Listening Like Tilopa
a Listening Mind doha
Listen.
Let go of the songs of the past.
Choose reality. You cannot hear memories of an unfolding moment.
The self-existing rain performs its symphonies with no composer.
If you try to own concepts,
You will miss the effervescence of immediacy.
Do not anticipate songs of the future.
Despite your thought-work, not because of it,
Whatever arises is revealed as the momentary mist of mind.
The co-emergent chords of birth and death, coming and going,
Echo through the hollow sky, where labels and concepts cannot attach.
If you try to own projections
You will miss the chorale of one taste that heeds no conductor.
Do not ponder present hubbub.
Current awareness, including all those stubborn inner narratives,
Is none other than the vanishing roar of appearance/ emptiness.
They are the spontaneous voices of awakening,
From the realm where no listener exists, none ever existed, nor will any ever!
If you try to own them through reactive emotions,
You will miss this supremely melodious concerto of phenomenal utterance.
This primordial music of suchness, music without musicians, is beyond beautiful.
Rest in natural freshness.
Within the purified energy of unchanging stillness,
The great parade of becoming marches into manifestation, but leaves no footprints,
Every vibration announces its own passing.
Listen to the song without beginning, without end, and not abiding anywhere,
The unending mantra of isness,
Uncompounded by time or space.
Stop and listen- between forgetting and remembering.
Look again and again into the cosmic mirror of naked awareness,
Where accepting and rejecting evaporate on their own.
And forget everything, let it all be,
Delight humbly in the chorus of birds, insects, breezes, and inexpressible suchness-
As the unobstructed sun of ordinariness
Laughs at duality.
Feb 11, 2026