Effective Conversational Practice LO8922

jack hirschfeld (jack@his.com)
Tue, 6 Aug 1996 21:44:24 -0400

Replying to LO8885 --

Thank you, Grover, for posting the quote from Krishnamurti. It brought to
mind a conversation with a roshi in Hawaii in 1960 in which I was
instructed:

"To learn how to listen silently, you must practice listening to silence.
But first you must learn to find silence by listening for it. You can do
this best by practicing -- making sounds."

Grover Partee said:

>Regarding listening as a conversation skill:
>
>"If we try to listen we find it extraordinarily difficult, because we are
>always projecting our opinions and ideas, our pejudices, our background,
>our inclinations, our impulses; when they dominate we hardly listen at all
>to what is being said ...
>
>"In that state there is no value at all. One listens and therefore learns,
>only in a state of attention, a state of silence, in which this whole
>background is in abeyance, is quiet; then, it seems to me, it is possible
>to communicate . . . real communication can only take place where there is
>silence."
>
> -- Krishnamurti
> Talks and Dialogues

--

Jack Hirschfeld Where have all the young men gone? jack@his.com Gone for soldiers, every one! When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>