Listening, Or Not

On the way to work this morning, i turned off the radio just for a moment. Normally i always tuned in to BFM 89.90 each morning. Today, i passed the toll booth and with the radio off, thought "what a noisy city i lived in". The noise of the cars on the road, jam-packed after the toll as usual. Such a stressful condition i have gotten myself into just to make a living.



And then all of a sudden, of all things, i heard a bird singing. It sounded so near yet i could not see where the bird was. Could it be standing on some nearby lamp post in the middle of the road? Or could it be flying through the top of my car and sing for me? i had no idea.

It sounded so out of place in that busy highway that i wondered if anyone else hear what i had just heard. If i had consciously try to listen to a bird sing, i doubt i could ever hear it. It just happened without me knowing. For a moment when i turned my mind off the surrounding noise did i heard a bird telling its truth to the world. To any living things that care to listen.

And so as it is with real life. How many times have i actually listen to someone when they express their thoughts or feelings. Instead i project my own thoughts and feelings to the other person. How many times have i failed to understand what they're really saying to me. Sometimes i know that even they have difficulty coming up with the words to explain things to me. And yet i would not try to understand them.

There is much subtleties to be found in the music i listened to which i took time to find. Why should i not apply it to human conversation too. Maybe then the truth of what the other person is trying to say will reveal itself to me, like what the singing bird did this morning.

An Ancient Saying - reprise and expanded

"If the wrong person uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way".

This is in sharp contrast to our belief in the 'right' method irrespective of the person who applies it. In reality, everything depends on the person and little or nothing on the method.

From here: http://modernlife-maya.blogspot.com/2011/10/ancient-saying.html

"Obviously the present crisis throughout the world is exceptional, without precedent. There have been crises of varying types at different periods throughout history - social, national, political. Crises come and go; economic recessions, depressions, come, get modified, and continue in a different form. We know that; we are familiar with that process. Surely the present crisis is different, is it not? It is different first because we are dealing not with money nor with tangible things but with ideas. The crisis is exceptional because it is in the field of ideation. We are quarreling with ideas, we are justifying murder; everywhere in the world we are justifying murder as a means to a righteous end, which in itself is unprecedented. Before, evil was recognized to be evil, murder was recognized to be murder, but now murder is a means to achieve a noble result. Murder, whether of one person or of a group of people, is justified, because the murderer, or the group that the murderer represent, justifies it as a means of achieving a result that will be beneficial to man. That is, we sacrifice the present for the future, and it does not matter what means we employ as long as our declared purpose is to produce a result that we say will be beneficial to man. Therefore, the implication is that a wrong means will produce a right end and you justify the wrong means through ideation. We have a magnificent structure of ideas to justify evil and surely that is unprecedented. Evil is evil; it cannot bring about good. War is not a means, to peace."

~ J. Krishnamurti, excerpt from "The Book of Life". (Hat tip to blogger 'coyoteprime' for this excerpt).

Read the article, Protection Fraud, to better understand the above quote.

Being angry at the current situation and keeping the anger inside, or worse still, expressing those anger towards another person are not going to make the situation go away or gets better. The best way to make it (the situation) a little bearable, if not "better", is to share it with as many people as possible. It is the only act of freedom any person could do in this situation.

An Existential Thought

The most "real" world we live in is that of our fellow human beings. Without them, we should experience a sense of enormous emptiness; we could hardly be human ourselves, for we are made or marred by our relations with other people. The company of animals could console us only because, and to the extent to which, they are reminders, even caricatures, of human beings. A world without fellow human beings would be an eerie and unreal place of banishment; with neither fellow humans nor animals the world would be a dreadful wasteland, no matter how luscious its vegetation. To call it one-dimensional would not seem to be an exaggeration.