How Shall I Live, And Other Questions

Ethics Are Impossible Where There's No Justice
If you ask yourself the question, “How shall I live?”, what do you hear in response? And whom do you hear it from? It’s a powerful question, maybe the most powerful. A question as old as time.

Zen Master Suzuki Roshi answered it by saying, “Wake up! Life is transient, swiftly passing. Be aware the great matters. Don’t waste time.” How about Suzuki Roshi's admonition as an answer for how to have a generous, ethical, life? Or as a theme for how to l

Transcript

Hi,

Everybody.

It's Judy Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 366.

We've been exploring the perfection of ethics and before that,

The perfection of generosity.

And next week,

We'll look at the third paramita,

Which is the perfection of patience.

Meanwhile,

Today,

We're in the middle of what we Jews call the high holidays or the days of Ah,

Which are the days between Rosh Hashanah,

The New Year,

And Yom Kippur,

The Day of Atonement.

It feels to me like a good time to circle back to Norman Fisher's invocation of the paramitas as imaginal.

The title of his book is The World Could Be Otherwise.

And how imagining ourselves in order to be a better person is a theme that runs through,

I think,

Many traditions.

Norman's invitation is to imagine that we are fully 100% generous,

Ethical patient,

Full of joyful effort,

Fully mindful,

And brimming with wisdom.

Brimming with wisdom.

And to do this while knowing that it's not true,

It's not even possible,

And yet uplifting and with practice,

Nevertheless,

The imagination moves us in those directions in a kind of mysterious and kind of profound way.

According to Norman,

The more we do this,

The better we can serve others,

Which is our job in the law,

Right?

So it seems like a good idea professionally.

Plus last week,

I talked with James Barras,

Who wrote Awakening Joy,

Which I highly recommend if you don't have a copy.

And he said we should also,

Or really,

He said we should mainly practice the paramitas because improving our character,

We experience gladness,

Which is something we are very much entitled to and can then give back to the world,

But first enjoy ourselves,

Right?

And maybe,

You know,

Maybe we can relate to that,

Like that time that maybe it was just this week or last week or last month when you did something or you said something that was really generous or you held your ground in a good way on an ethical matter,

And it's felt really good.

It felt really good.

Over the high holidays,

The rabbis invariably remind us that from the Jewish perspective,

Our role as humans is also these two things,

To improve our character,

Which in Hebrew is called tikkun midot,

And which gives us gladness,

And to repair the world,

Which in Hebrew is called tikkun olam,

Which brings gladness to others.

And I imagine every spiritual tradition and all thoughtful people who don't subscribe to any formal tradition have some version of this,

A commitment to cultivate our own character for these two purposes,

To be of better service to others and because it feels good.

And there's another reason too,

Which I talked about in terms of dana paramita and sila paramita,

Generosity and ethics,

And that's karma.

And I want to show you on a slide,

One way of thinking about that,

This is the bell down at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center,

And this is kind of a Zen perspective.

Wake up,

Life is transient,

Swiftly passing,

Be aware of the great matter,

Don't waste time.

Right?

So there's another reason to cultivate the paramitas,

And that's karma.

And I'm not talking about karma in an esoteric sense at all,

And I wouldn't be qualified to talk about that anyway,

But just from a very practical perspective of direct cause and effect.

So when I'm acting ethically,

People around me feel safer,

And they are safer.

When I'm acting without ethical intentions,

When I'm ignoring the precepts of not causing harm,

Not stealing,

Not misusing sexuality,

Not speaking harshly,

Not using intoxicants to cloud the mind,

People frankly may not feel safe around me,

And there's a good chance they aren't.

And as a lawyer,

For me at least,

This is especially true and essential to understand.

You know,

Our clients are sharing confidential and sometimes very intimate information,

They're vulnerable,

And if I cause them harm,

If I steal from them,

If I lie,

If I take advantage of their vulnerability to make sexual advances,

However mild or innuendered,

You know,

If I'm substance impaired,

My clients aren't safe.

Right?

So cause and effect.

The good news,

But only in some cases,

Is that some clients can vote with their feet,

But some can't,

Like in the public defender context.

And the thing is,

It's not only clients who are unsafe if I'm not ethical or generous,

My lack of ethics will also redound to me.

My reputation will be negatively impacted if I become known as someone who's dishonest.

My lack of generosity will redound to me if I become known as someone who won't easily agree to extensions or says unkind things to my colleagues or staff.

