October–December 2016, Volume 43
Features
Listening
Communication begins with listening. Listening is especially important in vocations such as psychotherapy, hospice care, and social work, which provide mental and spiritual care for people in need. Listening often brings relief to those who suffer and can even help them regain the spiritual strength to move forward.
Listening is essential in religion too, if religion is to bring spiritual liberation. It is no less important than preaching. However, we can listen intently to others only when our minds are free from distraction or preoccupation with passing judgment. One must also put aside any intention to proselytize.
It was in that spirit that in Japan, soon after the disastrous earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, clergy of various faiths visited the disaster areas and together underwent training in careful listening in order to serve as interfaith chaplains to help counsel disaster victims.
Participants in interreligious dialogue must respect one another, whatever their disagreements. Productive dialogue should begin with positive listening free of preconceptions or prejudices. When our minds are open, listening can also bring self-discovery, as well as deeper understanding of the speaker.
We may agree, therefore, that people of faith should be good listeners. But do all of us know what it means to listen to others, or how to cultivate the art of listening? We hope to explore the meaning and role of listening in religion and how as people of faith each of us can learn to become a better listener.
Listening to the Thin Voice of Silence
by Hans Ucko
Deep listening to the other doesn’t just provide space for the other to be who he or she really is. Listening to the other also provides space for the listener’s own religious wanderings and pilgrimage.
Deep Interreligious Listening in Buddhist-Christian Dialogue
by Elizabeth J. Harris
Deep interreligious listening invites us to develop a frame of mind that is open and vulnerable. Such a frame of mind goes beyond dialogue into a zone where deep interreligious learning is possible.
Teaching and Learning Attentive Listening
by Kenta Kasai
Is it a good idea to listen to everything? Isn’t it important to have the self-awareness that as human beings we are limited and can’t comprehend or accept everything?
Chaplains and Listening: A Buddhist Perspective
by Yozo Taniyama
Listening by a caregiver allows care recipients to tell their stories and simultaneously discover their distress and its effects. This also makes it possible for the distress to be managed; the role of the caregiver is to assist this process of discovery.
Listening: A Practice of Generosity and Healing
by Daijaku Kinst
Listening requires courage and confidence. This courage is the courage of a bodhisattva who gives fearlessness. . . . To give fearlessness to oneself and others means not to turn away, to stay present for what is happening with all of its complexity, contradictions, and fullness.
Essay
Remembering Hakuin’s Voice of Dissent in Today’s Japan
by Masaki Matsubara
“Yet from what one hears from all the provinces everywhere, the sadness of life lodges itself among the common people. . . . What state of mind is it that allows for the concentration of luxury in one person, while causing many to suffer?”
Interview
Rebuilding a Society That Honors Diversity Interview with Dishani Jayaweera and Jayantha Seneviratne of the Centre for Peace Building and Reconciliation
The Niwano Peace Foundation awarded the thirty-third Niwano Peace Prize on May 12 to the Centre for Peace Building and Reconciliation (CPBR) in Sri Lanka for its distinguished contributions to peace building and reconciliation there during and after the country’s twenty-six-year civil war and for its help in rebuilding society. Dr. Hiroshi M. Niwano, chair of the Niwano Peace Foundation, interviewed CPBR’s cofounders, Ms. Dishani Jayaweera and Dr. Jayantha Seneviratne, as follows, on May 15 at the International House of Japan in Tokyo.
