Frank Baird

“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”
― Gemma Corradi Fiumara, The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening

“As Kant points out: The proverbial saying, ‘fiat iustitia, pereat mundus’ (i.e. ‘Let justice reign, even if all the rogues in the world must perish’) may sound somewhat inflated, but it is nonetheless true… But it must not be misunderstood, or taken, for example, as a permit to apply one's own rights with the utmost rigour… 32 It would appear that here the serious risks inherent in misunderstanding a sound principle of right and the ‘permit to apply one's own rights with the utmost rigour’ are held to be comparable. Both misunderstanding (in the sense of incorrectly using a message) and using one's own rights (not only civil rights but, above all, rational rights) ‘with the utmost rigour’ may derive not so much from a ‘misleading’ categorization or abuse of current logic as from the pre-established dismissal of listening. Both the misunderstanding and utmost rigour (’hard’ and ‘slippery’) that Kant warns us about would appear to be the primary derivatives of a dominant thinking that can not and hence will not further comprehension. ‘Rigour’ and, conversely, misunderstanding are deeply rooted in the exclusion of listening, in a trend which brooks no argument, where everyone obeys without too much fuss. These interwoven kinds of ‘reasoning’ lead us into a vicious circle, as powerful as it is elusive, a circle that can only be evaded with a force of silence that does not arise from astonished dumbfoundedness, but from serious, unyielding attention.”
― Gemma Corradi Fiumara, 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.”
― Bhikkhu Ñaṇamoli, The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya

“It almost seems that ‘culture’ requires aspirants to participate according to their specific qualifications, to become adherents to an immense task of justifying a ‘logic’ that knows very well how to say practically everything and hardly knows how to listen.”
― Gemma Corradi Fiumara, The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening