By Partha Sinha
There was a time when silence was rare because it was sacred. Today, it is rare because it is extinct. In an age where every room echoes with the low hum of dopamine-dealing devices and opinion-choked soliloquies, the most radical act is not to speak – it is to listen.
Not hearing. Not waiting to speak. Not rehearsing clever responses while someone else’s lips are moving. But truly listening. The kind that involves ego disarmament and inner stillness. The kind that makes your inner voice shut up and take notes. That kind.
I sometimes think if there were a karmic scoreboard in the sky, it wouldn’t measure how many hours you sat cross-legged on a yoga mat staring at your breath. It would measure how many times you made someone feel heard. Because listening, when done with intent, is the purest form of meditation. It demands presence. It trains the mind to stay still while another soul unfolds. It replaces ‘i’ with ‘you’ – a temporary dismantling of the self, not unlike the best of spiritual practices. Only, it requires no app, no mantra, no incense sticks. Just humility.
But it’s also alarmingly endangered. There are more TED Talks than listeners. More podcasts than attention spans. Even in meetings, on dinner tables, inside therapy rooms and WhatsApp groups – there’s a famine of attention in a feast of expression. Modern life has turned conversation into a competitive sport. We don’t engage. We intercept. We don’t listen. We load, aim, and fire – opinions, rebuttals, quips, quotes, memes. Silence is just a buffering zone between what we want to say and how soon we can say it.
Somewhere between mindfulness and mindless noise, we forgot that listening is the deepest form of respect.
It tells the speaker: you matter enough for me to be quiet. And that is no small gift in a world screaming for attention.
The spiritual traditions knew this long before Instagram discovered mental health. The Upanishads are quite literally ‘heard wisdom’ – sruti, not likhi. In Zen, the master speaks little, but listens with the weight of a mountain. In Sufism, the listener is as holy as the whirler. Even in the Gita , Krishn says much – but only after Arjun asks and listens.
The irony? Meditation is now prescribed as a remedy for burnout caused by too much noise – but the simplest form of meditation is learning to shut up and really hear someone. Not solve. Not agree. Not paraphrase. Just absorb. Like a still pond absorbs a falling leaf.
If you’ve ever truly been listened to – without agenda, without interruption, without someone reaching for their phone halfway – you know it feels almost divine. It doesn’t change what you say. It changes who you are while saying it.
We live in a time where we are data-rich and meaning-poor. In such a world, a good listener is not just a good human. They are a spiritual insurgent. A soft rebel against the tyranny of noise. Maybe we don’t need more speakers. Maybe we need more monks with earphones unplugged.
Because sometimes, salvation sounds like someone finally, finally, listening.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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