Wake Up Call #366:
How Shall I Live, and Other Questions We Can Only Answer in Our Imaginations
Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 366. We’ve been exploring the perfection of ethics and before that, the perfection of generosity. 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 Days of Awe, the days between Rosh Hashana (the New Year), and Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). It feels like a good time to circle back to Norman Fischer’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 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. And to do this while knowing it’s not true, not even possible, and yet uplifting and will, with practice, nevertheless move us in those directions in a mysterious and profound way.
According to Norman, the more we do this, the better we can serve others, which is our job in the law and so it seems like a good idea professionally. Plus, last week I talked with James Baraz, who wrote Awakening Joy, which I highly recommend, and he said, we should also (or really he said, mainly) practice the paramitas because in 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. Maybe we can all relate: that time – maybe just this week? – when you did or said something generous, or held your ground in a good way, on an ethical matter? It feels great, doesn’t it?
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. 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.
There’s another reason, too, which I talked about in terms of dana paramita and sila paramita – generosity and ethics – and that’s karma. Not karma in an esoteric sense just from the very practical perspective of direct cause and effect. When I’m acting ethically, people around me feel safer and are safer. When I’m acting without ethical intentions, 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. As a lawyer this is especially true, and essential to understand. Our clients are sharing confidential, sometimes intimate information, and they’re vulnerable. If I cause them harm, if I steal from them, if I lie or take advantage of their vulnerability to make sexual advances, however mild or inuendoed, if I’m substance-impaired, my clients are not safe. Cause and effect.
The good news but only in some cases, is that some clients can vote with their feet. But some cannot, like in the public defender context. But it's not only clients who are unsafe if I’m not ethical or not 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 to not 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. (Judaism is very proactive.) And then, once we’ve don’t that, we’re invited to imagine ourselves as more generous, ethical, patient, joyful, mindful, and 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. Of course the book of life is just a symbol, but it’s a powerful one. I love what Rabbi Maurice Davis said about 100 years ago about the book of life. He said to think about it like this: “You are being recorded. What you say is more than words whispered into the wind.”
Maybe this is one answer to the age-old question, How shall I live? Maybe we should live imagining ourselves as 100% generous, ethical, patient, joyful, mindful, and wise, as if we are being recorded, like we – or someone – is keeping track, like we don’t get away with anything, instead of as if our words are simply being whispered into the wind.
The good news is, 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 fact, community is sometimes said to be the “whole of the path.” 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. It reminded me of the title of Ram Dass’s final book, which he wrote with Mirabai Bush, and which is about his life and his death. It’s called, Walking Each Other Home.
In the end, maybe that’s at least one way we should live.
Let’s sit.
I’ll close with some lines of a poem by Rabbi Rami Shapiro:
…The quickening of the moon calls us to return
and we gather, seam-dwellers on the edge of the earth.
As the sun lowers itself into the sea
introspection rises.
A SL-iver cracks the heart of the firmament,
the vast blackness an invitation
to write ourselves anew.
[Play the John Lennon Imagine video at the end of the Paramitas – whenever that is! (It’s bookmarked under Music.)]
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 live a joyful life in the law?