When we don't listen, we are shutting ourselves off -- not from others but from ourselves. We can't do anything from a place of knowing. When we think we know something, we don't listen. We have to empty ourselves over and over, return to unknowing, and just listen. And listen. And listen... And once we listen, we have to act. The functioning that comes out of listening -- out of "Attention!" -- is compassionate action. If we don't listen, we can't act with compassion.
We do not have within us a principle of stable existence. What we find in ourselves, on the contrary, is a principle of renewal, of return, of being lost and found again. This principle we can only understand if we experience it in ourselves; and we know its taste as the taste of rebirth: whenever we come back from a state of oblivion, of forgetfulness. This happens over and over again, to such an extent that we become accustomed to it and cease to see how important it is – and really how wonderful it is – that we should be able to come back again after having been lost.
~ J. G. Bennett’s "Death and Resurrection" in SUNDAY TALKS AT COOMBE SPRINGS