People will learn not to trust me or simply won't want to be around me.

The world,

My world,

But also the world of all the folks I bump up against and the world all of them bump up against,

Will be that much poorer,

That much less honorable,

That much less safe for my failure to first imagine myself as fully generous,

Ethical,

Patient,

Joyful,

Mindful,

And wise,

And then to live into that imagination as best I can.

During these high holidays,

These days of awe,

We're invited to consider our lack of generosity,

Our failures of generosity,

Our impatience,

All of our transgressions against one another,

And then to literally go to everyone whom we may have harmed and apologize and ask for forgiveness.

In this way,

Judaism is really proactive.

And then once we've done that,

We're invited to imagine ourselves as more generous,

More ethical,

More patient,

More joyful,

More mindful,

More wise going forward.

And with that imagination,

To imagine ourselves or to ask God,

Depending on what you believe,

To be written into what's called the Book of Life for one more year.

Right?

So we get to stick around for a year.

And of course,

The Book of Life is just a symbol,

But it's a powerful one.

And I was reading some texts on this,

And I love what Rabbi Maurice Davis said about a hundred years ago about the Book of Life.

He said to think about it like this.

He said,

Think about it like,

You are being recorded.

What you say is more than words whispered into the wind.

And maybe this is one answer to that age-old question,

How shall I live?

Maybe we should imagine,

Maybe we should live imagining ourselves as a hundred percent generous and ethical and patient and joyful and mindful and wise and practice that as if we are being recorded.

You know,

Like we or someone is keeping track.

Like we don't get away with anything,

Which I always like to say,

You know,

Instead of as if our words are simply being whispered into the wind.

The good news is,

Maybe this is all good news,

But here's another little bit of good news.

We don't have to do this alone.

We get to do it together.

In mindfulness,

Community,

This one,

Your friends,

Your family,

Your professional community,

Your spiritual community,

Your community of furry friends,

Even your community of trees and mountains and oceans is one of the three jewels in life,

Right?

Along with our own innate spirituality or interconnectedness to ourselves and along with the teachings of mindfulness,

Community is one of the three jewels and it's sometimes said to be the whole of the path.

And the Jewish teachings say this as well in many different ways.

One beautiful line I heard in synagogue on Sunday is that the path before us is uncertain.

All we can do is hold each other tight as we make our way home.

And that took me back to a mindfulness teaching from Ram Dass,

Really just the title of his book,

His final book,

Which he wrote really very shortly before he died with Mirabai Bush,

And which is about his life and his death,

And it's called Walking Each Other Home.

Walking Each Other Home.

And in the end,

Maybe that's at least one way that we should live.

So let's see.

Finding a comfortable posture,

Supportive for you today,

Right now,

Whatever is most supportive.

And just relaxing.

As if the invitation for this whole 10 minutes is just to relax.

Let go of any planning,

Any worrying,

Any rumination.

And then even though there is that invitation when the mind invariably hits that discursive mode and starts doing it anyway,

Let go of any concern about that and just come back.

Using the breath as an anchor or the sensation of the body sitting or standing or lying down or walking as the anchor for the attention.

I'm not even the anchor but the refuge,

The place of refuge.

And grieving.

The generosity towards that wandering mind and a deep ethical commitment to not cause any harm to yourself by judging or frustration with that wandering mind.

Just being kind,

Being abused,

And then coming back.

Coming back to relaxation,

To refuge.

The invitation to yourself to just take these few minutes as a gift.

And as an imagination of what our life could be like if we brought more of these moments into the everyday busyness of our lives.

So paying attention so that we can locate this refuge any moment,

Any time.

Allowing this moment,

This breath to be kind of imprint on your heart that you can locate.

Okay.

Anytime during the day,

Today,

Tomorrow,

Any day.

Imagining that it's always available and in imagining that,

Making it so.

This is from a poem by Rabbi Rami Shapiro.

The quickening of the moon calls us to return and we gather.

Scene dwellers on the edge of the earth.

As the sun lowers itself into the sea,

Introspection arises.

A sliver cracks the heart of the firmament.

The vast blackness,

An invitation to write ourselves anew.

Jingles Thanks everybody for coming to The Wake Up Call today.

It's wonderful to see you.

Be safe out there,

Have a good Thursday and a good weekend,

And your fasting.

Your fasting.

Next Tuesday night Wednesday may you have an easy fast.

I'll see you next Thursday.