Listening is an art which very few of us are capable of. We never actually listen. The word has a sound and when we do not listen to the sound, we interpret it, try to translate it into our own particular language or tradition. We never listen acutely, without any distortion. So, the speaker suggests, respectfully, that you so listen and not interpret what he says. When you tell a rather exciting story to a little boy, he listens with a tremendous sense of curiosity and energy. He wants to know what is going to happen, and he waits excitedly to the very end. But we grown-up people have lost all that curiosity, the energy to find out, that energy which is required to see very clearly things as they are, without any distortion. We never listen to each other. You never listen to your wife, do you? You know her much too well, or she you. There is no sense of deep appreciation, friendship, amity, which would make you listen to each other, whether you like it or not. But if you do listen so completely, that very act of listening is a great miracle.

倾听是一门我们很少有人能够掌握的艺术，我们从不真正地倾听。词语有自己的声音，而当我们不去倾听那个声音时，我们就会诠释它，试图把它翻译成我们自己特有的语言或者传统。我们从不毫无扭曲、敏锐地倾听。所以讲话者充满敬意地建议你能够这样倾听，而不诠释他说的话。当你给一个小男孩讲一个非常有趣的故事时，他会带一股极大的好奇心和活力去听。他想知道接下来会发生什么，他会一直兴奋地等到最后。但我们成年人已经完全失去了那份发现真相的好奇心和活力，那股非常清晰地、如实地、毫无扭曲地看到事物所需要的能量。我们从不倾听彼此。你从不倾听你的妻子，对吗？你对她或者她对你都太熟悉了。你们之间没有那股深深的理解、友谊、和睦，这些品质足以让你们倾听彼此，无论你是否喜欢。然而如果你确实能够如此完全地倾听，那倾听的行为本身就是一个伟大的奇迹。

That listening, like seeing, observing, is very important. We never observe. We observe things that are convenient, friendly. We observe only if there is a reward or punishment. I do not know if you have noticed that our whole upbringing, all our education and our daily life is based on one principle: reward and punishment. We meditate in order to be rewarded, we ‘progress’ in order to be rewarded, and so on. When we seek a reward, physical or psychological, in that search for a reward there is also the punishment—if that reward is not satisfying. So could we listen to each other perse, for itself, not for something else? Could we listen, as we would listen to marvellous music or to the song of a bird, with our hearts, with our minds, with all the energy that we have? Then we can go very far.

这份倾听，就像看和观察一样，是非常重要的。我们从不观察。我们只观察方便的、友好的事物。只有存在奖惩的时候我们才去观察。我不知道你有没有注意到，我们的整个成长环境，我们所有的教育和我们的日常生活都基于同一个原则：奖励和惩罚。我们冥想是为了得到奖赏，身体上的或者心理上的，而在这份对奖赏的追求中同样存在着惩罚——如果这份奖赏不令人满意的话。所以我们能不能为了倾听本身去倾听彼此，而不是为了别的东西？我们能不能用我们的心、我们的头脑、我们的所有能量去倾听，就像我们聆听美妙的音乐或者聆听小鸟的歌唱一样？那样我们才能走得很远。