Whacking Someone On The Head, In A Mindful Way

If you were heading down the street and someone tried to mug you, what would you do? Maybe instinct would kick in and you'd run, or turn and try to fight them off. Maybe you'd have an instantaneous mindfulness check-in and think, "non-harming, non-harming" - I shouldn't go after them. Maybe - just maybe - you'd whack them over the head with your umbrella. From a mindful lawyering perspective, is there a time and a place for that, too?

Transcript

Hey,

Everybody,

It's Judy Cohen,

And this is Wake Up Call 342.

And tomorrow is the start of our first intensive for the 2022 Mindfulness in Law Teacher Training.

So,

Feeling really excited about that.

And I've been thinking about the intensive and writing talks,

Listening to talks,

And being in my own training,

Listening to my teacher,

Doing a lot of reading,

Practicing.

So it's been an amazing few weeks preparing.

And in one of those conversations,

One with James Baras,

My main teacher,

James reminded me of a story that I think makes a lot of sense for lawyers.

And it's a story about Sharon Salzberg,

One of the young Westerners who went to India and Southeast Asia in the late 1960s and early 1970s and studied there.

And then along with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein and James and a few other Westerners brought mindfulness back to the US and to England.

So I want to tell that story.

But before I do that,

The reason James was telling the story and that it's so interesting to me is because of this question that so often comes up when I'm talking with lawyers about whether or not it's OK from a mindfulness perspective to be aggressive or even violent.

And of course,

At face value,

Probably everybody knows this,

You know,

The teachings say no.

Some of the quotes,

Hatred never ends with hatred,

But with love alone is healed.

That's a quote that Martin Luther King,

Of course,

Adopted at Mahatma Gandhi adopt.

Anger is like carrying around a hot coal and expecting someone else to get burned.

One of the precepts,

Do not kill,

Do not let others kill,

Find whatever means possible to protect life.

Do not live with a vocation that is harmful to humans and nature.

And then there's the simile of the saw,

Which is one of the ancient teachings.

And it goes even further in the simile of the saw is long,

But here's the relevant part.

It says,

Even if bandits were to carve you up savagely limb by limb with a two handled saw,

You should train yourself to be unaffected and say no evil words,

But remain sympathetic with a mind of goodwill and with no inner hate.

So pretty tall order there and also not much room for interpretation.

So people sometimes ask me about this topic and the name Warrior One,

And because the word warrior does sound kind of violent,

We have that violent connotation.

I have that violent connotation of the warrior.

And the name was partly after the yoga pose,

Which is a pose of stability and dynamic energy.

And it's not a violent pose.

No yoga poses are violent.

But it's also asked you the Tibetan legend of the Shambhala warriors,

Shambhala warriors.

And if you've done deep on the Warrior One website,

You might have read the legend,

Which is on there,

Part of it.

And according to the legend,

There's going to come a time of chaos in the world when powerful opposing human forces will rise up in an attempt to annihilate one another.

And the Earth's future will hang in the balance,

Which might feel like right now.

And supposedly right at that moment,

The Shambhala warriors will appear and they won't look any different from anyone else,

But they will be these really courageous beings.

And it's going to be with that courage that they'll be able to show humanity how to lay down their arms against each other and against the Earth.

And they'll succeed.

Mainly they'll succeed because they'll be able to explain mindfulness.

The fundamental elements of mindfulness,

Wisdom,

Compassion,

Justice,

Inclusion,

Belonging.

And they'll be able to get everyone on board.

And now this reminds me of Arnold Toynbee,

The historian,

Saying that when we look back,

The greatest development of the 20th century will be mindfulness coming to the West.

So the Shambhala warriors will get everyone on board with mindfulness and help us all to see that our wars and our conflicts with each other and against our planet all arise from the constructs of our own minds and therefore can be dismantled by the night.

Many years ago,

When I heard this legend the first time,

Which was long before Warrior One was a gleam in my eye,

I thought,

You know,

This is us.

This is who we are.

This is who the lawyers are or could be or should be.

You know,

That the lawyers are or could be or should be those Shambhala warriors,

Because our job like theirs is to champion justice,

Compassion and belonging.

And our job like theirs is or should be to champion the earth.

And the key to it all is that our weapons,

Just like theirs,

Are not weapons of violence or shouldn't be.

They're just these two qualities of mind and heart,

Wisdom and compassion.

Compassion for a couple of reasons.

One,

Because we're working towards well-being,

Our own,

The well-being of others,

The well-being of our planet.

And we're certainly seeing a real interest in well-being at our firms,

At our organizations and in our law schools.

And the other reason for compassion is because compassion leads us to justice.

It leads us to inclusion.

It leads us to belonging and it leads us to a commitment to do no harm.

But compassion alone,

And this is part of the legend and I think also part of thinking about the Shambhala warriors as being the lawyers,

Compassion alone is too soft.

It's too yielding alone all by itself.

