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“Paradoxically, it is the major theoretical trends that appear to be in search of that aspect of our logos which has been lost in western thought, namely the capacity for attentive listening. In fact, the more rigorous the knowledge claims are, the more ‘greedily’ they demand to be listened to. And the need becomes so impelling that even double-edged means are adopted by the adherents in order to ensure that central claims be heard and accepted. As we are not sufficiently conversant with the attitude of openness, acceptance is once again confused with indoctrination and standards of success and popularity are taken to be the conditions best suited to guarantee knowledge claims.”
― The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening
― The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening
“There seems to be the deployment of an underlying nonlistening and curtailed logos which can not see and question the bearing of its own achievements on humans. Under the covering of our halved logos there is constant denial of any ecological totality in favour of obstinate attention to the parts. While an ever-increasing formalization of specialized languages conceals the problem of reciprocity between different fields of research, a restoration of our logos by means of a recovery of our potential propensity for listening aims at a possible conjugation of standpoints.”
― The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening
― The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening
“By listening with active openness, they help other people to articulate their own values more clearly and so to bring a richer vision of value into the relationship. “Under the relational conception of power, what is truly for the good of anyone or all of the relational partners is not a preconceived good. The true good is not a function of controlling or dominating influence. The true good is an emergent from deeply mutual relationships.”6”
― Process-Relational Philosophy: An Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead
― Process-Relational Philosophy: An Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead
“An aversion – almost – towards listening to the rich multiplicity of ‘reality’ seems to be linked with a background of profound fears and to the resulting defensive postures that express themselves in a tendency to reduce knowledge in general to a set of principles from which nothing can escape. A relentless battle is waged as an attempt is made to organize everything in the light, or shadow, of the ‘best’ principles of knowledge: a chronic struggle of territorial conquest where the ‘territory’ is the set of notions and principles for constructing reality. Listening thus comes to be an essential function in the attempt to identify and monitor possible predatory aspects of our knowledge, no longer even capable of rememorizing or imagining the Parmenidean function of the ‘shepherds of being”
― The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening
― The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening
“The methods of meditation taught by the Buddha in the Pali Canon fall into two broad systems. One is the development of serenity (samatha), which aims at concentration (samādhi); the other is the development of insight (vipassanā), which aims at understanding or wisdom (paññā). In the Buddha’s system of mental training the role of serenity is subordinated to that of insight because the latter is the crucial instrument needed to uproot the ignorance at the bottom of saṁsāric bondage. The attainments possible through serenity meditation were known to Indian contemplatives long before the advent of the Buddha. The Buddha himself mastered the two highest stages under his early teachers but found that, on their own, they only led to higher planes of rebirth, not to genuine enlightenment (MN 26.15–16). However, because the unification of mind induced by the practice of concentration contributes to clear understanding, the Buddha incorporated the techniques of serenity meditation and the resulting levels of absorption into his own system, treating them as a foundation and preparation for insight and as a “pleasant abiding here and now.”
― The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya
― The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya
Frank’s 2025 Year in Books
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