Hey,
Everyone,
It's Judy Cohen,
And this is Wake Up Call 457.
I missed you last week.
And we had an amazing time with the 2024 class of the Mindfulness and Law Teacher Training in person.
We were in person.
It was really special to get to practice together and learn together and eat and play together and hug one another and not be on the Hollywood squares.
It was really sweet.
So today is World Mindfulness Day.
Happy that.
Maybe the whole world is practicing with us.
We can,
We can hope.
For the last bunch of weeks,
I've been talking about the Eightfold Path to Liberation.
And we are at step six on the path now.
Well,
Actually,
We're always at every step.
But here on the Wake Up Call,
We're at step six.
So we've already looked at the wisdom elements,
Wise view,
Wise intention,
And then the ethical elements,
Wise communication,
Action,
Livelihood.
And the next three steps are what are called the Samadhi elements,
So the elements of the path that calm the mind and focus the mind.
So wise effort,
Wise mindfulness,
And wise concentration.
And wise effort is just exactly what it sounds like.
How much effort do we need to put in?
And it's a great one for us,
For lawyers,
Because we're so darn accustomed to being required to,
You know,
Make what amounts to a Herculean effort.
The Herculean effort 24-7,
365,
Right?
In law school,
In our clerkships,
At the jobs we take.
And it doesn't matter whether they're corporate or public interest or everything in between,
The ethos is not to put in a hundred or even 200%,
But to put in a thousand percent.
And I did it,
And we probably all did it.
You know,
For so many years,
I just burned the mid-night oil and worked all day,
Came home,
Hung out with the family,
Worked another three,
Four,
Five hours into the night,
You know,
Into the wee hours of the morning,
Subsisted on five hours of sleep for,
I don't know how many years,
You know,
Said yes to everything,
Lived on black tea and honey,
You know,
Crazy times.
And pretty far from alone,
I'm guessing lots of you have a story like that as well.
And also the competition part,
You know,
Who came in earliest,
Who stayed latest,
Who billed the most hours,
Of course.
And it's still like this in many offices,
Even if it's not supposed to be that way.
So I practiced law at a pace that got me where I needed to get and was also a perfect recipe for burnout.
And then before bumping into mindfulness,
I bumped into yoga and,
You know,
Yoga in the West.
It's also possible to fall into the perfect recipe for burnout,
You know,
Loud music pushing the body far past its limits of endurance or even of safety.
And so I started out by practicing yoga at a thousand percent too.
Last weekend at the MLTT in-person teacher training,
Our yoga director,
Also one of my very closest friends,
Elisa Gray,
She called out at some point,
I want to see you practicing at 30 percent.
And I just love that so much.
When I practice yoga at 30 percent,
You know,
My body feels like a million.
You know,
There's suppleness,
There's ease going in,
There's ease going out.
It feels self-respectful.
So I'm really treasuring that instruction.
And I guess with mindfulness,
The instruction is a little different,
But certainly closer to Elisa's 30 percent than to my firm's thousand percent,
You know.
Here's one of the legends of wise effort.
Maybe you've heard this.
It's called the simile of the lute.
Venerable Sona had practiced sitting and walking day and night until his bare feet were bleeding and raw.
And still he felt like he wasn't getting anywhere.
He was about to abandon the practice,
But the Buddha,
Who knew Sona was a musician,
Said,
When you string the lute too tightly,
Does it make a beautiful sound?
And Sona replied,
No,
Sir,
The sound is shrill.
Ah,
Said the Buddha.
And when you string the lute too loosely,
Does it make a pleasing sound?
Not at all,
Sir,
Replied Sona.
When the strings are too loose,
The lute makes an unpleasant sound.
So how does the lute sound when it is tuned just right?
The Buddha asked.
To which Sona replied,
It makes a beautiful sound.
To which the Buddha replied,
Sona,
Your practice must be like this.
If you practice with too much zeal,
Your practice will be like the strings of the lute tuned too tightly.
If you practice with not enough zeal,
You will sink into sluggishness,
Sluggishness,
And lose all mindfulness.
