listen not so much to the intellectualization of the rage-inducing thoughts, but instead bring awareness to what you are feeling—the breathlessness, the tightness, the ache behind your eyes. One need not seek to move away from such intrusive thoughts. And yet, when we focus on the emotive quality of such thoughts, they do seem to dissolve. This is to say that when we focus on the emotive content rather than our intellectualization of said things, they dissolve. Not focusing on the why or the preceding history of x or y, but just the experience as it shows up now.

I’m in my backroom. I’m aware of the environment around me—the rain, the wind, the hum. I’m aware of my thoughts, the narrative into which everything is woven: who is sitting here, Lewis is. He is having these experiences; every thought correlates with who I know Lewis to be. Lewis knows himself to be living in North Carolina, so of course, he experiences the weather, the bugs, the condition befitting a man currently sitting on a cushion in his backroom in the old north state. My thoughts likewise correlate with who I believe myself to be. I am someone interested in politics, philosophy, spirituality, film, history, interior design, and so forth. As such, when my thoughts spill into such areas, they do not take me by surprise.

Listening requires no such orientation of my thoughts. A thought may occur. Let’s use a real example: I’m sitting in my backroom, and I start thinking of Jennifer Leigh’s missing teeth in Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight. I wonder how this effect was achieved. I assume Quentin Tarantino didn’t use CGI to pull off such an effect; that would go against his filmmaking ethos.

I’m supposed to be meditating, or rather, sitting. I shouldn’t be thinking about how certain film effects are pulled off. And so I feel frustrated with myself. I’ll refocus, breathe deeper, give more attention to my breath. I think, however, you can even see the roots of her teeth in those close-up shots, the ones where she’s covered in blood, scenes not unlike some from Kill Bill.

In a moment, my thoughts return to the room—the rain, the freezer’s hum. Focusing in on the hum, there’s a nagging sensation, a pointed pain that manifests in my head. I focus on that pointed pain, with its edges that lie towards the front of my skull. My attention draws something from the experience; it blurs the edges. Is my head even aching? I’d probably say yes, but with focus, with attention, it no longer resides front of mind. There is a quieting that occurs, not a quieting willed, rather a quieting that occurs naturally. It is not sought, simply arrived at by way of listening. I shouldn’t even state that it has resulted by way of my sitting practice, per se. I don’t think one should be pursuing it as some end to be striven for. Do not strive. Simply listen.

Don’t set goals or seek self-improvement; these only act to take you away from the current moment. Part of what it is to listen is to experience your thoughts as they come, to be aware of the manner in which they arise, what thoughts beget others, what emotions. The emotions will come: bemusement, frustration, anger. Our purpose here is not to resist such emotions but rather to note them, and not so much in a rationalistic way. Note these emotions in terms of their full felt experience, their physicality, their spatial quality. There is the I who perceives, the I that listens.