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The Art of Listening: A Guide to the Early Teachings of Buddhism
he Dīghanikāya or Long Discourses of the Buddha is one of the four major collections of teachings from the early period of Buddhism. Its thirty-four suttas (in Sanskrit, sutras) demonstrate remarkable breadth in both content and style, forming a comprehensive collection. The Art of Listening gives an introduction to the Dīghanikāya and demonstrates the historical, cultural, and spiritual insights that emerge when we view the Buddhist suttas as oral literature.
Each sutta of the Dīghanikāya is a paced, rhythmic composition that evolved and passed intergenerationally through chanting. For hundreds of years, these timeless teachings were never written down. Examining twelve suttas of the Dīghanikāya, scholar Sarah Shaw combines a literary approach and a personal one, based on her experiences carefully studying, hearing, and chanting the texts. At once sophisticated and companionable, The Art of Listening will introduce you to the diversity and beauty of the early Buddhist suttas.
Each sutta of the Dīghanikāya is a paced, rhythmic composition that evolved and passed intergenerationally through chanting. For hundreds of years, these timeless teachings were never written down. Examining twelve suttas of the Dīghanikāya, scholar Sarah Shaw combines a literary approach and a personal one, based on her experiences carefully studying, hearing, and chanting the texts. At once sophisticated and companionable, The Art of Listening will introduce you to the diversity and beauty of the early Buddhist suttas.
- GenresBuddhism
304 pages, Paperback
Published June 15, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 13, 2021
This is a special book that is essential for anyone connected to the family of Buddhist traditions based on the Pali canon. But, as you will see, it is also a very important work for what it covers is echoed throughout the wider Buddhist world from east Asian traditions of Chan/Zen and Pure Land to the Vajrayana Buddhism of the Himalayas. And as many of the texts covered are the foundational and early teachings on mindfulness, those interested in the many contemporary takes and applications of mindfulness will also find this fascinating.
There are those in the English-speaking world who prefer reading contemporary teachers or earlier commentaries as they have a vague sense of the Pali suttas being perhaps a bit dry, repetitive, somewhat superstitions, maybe mythical. I expect readers of this book will put aside these misconceptions once and for all.
We think of a “canon” as a collection of books, but here Shaw emphasizes the oral quality of this collection and brings us along to imagine how very different experiencing these teachings are when listening to them. There is a lot at stake here. Reading is often a passive endeavor, yet listening to these texts, as Shaw explains,
“must also have been regarded as something more interactive: you would listen, perhaps investigate the content (and yourself), and then allow your mind to move on to the next stage of the text. Each text is a paced, rhythmic composition, a choreographed movement in time, that works in a different way from something you read alone with book or iPad in hand. So, with these texts, you start to feel the Buddhist principles of rising, sustaining, and falling—with circling rhythms repeating in “real” time—in the very structure of the words. If you hear the texts as recitals in a temple, you look, listen, and attend; you are conscious of those around you, how you are sitting, and the environment. You are open to the text in a different way. Much of Buddhist meditation and ethical teaching is based on this underlying delivery of the text itself by living people to those who have met, perhaps, just to listen.”
But it is not simply the format she unpacks. She presents these foundational suttas through various lenses such as their literary features, numeric symbolism, myths, and directionality. Tolkien, Shakespeare, and the ancient Greeks all lend a hand. So do a host of traditional Buddhist thinkers and contemporary Buddhist scholars. But this is not an exercise in academic showmanship; rather each lens is a bridge that brings the intent of Buddha, the early and contemporary reciters of these texts (there are some alive who can recite the entire canon from memory which takes about three months), and those that continue the tradition to us right here and right now.
A bit over half the book is based on twelve of these suttas through which key themes of the canon are brought to light as are the brilliant techniques employed by those who committed these words to their listening audience and later palm leaves, paper, and printing presses.
While this book is nectar or amrit for those interested in the family of traditions based on the Pali suttas, I also feel that this is has great import to those interested in other Buddhist traditions as well. There is so much in here about Buddhism in India that is directly relevant to other traditions.
For example readers of all traditions will all find a common understanding of cosmology, the gods, the Four Kings, the Chakravartin, the role of ritual, magic and protection, and more. Dr. Shaw makes connections between samatha (calm abiding) meditation presented in some suttas and commentaries on the Dhammapada to esoteric Theravada, Chinese Visualization Sutras, Pure Land, and Vajrayana techniques. She highlights the presentation of the thirty-two marks of the Buddha and how they relate to the path of the bodhisattva and appear in early Thai meditation manuals and Tibetan visualization instructions. It is a “pan-Buddhist cosmological and teaching system, embedding the doc-trine in the meditative and sometimes visual body of the great being who taught it.” Exploring numbers and letters, she reveals connections and parallels between some Pali suttas, Chinese T’ien-t’ai Buddhist walking practice, tantric texts, and the Japanese poetic form of tanka.
