श्रद्धावाननसूयश्च शृणुयादपि यो नरः ।सोऽपि मुक्तः शुभाँल्लोकान्प्राप्नुयात्पुण्यकर्मणाम्॥
śraddhāvān anasūyaś ca śṛṇuyād api yo naraḥso ‘pi muktaḥ śubhāl lokān prāpnuyāt puṇya-karmaṇām
Word by word
The verse says
And the person who simply listens to it, trusting and not finding fault, is also freed. He reaches the good worlds that belong to those who have done well.
In plain words
The bar drops once more, and this is as low as it goes.
Not studying. Listening. With trust, and without looking for something to object to.
Two conditions, and neither requires any training, literacy or leisure. This is the most accessible promise in the book.
Where you've felt this · in community
At a reading in a courtyard, most of the people sitting on the floor are not following the Sanskrit and some are not following the Hindi very closely either. An old man near the back has come every week for six years. Ask him what was said tonight and he will give you a rough version. He is not the same man he was six years ago.
Going deeper
Extending the promise to someone who only listens is the last and widest step in this sequence, and the sequence is worth seeing whole.
It began with the person who surrenders, then the one who teaches, then the one who studies, and now the one who merely sits and hears. At every stage the requirement drops and the promise does not.
The two conditions attached are not intellectual. Trust, and the absence of fault-finding. The second is the interesting one. A listener looking for the weak point is doing something active and often clever, and it keeps the material at a distance, which is sometimes exactly what it is for.
So what is being asked of a reader at the close is modest. Not agreement, not belief, not understanding. Only that you let it in far enough to find out whether it is any good, which is a different posture from either swallowing it or fending it off.