When you go out into the woods, and you look at trees, you see all these different trees. And some of them are bent. You sort of understand that it didn't get enough light, and so it turned that way. And you don't get all emotional about it. You just allow it.
The minute you get near humans, you lose all that. And you are constantly saying "You are too this, or I'm too this!" That judgment mind comes in. And so I practice turning people into trees. Which means appreciating them just the way they are.
One cultivates silence not by forcing the ears not to hear, but by turning up the volume on the music of the world and soul.