Communion is a very difficult art. To commune with one another over many problems that we have requires listening and learning, which are both very difficult to do. 1[■] To commune with each other, we require a certain capacity, a certain way of listening-not merely to gather information, which any schoolboy can do, but rather listening in order to understand.
2[■] Learning is not merely the accumulation（积累）of knowledge. Knowledge never changes the way you think; experience never flowers into the beauty of understanding. Most of us listen with the background of what we know and we have experienced. Perhaps you have never noticed the difference between the mind that really learns and the mind that merely gathers knowledge. 3[■] It is always translating what it hears in terms of its own experience or in terms of the knowledge which it has gathered. It is caught up in the process of accumulating and adding to what it already knows, and such a mind is incapable of learning. I do not know if you have noticed this. So it seems to me very important that we commune with each other quietly, in a dignified manner, and for that there must be a listening and a learning.
When you commune with your own heart, when you commune with your friend, when you commune with the skies, with the stars, with the sunset, with a flower, then surely you are listening so as to learn. It does not mean that you accept or deny. 4[■] When you commune with the sunset, with a friend, with your wife or with your child, you do not criticize, you do not deny or support, translate or identify. You are communing. You are learning. You are searching out. 5[■]
I think it is important to understand that a man who accumulates can never learn. Self-learning implies a fresh and eager mind-a mind that is not committed, that does not belong to anything and that is not limited to any particular field. It is only such a mind that learns.