Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call #322 on October 21st.
Last week was about the Dhammapada’s invitation to conquer and cultivate ourselves: to conquer greed, ill will, delusion; and to cultivate wisdom and compassion. The next verses talk about respecting those who have done this. They’re part of Chapter 8, which you might recall is named “Thousands” because each verse weighs one action or way of being against another, saying “this is a thousand times better than that,” or “a hundred times better,” or in the case of the first verse I want to mention today, in a reverse kind of way, using a fraction. 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 the fraction.
What’s so interesting to me about this verse is the way it seems to me it points so directly towards us, in the legal profession.
And I want to give a shout-out to my friend and newest dharma-buddy Angela, because yesterday we were talking about how layered the teachings are, and how they don’t always reveal themselves so easily. Thank you for that spark of insight, which somehow got ignited just a tiny bit more overnight – and this happens sometimes for me – does it happen for you? – that I have a basic understanding of something but my mind has other ideas, and overnight, either I’m dreaming about it or it’s just on my mind, and I wake up and see something that was usually perfectly obvious, and might have been obvious to someone else, but that I hadn’t seen.
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. I think what’s happening here – seems obvious now, but see what you think – is that the message is, 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, and maybe honoring, and maybe studying with, and ultimately even venerating, what the verse calls the “upright.” And if this is true, and let’s just go with that as a thought experiment for now, then we’ve really got it backwards in the law…and maybe in Western society.
So first, as Ky Risdal says, let’s do the numbers, or in our case, let’s do the definitions. What does “upright” mean? I’m going with “upright” from a mindfulness perspective: someone who has conquered and cultivated. Someone who lives with wisdom and compassion. Someone who is 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 who is a merit-seeker, “sacrificing” or “offering”?
In Asia, people offer food to the monks and nuns, flowers (the temples are bursting with beautiful flowers), donations. In some places, like Thailand, families offer their young men to the temple for a period of study and practice, like military service in other countries. These are often sacrifices, as when people don’t have much and yet cook extra for the temple. And they’re surely offerings from the goodness of people’s hearts, out of generosity, dana.
But as I understand it, they’re also made to accumulate merit so that, classically, the merit seekers can move forward on the path, be reborn in a higher realm, or at least be at less risk for being reborn in a lower realm – an acceptable and morally and ethically sound motive.
From a secular perspective, including in our profession, merit-seeking looks like sacrificing or offering something not to accumulate merit in order to move forward on the path, but to gain not status, exactly, but a good reputation, beloved-ness if that’s a word, in the present. We might be generous to others with our time, our money, our wisdom, definitely out of the goodness of our hearts…and, also, underneath that or at least as 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, kind, patient, and compassionate; or as someone who is willing to help at the firm or organization, or at school; or as someone others can count on, or call on, in the community. Also an acceptable, or reasonably acceptable (as long as it doesn’t tip into conceit), and also 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.
This is the part that dropped in overnight, this balance, which if we read it literally is like a seesaw with one side just a little bit off the ground and the other side way up in the air: seeking merit (a little) and showing respect (way high up there), and this question: do we do that as lawyers? Do we express respect to those who are upright – who are kind, compassionate, clear-minded, connected?
If so, I’m thinking we ought to be able to easily point to those people right now, and think of a time when we did that, recently. I’m guessing we can all – right now – recall a moment of generosity or sacrifice. But what about one of intentionally showing respect? Voicing it? Pulling someone aside and saying, “I think the world of you.” And what if we exclude our kids, because we get some credit for kvelling over our kids but I’m talking about our colleagues, others in our field, and dare we even consider opposing counsel?
Once I did a program for a big firm and the head of the trial department crushed this guy in a trial he was leading, right in the middle of our program, and after the guy got crushed he picked up the phone and called my trial department head and said, “Congratulations. You earned that win.”
Do we do that? Do we do it three times as often as we seek merit for ourselves? Is at least one interpretation of this verse as simple as, recognize and honor the merit of others three times as much as seeking it for yourself?
And if we don’t do it, why not? What gets in the way?
And if we remove those obstacles, what do we gain? Here’s what the next verse says about that:
For the person who shows respect and always revers worthy people, four things increase: life span, beauty, happiness, and strength.
Sounds pretty worth it to me. What do you think?
Let’s sit.