Letting Generosity Set The Tone For What Follows

I wonder about the power of generosity to 
set the tone of the law, or change it. Right now, we’re everyone to our corners and then knives out. 
What if we could be passionately on the sides of 
clients, causes, justice, but in a different way, 
not with a classic, take-no-prisoners approach, but with generosity?
 And with faith that the choice to do that 
would be seen as skillful, not weak? 



In a way, generosity seems anathema to our work. 
In another way, it seems like a shift we desperately need. 
There’s no point in guessing, though.
 We’ll only know if we try.

Transcript

Okay so it's Judy Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 491. Welcome everyone. I'm in London and yeah it's really fun to be doing this from London although the time really messed me up. Like I'm used to doing this as I'm barely awake and now it's at the end of the day so it's interesting. Anyway so on the last wake up call I was I was starting to talk about what Sayadaw Upandita who was a great Burmese teacher of this century and the last century called the three trainings. Dana, Sila, And Bhavana or in English generosity, Ethics, And concentration. And in his teaching which has been inspirational or maybe aspirational for many Western teachers I've heard them say and for many students these three trainings are a direct path to freedom and so I thought it would be kind of fun and interesting for us to explore them here. So starting with generosity which is Dana in the Pali. You know last time I mentioned this hypothesis that having and acting with true generosity even if some of us just some of us do that could create a kind of an initial shift and maybe even lead to a kind of a sustainable change in the way we we treat each other and so then a real change in the profession in the law right. And the shift that that I'm thinking about or that I'm sitting with right now as a possibility just a possibility is generosity as an antidote to aggression in adversarial proceedings. And I mean I don't know aggression can feel like it's it's woven into the fabric of our work and then it can permeate our collegial relationships and our friendships and even our family and and turn those adversarial and even when it doesn't it's not always the best way to conduct our work. Generosity as an antidote or an alternative to aggression and the harm that aggression can cause raises this old inquiry right. Can we be passionate advocates and also do no harm? And is generosity the ticket or at least one of the tickets? So there are different forms of generosity and and all of them are pretty much considered foundational to mindfulness and all which was the purpose of the title of today's wake-up call all of them set the tone for what follows. So if I'm generous in this moment it sets the tone for the next statement the next moment the next decision the next relationship everything right. And I mean this isn't news to anybody here because we all know that all states of mind set the tone for what follows right anger sets the tone for what follows fear sets the tone joy gratitude and gratitude's cousin generosity right all set the tone. So generosity that involves giving giving something away we want to be doing that if it's something of value right we want to be doing it with our own hands with our own heart like not having somebody do it for us we want to do it respecting the person who is receiving whatever it is that we're giving and and we want to do it with the idea that it's a wholesome thing to do and something good will come of it right not that I'll get something back for it but that's something good will come of it. I was a recipient of this on on Mother's Day my daughter-in-law made me and her and her other mother-in-law each a small it was like a third of an egg carton and it was filled with treasures in just a teeny tiny succulent in one hole and two little purple flowers in another and a big fat caramel in another and a chocolate in another right and this is the daughter-in-law who doesn't reach out as much and so I felt really honored and joyful and grateful and and it was a good example of yeah it really has this wholesome effect right generosity working its magic if you will. And then generosity isn't always things it can also be about giving someone something in a more spiritual realm and and one way to think about that is to give someone faith right and and I don't mean faith in some third-party entity or anything anything like that but faith in in themselves and in their ability to wake up and you know always respectfully doing that and at the right time and with a lot of generosity in our own hearts and without any kind of you listen to me-ness in it right so at the beginning of each semester and and even with programs for lawyers that we do even with our teacher training a lot of times I hear all true learning comes from mistakes you know we have to push ourselves as hard as we possibly can all the time kind of flay ourselves in order to win whatever success we have right and this might be a an attitude that you've heard or maybe that you've had I know that I I had it for a long time and what I find missing in these in these reports these self reports because these come from student journals or it'll come from a meeting with with a lawyer or with a meeting with a one of our teacher training students is that the faith that exists underneath the learning from mistakes and underneath the drive is missed that that isn't always being seen right and so in my journals back to them in conversations I get to talk about their brilliance their motivation but mostly about how much they care mostly about their hearts right and I mean if you think about it and you think about what we do as as lawyers as legal professionals and we have to care a lot because it's a really hard kind of work to do it's just difficult I mean even once you've been at it for a couple of decades and a lot of the work is on cruise control it's still really difficult work so there has to be something underneath that drive and it's got to be something intrinsic and and motivating and what I see that's underneath is is faith you know we have to have faith in our abilities faith in our own basic goodness and this is something that if I'm being generous and if you're being generous we can reflect this back to people right and then hope that they receive it as us lifting them right as the faith we see in them or as having faith in them and then sometimes inviting them to borrow that faith if it's harder for them to see their own faith in themselves right so faith offered in this way as a reflection or as something that can be loaned it feels it feels like another kind of generosity generosity whether it's giving a thing of value or giving faith or giving something else and and more on something else next time it can have this really powerful effect so it's a true benefit to those who are receiving it and the benefit also rebounds to the giver the ancient texts say before giving the mind of the giver is happy while giving the mind of the giver is made peaceful and having given the mind of the giver is uplifted the the nature of the the gift ends up not mattering too much although the invitation is for those of us with greater means to give freely to those in need and of lesser means to give what they can and for everyone to give the gifts of the heart of love of compassion of patience of joy because these things can change someone's day they can they can even change someone's life right so it brings me back to the initial inquiry what if we lawyers had this mind filled with generosity and we enabled that to infuse our our speech our actions could we replace aggression even in an adversary system with a practice of patiently untangling whatever is tangled and of listening for understanding to whoever is speaking is impacted is harmed and if we could what would the what would the law look like then so let's let's sit and then finding a posture that is supportive upright dignified closing the eyes or unfocusing the gaze locating the the breath and beginning to follow the breath as it flows in and out of the body and when the mind wanders what if it was this generous invitation or this invitation to be generous to yourself it's okay let everything else go just for this moment take this gift of this present moment and be with it it's like in some ways Donna generosity is is inherent in the practice this practice of generously giving ourselves to the present moment and letting go of everything else and again when the mind wanders just giving yourself the gift of presence the gift of attention to the present moment and really faith in ourselves in our ability to be right here and let go everything else just for these few minutes one more breath okay everybody really nice to see you all thank you for being here take good care I will be gone for two weeks so I'll see you not next week and not the week after but the week after that and I'll send a note out take care everybody