1.3. Sense of Hearing
Spend some time pay attention to your sense of hearing.
Meditation on the sense of hearing
Transcript
Let's spend a little time with the second sense, the sense of hearing. Bring your attention to the auditory field, the world of sounds, all the information coming through the ear channel. Straight away, notice how different the sense of hearing is from the sense of sight. Hearing is a totally different type of experience to seeing. Don't pay much attention to the things that you hear, to what the sounds are, birds, people talking, cars, but zoom out a little and pay attention to the fact of hearing, the act of hearing, the whole field of hearing. All the individual sounds that you hear are just part of this auditory field. Give your full attention to the sense of auditory field. --- If you find it useful, note to yourself, "hearing", "sounds", "ear channel", or whatever language is useful to help bring your attention to this sense field. Use noting or labelling to support your attention when it is easily distracted from the simple act of hearing. --- Notice the spacial dimension of hearing, how it's three-dimensional, giving the impression of being 360 degrees around, above and below. So different from seeing, which is all upfront. --- This is hearing. The sense of hearing. A field of sound. The ear channel. --- Notice what the ears actually perceive. Hearing knows nothing about 'birds' or 'cars' or 'dogs'. It only knows high and low frequencies, loud and soft volumes, different tones. The words and labels come from the mind, not from the ear. These are two entirely different sense fields. Come back to the simple world of sounds, frequencies and tones, without needing to define what they are. --- Close your eyes if they are open, stand still if you are moving about, and give your full attention to the field of sound. --- Notice how attention automatically jumps to the other senses as soon as there is a strong stimulus coming from elsewhere. Just know that it's happening and bring the mind back to hearing. --- Notice how the ears have no off button, there's no way to close the ears other than manually sticking your fingers in them. The ears are always on, day and night. The only way to stop hearing is to stop paying attention to sound—^^^ and this happens more than you might imagine! --- Notice how you like certain sounds, how you dislike certain sounds, how you are indifferent to certain sounds. --- Paying attention to the senses like this is a kind of 'base level' or 'default mode' for mindfulness. Whenever you start cultivating attention, always start with these simple exercises and build up. In time, you will become very familiar with these fields of experience and be able to distinguish them very clearly from one another. Come back to the sense of hearing. --- Keep coming back to this sense of hearing. Give it your full attention.Please continue studying the sense of hearing until you are familiar with its basic details, then move on to the sense of smell.
Q&A
Q: Do you have any questions or doubts at this point?