So it needs wisdom.

So compassion and wisdom,

The two wings of mindfulness.

And wisdom is what will create real and durable change.

Wisdom is what enables us to see with a discerning view.

Wisdom is what enables us to be open minded and also fierce to speak truth to power so that we can wage the battles we need to wage against injustice and oppression and the plundering of the earth.

And so this nonviolent way,

And yet,

You know,

What if in doing all of this and being a Shambhala warrior or just an ordinary,

Everyday committed,

Mindful lawyer,

Someone you love is about to be harmed or you are about to be harmed or your client is about to be harmed or your country is being harmed?

You know,

I have been thinking a lot,

As I'm sure all of us are,

About the war in Ukraine and certainly not the only war or conflict happening on the globe.

And a friend in Germany told me that for Americans on the West Coast,

One way to think about the war in Ukraine is to realize that if we lived in San Diego,

It would be as if Seattle was being invaded.

So that really brought the point home to me,

The proximity for Europeans.

So what if there was an invasion right up the coast from you wherever you are or across the state from you wherever you are if you're in the U.

S.

?

Is there justification for violence?

And the teachings still seem to say,

Still no.

So what do we do about the violence that's already embedded in the profession?

You know,

There's hatred,

There's tribalism,

There's oppositionality,

There's animosity,

There's covetousness,

There's anger,

All of the isms.

There's the whole range of negative human emotion among the factions of the law itself and in the ways we approach our cases and matters.

So does all of this have to go?

And can it be eliminated if we're advocates,

If we're warriors,

Even if we're Shambhala warriors?

You know,

Is that possible?

Maybe,

You know,

Maybe not,

But we can approach this maybe a little differently.

The story about Sharon,

The story about Sharon is really simple.

Sharon was a very young woman at the time.

She was in India.

She was there to study with her teacher,

Maninder Ji.

It was also Jack Kornfield's teacher and James's teacher and the teacher of a number of other influential Western teachers.

And he himself was a great teacher.

And Sharon was in a rickshaw in the rain in India.

And a man came running up to the rickshaw and grabbed her bag.

And so she was shaken and maybe she knew the simile of the saw,

Right?

But she was even if she was being torn from limb to limb,

She should have a mind filled with love.

And she went to Maninder Ji and she said,

What was the appropriate response?

And maybe you remember the old Zen koan,

What is the teaching of a lifetime and appropriate response?

And so Maninder Ji told Sharon the appropriate response was that with all of the love in her heart,

She should have picked up her umbrella and whacked the guy on the head.

And I'm thinking that this is wise and compassionate and nice.

You know,

It's compassionate because if you care about someone,

Then you would try to stop them from doing something that might also harm them or would certainly create bad karma for them.

And stealing is at the top of the list.

And it was also wise because plenty of times wisdom has to say no in no uncertain terms.

So on one level,

The teachings are clear,

Violence is never justified.

It's never wise to allow violence into our hearts.

And when we find it there,

Then we need to go to the remedies,

Metta to warm the heart and compassion,

To care rather than to hate and patience with ourselves and with others while they wake up,

While we wake up,

And forgiveness because then healing is truly possible.

So maybe what Maninder Ji did was to show Sharon that it's possible to have a loving heart because he said with a heart full of love,

Whack the guy on the head with your umbrella.

And so with a loving heart and also to protect yourself and also to protect others and also to protect the earth,

You know,

Take out your umbrella and whack it.

And so maybe we can develop these loving hearts,

Even though we may need to brandish our sword,

Brandish our umbrella and save some folks from the criminal justice system or from ICE or from corporate America or even from their own deluded minds.

And maybe we can hold each other in loving regard.

Even those who have to do that,

Even those who are engaged in violence and warfare,

Hold them all with loving hearts.

So let's sit and hold all beings with loving hearts and even those who,

Yeah,

Who have to do this,

Who have to use aggression and use violence to save themselves,

To save other people,

To save their country.

And to even hold the soldiers in our hearts.

So just settling into the present moment,

Whatever's here for you.

And checking in,

Checking in with your heart.

James always says that when we strip everything else away,

All that's left is love.

Sounds true.

Feels true to me.

But we might not be there.

So,

You know,

Can we also call in the,

The antidotes.

Call in better.

Take a moment to bring some matter to ourselves,

Maybe hand on the heart.

May I be well.

May I be safe.

May I be happy and free.

And compassion.

Just taking in whoever's in your environment right now or those of us on the wake up call,

All of us.

And just some compassion,

Some care.

And patience.

Patience in its simplest form of just relaxing in the present moment.

Vary the truth of the present moment.

Things are like this.

Vary the truth of the present moment.

And then forgiveness.

Maybe there's something,

Some small thing that we can forgive ourselves for just right now,

Just to get in the practice.

Some small moment when we were less than loving towards ourselves.

So many times we had a customer come up and tell us something that was big.

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