Softening Barriers

Are there people at your firm, organization, school, or courthouse, who deserve your respect? If so, are you expressing it as freely and frequently as you'd like? Mindfulness invites us to do that - to focus our energies more on showing respect to others than on burnishing our own reputations. Counterintuitive, or does it make sense? Join me for a 10-minute talk followed by a 10-minute guided meditation where you can listen to the musings of a long-time lawyer and meditation teacher.

Transcript

Hey everyone,

It's Judy Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 322 on August,

August.

It's not August.

It's October 21st.

It's raining.

I should know it's not August.

It's raining beautifully here in Northern California.

So last week was about the Dhammapada's invitation to conquer and cultivate ourselves,

Conquer greed,

Conquer ill will,

Conquer delusion,

And cultivate wisdom and compassion.

And the next verse says,

Talk about respecting those who have done this.

They're part of chapter eight,

Which maybe you remember is named thousands,

Which is where we've been because each verse weighs one action or one way of being against another and says,

This is a thousand times better than that,

Or a hundred times better than that.

Or in the case of the first verse I want to mention today,

It uses a fraction.

So it says,

Whatever sacrifice or offering a merit seeker might perform in an entire year is not worth one fourth as much as expressing respect to those who are upright.

So you can see the form and you can see the fraction.

And what's so interesting to me about this verse is the way it seems to point so directly towards us in the legal profession.

And I want to give a shout out to my friend and new Dharma buddy Angela,

Because yesterday we were talking about how layered these teachings are and how they don't always reveal themselves so easily.

So thank you for sparking that insight.

And somehow it got ignited a tiny bit more overnight.

And this happens for me and maybe it happens for you too,

That I have like a basic understanding of something.

And then my mind has other ideas and overnight either I'm dreaming about or it's just on my mind and I wake up and see something that was hugely perfectly obvious before,

Might've been obvious to someone else,

But I hadn't seen it.

So anyway,

Shout out to Angela.

Thank you.

And that's what happened with this verse.

So the verse says,

Again,

Whatever sacrifice or offering a merit seeker might perform in an entire year is not worth one fourth as much as expressing respect to those who are upright.

And so I think what's happening here,

Seems obvious now again,

But see what you think,

Is that the message is you can really,

You can work really hard in life to do good.

You can do all the right things,

Be kind,

Be compassionate,

Be thoughtful,

Gain some wisdom,

And that's all great.

But it's not worth one fourth as much as respecting,

Maybe honoring,

Maybe studying with,

Maybe venerating,

Those who the verse calls the upright.

And so if this is true,

And let's just go with it as a thought experiment for now,

Then that's why I say the certain points of the law we serve have it backwards in the law and maybe in the West in general.

So first,

As Kairos always says,

Let's do the numbers.

In our case,

Let's do the definitions.

What does upright mean?

So I'm going with upright from a mindfulness perspective,

Someone who has conquered and cultivated,

Someone who lives with wisdom and compassion,

And someone who lives with wisdom and compassion,

Someone who's generous and patient,

An ethical person,

Someone committed to self-reflection,

A person who understands impermanence,

And who knows in their bones that we're all intimately connected and lives accordingly.

And so we've got upright person,

And then we've got merit seeker.

Who is a merit seeker?

Who's doing this sacrificing or offering?

Well,

In Asia,

When I've been to the temples,

I've seen people offering food to the monks and the nuns,

Offering flowers,

The temples are bursting with flowers,

Donations,

And some places like Thailand families offer their young men to the temple for a period of study and practice,

Kind of like military service in other countries.

So these are often sacrifices,

Like when people don't have much and yet they cook extra food for the temple.

And for sure,

They're offerings from the goodness of people's hearts,

Out of generosity,

Out of donna.

But as I understand it,

They're also made to accumulate merit so that classically,

From a classical mindfulness perspective,

Or maybe a non-secular perspective,

The merit seekers can move forward on the path,

Can be reborn in a higher realm,

Or at least be at less risk for being reborn in a lower realm.

Which is an acceptable and morally and ethically sound motive,

Right?

The accumulation of merit.

So let's look at it from a secular perspective,

Including in our profession,

In the law,

Merit seeking obviously looks different,

But maybe it looks like sacrificing or offering something,

Not to accumulate merit in order to move forward on the path or be reborn in a certain way,

But to be able to move forward in a certain way and not exactly to gain status,

But kind of to gain a good reputation,

To gain maybe belovedness,

If that's a word,

In the present.

