All day long, as lawyers, we strategize, plan, scheme.How do we win this one? How do we show that DA/PD to the door? Whom do we need to step on, to climb just a little bit higher?(Is that an exaggeration? Maybe, maybe not.) What about a strange idea: that "greater in combat than a person who conquers a thousand times a thousand people, is the person who conquers herself." Yes? No? Maybe? See what you think.
All day long, as lawyers, we strategize, plan, scheme.How do we win this one? How do we show that DA/PD to the door? Whom do we need to step on, to climb just a little bit higher?(Is that an exaggeration? Maybe, maybe not.) What about a strange idea: that "greater in combat than a person who conquers a thousand times a thousand people, is the person who conquers herself." Yes? No? Maybe? See what you think.
Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call #321, on October 14th, back in Sonoma. New York was fun and it’s good to be home.
Let’s turn back to the Dhammapada, and we were on Chapter 8, Thousands, and we’d looked at the first three verses, which are,
Better than a thousand meaningless statements is one meaningful word; which, having been heard, brings peace. Better than a thousand meaningless verses is one meaningful line of verse which, having been heard, brings peace. Better than reciting a hundred meaningless verses is one line of teaching, which, having been heard, brings peace.
So, one meaningful word, or line of verse or of teaching, brings peace. Brings clarity. But how do we the not-easy work of letting go of the extra 999 words or verses or teachings, and of whatever is sitting behind or underneath our words and our action and that doesn’t point towards peace?
The next lines speak in terms of “conquering” ourselves. Since as legal professionals we’re surrounded by conflict, it seems like an appropriate metaphor. Here are those next lines,
Greater in combat than a person who conquers a thousand times a thousand people, is the person who conquers herself.
Certainly it is better to conquer oneself than others. For someone who is self-restrained and always lives with mastery, no one...could turn conquest into defeat.
At first when I read these lines I thought, no one is going to buy that. Greater in combat is the person who conquers herself? Certainly it is better to conquer oneself than others? If that were true, how would we do our jobs?
But of course the lines, the verses, are metaphoric. They’re not speaking to our caseload. They’re talking about conquering our own minds and hearts. In fact, you can see this because in the next two verses, the languaging shifts from conquering to cultivating when it says,
Better than a thousand ritual sacrifices offered every month for a hundred years is one moment’s homage offered to one who has cultivated herself.
Better than a hundred years in the forest tending a ritual fire is one moment’s homage offered to one who has cultivated himself.
First take a moment and think about this idea, maybe this practice, of conquering. When I did that I could see – and this is something I’ve been seeing for a long time and maybe you have, too – that I do need to conquer myself. I’m 62. I was born to a certain family, with certain prejudices and biases and proclivities and blind spots and privileges and wisdom. I received a good education – classical, but good. I’ve been influenced by friends, family, colleagues. I spent years and years of training in the law, training to be an enemy combatant, or maybe a frenemy combatant.
I’ve been studying mindfulness for just shy of 30 years. I’ve been practicing yoga since I was 26, which means I’ve been practicing for 36 years.
So all that’s in there. Think for a minute about what’s in you. The family influences, the influences of your city or town or country, friends, schools, teachers, the law, maybe another profession, your mindfulness or yoga or other practices. We are these wild amalgamations, giant kaleidoscopes with the pieces coming together in beautiful patterns, turning, falling apart, coming together in a new pattern, falling apart, over and over and over.
So, what do we conquer? And how do we cultivate? And what do we cultivate?
Working from the middle, outwards, we cultivate through awareness. We sit, we study, we reflect. We move our bodies through a series of movements, focusing on our breath. And as we do all of this, we see, because everything will oblige. Everything will arise for us, if we pay attention.
Our ill will, will arise, in its many, sometimes sneaky forms: frustration, aversion, criticism, derision, exasperation, wanting to be right, jealousy, skepticism, mistrust, sadness, grief, hopelessness, “the deepest sorrow,” as Naomi Shihab Nye says, “so we can see the size of the cloth.” Our greed, the way we want more, the way we believe more is better, the way we believe that if we could just increase our draws, replace our couch, buy that little cabin, afford those boots…and the way we know none of this is true and over and over again bending down to the earth to uproot this belief system, only to discover there are still weeds growing just where we thought we’d cleared the ground. And our delusion. The way we forget, over and over and over, that we belong to one another; that everything we say and do, matters; that when we snap at our partner, our kids, our dog; when – even if they can’t see us – we roll our eyes at an associate, an assistant, a server, as if we are different from them, we’re forgetting, forgetting, that we’re all just exactly the same; all just wanting to be happy, and healthy, and safe, and free.
So we pay attention and then it’s pretty easy to see what “cultivating ourselves” means. It means conquering all this.
Conquering, but not by using same qualities we’re trying to conquer. That’s the thing. Not conquering with derision or frustration. Not conquering by efforting and grasping. Not conquering by forgetting we belong to one another.
Conquering, through the counterintuitive process of loving: loving all the messiest parts of ourselves, and of others. Conquering, through deep and sustained compassion for ourselves and everyone else. Conquering, by appreciating the good fortune of others, out loud and with an open heart. By showcasing our love, as a law jam participant once said. Conquering, by standing in the messiness of everything – our own messy minds & hearts, everyone else’s messy minds & hearts, the world’s messy minds & hearts; conquering by staying steady, and loving anyway.
When Dr. King and Mr. Mandela and Mr. Ghandi and Mother Theresa and Gotama Buddha all said hate never conquers hate, only love can do that, they were not only talking about our interpersonal experiences, or our systems. They were also talking about our own hearts.
Greater in combat than a person who conquers a thousand times a thousand people, is the person who conquers herself. Better than a hundred years in the forest tending a ritual fire, is one moment’s homage offered to one who has cultivated himself.
Conquering and cultivating is hard work. And, because we are humans, because we are legal professionals, we are equipped for it. So we can do it. And, frankly, at this point in the world, what other wise, compassionate, choice is there?
Let’s sit.