Okay, in the Buddha's day there weren't any books, there weren't any MP3 players there weren't any computers. The memorizing of the teachings is how everybody learned in those days; that's why the chanting is done by the monks and nuns today. These are the same chants that started way back with the Buddha. They're actually reciting specific teachings, the Kalama Sutta was a specific teaching, they learned it and they chanted it in order to remember it. They say that for three-hundred years nothing was written down about the scriptures, then at that time the scriptures were recorded in a written form. To be able to listen and understand directly without using books is great, but some people don't catch it straight away, and that's why we do sell copies of the talks so that people can go over it again and again and again. They're going to listen, like with the chanting, over and over and over; drive it in, drive it in, drive it in.
So reading it and listening to it, they are two different ways of absorbing information. I can't really say that one is totally better than the other or vice versa; it depends a lot on personality. Some people, when they read with their eyes, they also get the visual contact, then they can take it in much easier than with hearing.
Now, an example, if you hear about people who have a certain type of disorder called Dyslexia, they have trouble seeing things clearly, but they don't have trouble hearing things. So if they try to read the bulletin board, and we've actually had people in retreats here with Dyslexia, they have a very hard time reading the board; they need help and often, if they are able to do it for themselves, it will take them like four hours compared to someone else who will take about twenty minutes. But if we actually spoke all that information to them they absorb it, they understand it no problem at all. So some people are better with hearing information than they are with absorbing information through the eyes. Some people can absorb more information reading than they can through hearing. So it's not for me to say one's better than the other, it's just that when the Buddha was alive listening was the only source they had for that incoming knowledge.
Something I personally find through listening compared to reading is that listening sometimes goes --straight in, straight to your heart. Often, there's more of a personal transmission, it's a personal thing, it's straight to your heart. If I say something that really hits you, it goes straight in there. When one sits down with a book, for me personally, it doesn't always do that; in fact, rarely does it do that. Occasionally there's something that makes me go, "Wow", but a lot of it just goes in in an easy way.
But, personal contact often goes in deeper; like your interviews have a certain characteristic that makes it a higher quality opportunity to learn and to grow compared to listening to a talk during the normal talks, and definitely a higher quality opportunity than to just reading it. In the interviews you get an interchange; you get to information back and forth for a while. You get to ask a question, you get the answer, you can feed back off the question, you can keep going. That direct communication is often the deepest way to understand on a more personal level.
Here, with the questions and answers, it's fairly personal, too, but not quite the same because you can't feed back off it. With a talk, anyone can prepare a talk, anyone can give a talk and then they walk out of the hall and it's all done. In an interview I can't do that to you, I have to sit there with you, you get to feed back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. One of the Suttas in the Twenty Suttas that I edited talks about a person's wisdom; it says something like, "It is through conversation that a person's wisdom is understood." So the ability to talk directly with somebody is often the quickest way, the deepest way that you can get some information straight into your heart.