So we might be generous to others with our time,

With our money,

With our wisdom,

Definitely out of the goodness of our hearts and also underneath that,

Or at least as a kind of a hoped for byproduct to be seen or to see ourselves and feel good about ourselves in a certain way,

As someone who is wise,

As someone who is kind and patient and compassionate,

As someone who is willing to help at the firm or organization or at school,

As someone others can count on or call on in the community.

So also,

I would say an acceptable,

Reasonably acceptable,

As long as it doesn't tip over into conceit,

And also a moral and also ethical motive.

But the verse says,

Even though merit seeking is happening,

It isn't worth what we might think.

It's only worth one fourth of the value of expressing respect to those who are upright.

So this is the part that dropped overnight in this balance,

Which the way I read it is like a seesaw with one side just a little bit off the ground and the other side way up in the air.

So seeking merit and showing respect,

Seeking merit a little bit up in the air and showing respect way high up there.

Right?

And this question,

Do we do that as lawyers?

Do we express respect to those who are upright,

Those who are kind,

Compassionate,

Clear mind,

Connected?

So if we do,

Then I'm thinking we all ought to be able to easily point to those people right now.

So see if you can.

And I'm thinking we can also all think of a time when we did that recently.

Because I'm guessing we can all right now recall pretty easily a moment of generosity or sacrifice.

But what about a moment of intentionally showing respect?

What about a moment of voicing respect?

What about a moment of pulling someone aside and saying,

I think the world of you?

You know,

And maybe everyone can do this,

So this is just a funny issue,

But I do think that if I put aside my kids,

Because,

You know,

We get some credit for telling about our kids,

But I'm talking about our colleagues and others in our field and,

You know,

Could we even consider our opposing counsel?

Once I did a program for a big firm and the head of the trial department was in the program and he was in a trial during the program,

He crushed this guy at a trial.

And afterwards,

He got a call from the guy who said,

I wanted to call you and say,

Congratulations,

You earned that win.

Fair and square.

So do we do that?

And do we do it three times as often as we seek merit for ourselves?

And it is at least one interpretation of this verse as simple as recognize and honor the merit of others three times as much as seeking merit for ourselves.

And if we don't do that,

Why don't we?

What gets in the way?

And if we remove the obstacles to whatever gets in the way of us recognizing and honoring the merit of others three times as much as we seek it for ourselves,

Then what do we gain?

And,

You know,

The teachings always have something about that and this does.

The next verse says this,

For the person who shows respect and always reveres worthy people,

Four things increase,

Lifespan,

Beauty,

Happiness,

And strength.

So,

Sounds pretty worth it to me.

What do you think?

Okay,

Let's sit.

So finding your seat and dropping in.

Just letting the weight of the body become known to you,

Feeling yourself,

Settling in whatever posture,

But on this earth.

And just remember that you are the light of the world.

And just releasing any concerns or worries that you have right now.

Just letting them release down into the earth.

She can hold that.

And then the invitation is just to turn the heart in the direction first of the generosity.

Your own really great goodness and generosity in the things that you do for others.

Gaining merit by sacrifice and offering.

Symbolizes our Letting that sense of goodness grow and fill your body like metta,

Like lovey kindness.

Letting that sense of goodness grow and fill your body like metta,

Like lovey kindness.

Letting that sense of goodness grow and fill your body like metta,

Like lovey kindness.

It's almost like in doing that,

We're learning to pay respect to ourselves first,

For all that goodness that we see and sometimes don't see in ourselves.

Letting that sense of goodness grow and fill your body like metta,

Like lovey kindness.

And what if we took all of that and the verse wants us to triple it.

And what if we could direct that outward to the people in our lives who are upright,

Who are wise,

Who are compassionate,

Connected.

Maybe even seeing more people that way we already do.

So maybe think of three people right now.

Three upright people,

Three wise people,

Three caring people.

And is there anything in the way of going to them,

Maybe even today?

And showing your respect out loud.

And respect even your reverence.

Alpha.

And if three people came to mind,

You can mark them,

Mark them for something positive.

And if they didn't,

No worries,

Not at all.

Just let it go.

It's not a program.

It's an inquiry.

Mindfulness is an inquiry,

Not a program.

And then just come back to your senses,

The body resting.

Take a couple of deeper breaths.

Thank you everyone for being on the wake up call.

Great to see you.

Have a good Thursday.

Be safe out there.

I'll see you next Thursday.