Is it that in listening to K, say, there is an accompanying desire to ‘get something’ from what one is hearing …and that ‘desiring’ pollutes the listening?
Critical listening starts when you try to asses and integrate what you just heard some one say, sounds of nature or your inner self talk to you.
At that point the question arises, what will you do with what you just heard?
Testing your level of understanding, you might as well go back to more critical assessment and reflection … 
What does it mean to be in a state of attention?
Then why are you here?
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Could it be that referencing K is a path to truth? Is there a path to truth?
Does ‘attention’ in the sense that he uses it , point at a state of awareness that includes one’s environment as well as oneself in it and with no sense of being identified with anything?
His secret: “I don’t mind what happens.”?
Freedom from the known?
I don’t know.
Let’s explore this. What happens to listening to another at the moment of desire to get something? One accesses memory, evaluates/measures what was said, compares it to the desire in some way, makes a judgment, then a reaction and out of the reaction comes a response. That is all internal and separate from the other, isn’t it? Isn’t one just using the other’s words as a stimulus to listen to oneself? And when listening to oneself isn’t one only listening to that which is already known?
I think you can see this with some people more than others because it’s so obvious that they can hardly wait for your sentence to end because they’ve already formed a response. There’s certainly no ‘interval’ as Macdoug spoke about: to see one’s own response and perhaps respond with it or not. What passes for much conversation is a sort of verbal ping pong.
Association between words and concepts?
In fact the brain has found a security in this: being able to expound on different subjects with old information stored in memory rather than being ‘empty’ (and appearing ignorant or worse) in the moment.
Again I’m talking about so called psych knowledge, opinions, likes dislikes not technical knowledge.
My understanding is that most of the time in any day we are mostly distracted with so many things that either come our way or that we seek, and those things that either come or we pursue are the food of our constant thinking, for example, sports, politics, religion, entertainment, work, K, etc. etc. But then, in very few instances, and very seldom does it happen, we see or hear something that stops us for a moment on our track of thinking, a stop that lasts perhaps one or two seconds, and during this couple of seconds the mind remains quiet, in attention, and perceiving without any reference to time, knowledge, or the environment. In this state of attention, the mind becomes very sensitive to what is being attended to, so much so that it can detect any contradiction in what is being perceived. I do not mean by this a contradiction between the object of perception and the mind that is perceiving, but rather a contradiction between what is being heard and what is being seen by the perceiving mind at that moment, and when such a contradiction is detected attention ends. Attention is what allows us to live through an experience without the possibility of being hurt, without the experience leaving a mark; it is something we can all live through without knowing.
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one example of this is when there is attention to experiencing itself. Rather than being a fragmented attention to what is being experienced (desired, feared) but a wider angle of attention that includes the conditioned experiencer (that causes the dissapearrance of all discriminatory content ie all the named things)
Isn’t one’s own response coming out of ‘not listening’? And are you suggesting that one continues to ‘not listen’ by further thought as to whether or not to respond with it? Isn’t that moving further away from listening?
Isn’t the response an association to what has been said? Rather than silence.
Truth is now, and if the brain is conditioned to alter truth for the sake of its chosen terms and conditions, the brain decides, chooses to determine what truth is.
When this is understood, there is clearly no path to truth because it can’t be arrived at or achieved. It can only be directly perceived by a brain that has no choice in the matter.
So the question is not whether there is a path to truth, but whether there is a calculated resistance to truth manifested by reactions of distortion, denial, condemnation, justification, etc.
Perhaps you think you are not conditioned, that being free you have no need to refer to K’s teaching and feel superior to those in this forum who freely admit we are here to understand K’s teaching thoroughly enough to be free of it.
Does freedom come through understanding another?
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Are you aware of your speculation?
Here’s hoping that the hypocrisy of this utterance is not wasted on you. You appear to be convinced that you know something others don’t and wish to - albeit unceremoniously - convey that understanding. Even if you claim to neither know nor understand anything.
Self-understanding is a complex affair and if there was not something of value that could serve as a catalyst Krishnamurti would not have spoken.
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Thus endeth the dialogue.
Have confidence … not everyone is ready to give up their own ability to reason and use their mind creatively, independent of a few cult types who keep thinking inside a mystical but quite irrational box removed from much, if not all understanding of the real world condition of humanity on this planet …
I don’t know. I’m not free. Are you?
There is freedom when ‘listening is’.