Listening

I hear the leaves before I look up.

The sound moves somewhere above me, passing through one part of the tree and then another.

For a moment the branches are still.

Then they move again.

The leaves are long and narrow, hanging towards the ground. Against the blue sky, I can see the smallest ones turning. Sunlight catches their edges and disappears.

I stand beneath them and listen.

It is strange how differently we hear when we are not waiting for anything in particular.

Most of the time, sound reaches me while I am doing something else.

Water running while I wash vegetables.

A door closing somewhere in the house.

Birds outside while I am writing.

Footsteps.

A car passing.

The kettle beginning to boil.

I hear these things, but I am not always listening to them.

Under the tree, there is nothing I need to hear.

Perhaps that is why I begin to notice so much.

The leaves closest to me make one sound. Higher in the branches, where the wind seems stronger, they make another. Sometimes the whole tree moves together. Sometimes only a few leaves stir.

I close my eyes.

Without sight, it becomes harder to know exactly where the movement is.

The sound seems to travel.

Near.

Further away.

Above me.

Then somewhere behind.

I feel the air against my face a moment later.

The practice of listening

Yoga has made me interested in attention.

For many years, I thought of that attention largely in relation to the body.

The placement of a foot.

The movement of the spine.

The beginning of an inhale.

The moment an exhale ends.

With time, the same quality of attention has begun to appear elsewhere.

I notice how light enters a room.

How food changes as I chew it.

How the air feels different against my skin from one month to another.

How the sound of leaves changes when the wind changes.

None of these things requires me to turn them into a practice.

That matters to me.

There is a difference between paying attention because we have been instructed to notice something and finding that attention has begun to arise by itself.

Perhaps this is one of the ways practice travels beyond the mat.

Not as another task to perform.

As greater sensitivity to what is already happening.

I open my eyes.

The mountain has not moved.

The branches are still moving above it.

For a few seconds the wind drops and the leaves settle.

Then I hear it coming through the tree again.

Susanna Syassen