If your practice is evenly tuned,
It will be like a lute that makes beautiful music.
So what is just right for our practice?
In other words,
What is wise effort,
The Goldilocks effort,
That will enable us to cultivate mindfulness and make beautiful music or beautiful law or beautiful life?
And it's different for each of us.
For someone who becomes a monk or a nun,
Just right might mean meditating for 15 hours a day.
For a practicing lawyer who's also part of a family and has friends and a professional life and maybe also a volunteer community,
Just right might mean practicing for 30 minutes each day.
And for that same person who maybe wants to purify their heart and mind a little bit more,
Just right might include going on retreat periodically,
Sitting in silence,
Exploring the mind for extended periods of time.
And for some of us,
Just right might be taking 0.
1 or six minutes once a day or a few times a day and checking in,
Settling the mind,
Settling the body,
Settling the heart,
Attending to the breath,
Seeing what's happening internally and externally,
And cultivating mindfulness in that way.
There are texts and stories,
Ancient ones,
That remind us to practice as if our hair were on fire.
And I actually love that image because for me,
It speaks to the urgency of practice much more than the frequency of duration.
You know,
We should practice as much as is possible for us,
But also remembering that if we don't practice,
Our anger and our greed and our delusion will burn us up.
It will burn us up.
And then I also love the Tibetan slogan,
Hasten slowly,
Hasten slowly,
Which reminds me to keep to get going and keep going,
Right,
To keep practicing,
Even though it's a long path.
It's a path that's going to take a whole lifetime to walk.
So my progress,
My progress feels very slow.
And that's OK.
The Dalai Lama apparently practices for four hours a day,
And that sounds just right for the spiritual leader of Tibet.
Suzuki Roshi,
Who founded San Francisco Zen Center,
Once said,
If you don't have time to practice for an hour each day,
Practice for two.
And then from our own tradition,
From our shared tradition of the law,
From Learned Hand,
Who was on the Second Circuit at the time for the Southern District of New York at the time.
And here's what he said about wise effort and also about the mind.
He said,
We may not stop until we have done our part to fashion a world in which there shall be some share of fellowship.
Which shall be better than a den of thieves.
Let us not disguise the difficulties and above all,
Let us not content ourselves with noble aspirations,
Counsels of perfection and self-righteous advice to others.
We shall need the wisdom of the serpent.
We shall have to be content with short steps.
We shall be obliged to give and take.
We shall face the strongest passions of humankind,
Our own not the least.
And in the end,
We shall have fabricated an imperfect instrument.
But we shall not wholly have failed.
We shall have gone forward if we bring to our task a pure and chastened spirit,
Patience,
Understanding,
Sympathy,
Forbearance,
Generosity,
Fortitude,
And above all,
An inflexible determination.
So wise effort from learned hand in the early part of the last century.
So let's sit.
Finding a comfortable posture for yourself,
One that will support you being in silence and also in stillness for the next almost 10 minutes.
Locating the body,
Paying attention for a few minutes to just how is my body doing?
How am I feeling right now?
And then bringing the attention to the breath as it's flowing in and out of the body,
This one beautiful body that each of us has,
And resting the attention on the breath.
And when the mind wanders,
Definitely with kindness,
Come back to the breath with kindness and with determination,
Knowing that an effort is required.
And we're making that effort right now together.
If mindfulness really is a two-winged bird of one wing of compassion and one wing of wisdom,
Then our kindness as we come back to the breath over and over is one wing.
And then our determination is the other.
Meeting the wandering mind with kindness and with determination and coming back to the breath as an anchor.
We face the strongest passions of humankind,
Our own not the least.
And in the end,
We shall have fabricated an imperfect instrument,
But we shall have gone forward if we bring to our task a pure and chastened spirit,
Patience,
Understanding,
Sympathy,
Forbearance,
Generosity,
Fortitude,
And above all,
An inflexible determination.
Happy World Mindfulness Day again,
Everyone.
Have a good Thursday and a safe weekend.
I'll see you next Thursday.