The richness of the early Buddhist tradition comes shining forth in this book.
Please note: I am associated with Shambhala Publications but this is an honest, heartfelt review.
There are those in the English-speaking world who prefer reading contemporary teachers or earlier commentaries as they have a vague sense of the Pali suttas being perhaps a bit dry, repetitive, somewhat superstitions, maybe mythical. I expect readers of this book will put aside these misconceptions once and for all.
We think of a “canon” as a collection of books, but here Shaw emphasizes the oral quality of this collection and brings us along to imagine how very different experiencing these teachings are when listening to them. There is a lot at stake here. Reading is often a passive endeavor, yet listening to these texts, as Shaw explains,
“must also have been regarded as something more interactive: you would listen, perhaps investigate the content (and yourself), and then allow your mind to move on to the next stage of the text. Each text is a paced, rhythmic composition, a choreographed movement in time, that works in a different way from something you read alone with book or iPad in hand. So, with these texts, you start to feel the Buddhist principles of rising, sustaining, and falling—with circling rhythms repeating in “real” time—in the very structure of the words. If you hear the texts as recitals in a temple, you look, listen, and attend; you are conscious of those around you, how you are sitting, and the environment. You are open to the text in a different way. Much of Buddhist meditation and ethical teaching is based on this underlying delivery of the text itself by living people to those who have met, perhaps, just to listen.”
But it is not simply the format she unpacks. She presents these foundational suttas through various lenses such as their literary features, numeric symbolism, myths, and directionality. Tolkien, Shakespeare, and the ancient Greeks all lend a hand. So do a host of traditional Buddhist thinkers and contemporary Buddhist scholars. But this is not an exercise in academic showmanship; rather each lens is a bridge that brings the intent of Buddha, the early and contemporary reciters of these texts (there are some alive who can recite the entire canon from memory which takes about three months), and those that continue the tradition to us right here and right now.
A bit over half the book is based on twelve of these suttas through which key themes of the canon are brought to light as are the brilliant techniques employed by those who committed these words to their listening audience and later palm leaves, paper, and printing presses.
While this book is nectar or amrit for those interested in the family of traditions based on the Pali suttas, I also feel that this is has great import to those interested in other Buddhist traditions as well. There is so much in here about Buddhism in India that is directly relevant to other traditions.
For example readers of all traditions will all find a common understanding of cosmology, the gods, the Four Kings, the Chakravartin, the role of ritual, magic and protection, and more. Dr. Shaw makes connections between samatha (calm abiding) meditation presented in some suttas and commentaries on the Dhammapada to esoteric Theravada, Chinese Visualization Sutras, Pure Land, and Vajrayana techniques. She highlights the presentation of the thirty-two marks of the Buddha and how they relate to the path of the bodhisattva and appear in early Thai meditation manuals and Tibetan visualization instructions. It is a “pan-Buddhist cosmological and teaching system, embedding the doc-trine in the meditative and sometimes visual body of the great being who taught it.” Exploring numbers and letters, she reveals connections and parallels between some Pali suttas, Chinese T’ien-t’ai Buddhist walking practice, tantric texts, and the Japanese poetic form of tanka.
The richness of the early Buddhist tradition comes shining forth in this book.
Please note: I am associated with Shambhala Publications but this is an honest, heartfelt review.
May 11, 2023
totally amazing.
March 30, 2026
Having uninstalled Instagram and X to avoid the depressing landscape of ongoing events, I got a set of books on Eastern Philosophy to cope with the existential crisis. This book admittedly wasn't a traditional exploration of the substance of Buddhism, but it was nonetheless a very intriguing literary exploration of how Buddhism was spread out through "oral literature".
If I were to rate it by the scope of what it set out to do, I'd definitely give it a 5/5 and recommend it to anyone looking to explore the literary background of Buddhism, the Dīghanikāya in particular.
If I were to rate it by the scope of what it set out to do, I'd definitely give it a 5/5 and recommend it to anyone looking to explore the literary background of Buddhism, the Dīghanikāya in particular.
March 25, 2024
Very beautiful book. Not an easy read, but you will never look at sutras the same way again. Listening to chanting of sutras is a journey and a kind of cultivation.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews