The Wake Up Call for Lawyers

This question of identity: what does it mean to "be" a lawyer? Is it something to earn, like a degree? Or something to pass into, or be sworn into, after taking the bar? And what does it mean to "be" a mindfulness practitioner? Is there some right of passage? Some number of hours of silence to cultivate, or endure? Some tap on the shoulder by elders, or teachers? Or are these n...

Corruption is one of those scary words to me because it conjures intentional dishonesty for personal gain, which goes into the category of never, ever, ever. At the same time, practicing law can be so intense that it can feel corrosive in & of itself. Which started me wondering if practicing law is, in some way, corrupting us. And maybe not in such a small way. And that got me wondering whethe...

My habitual reaction to qualities of heart and mind I don't like, like anger, fear, and wickedness, is to try to fix them. I suppose that can be a good thing. Another good thing can be to meet them with kindness and goodness, in a kind of dance of opposites. But what is the use of taking the hand of fear, or letting the liar whisper sweet nothings in your ear? Maybe it's a paradox that w...

Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh died last Friday, at the age of 95, in the temple in Vietnam where he first became a monk at the age of 16. In a long, mindful life, Thay, as his students lovingly called him, touched the hearts and minds of millions. Thay also changed the mindfulness conversation to one that focused on justice and peace for all. He believed - and lived into the belief - that engagement...

Today's talk is about strawberry ice cream and all those other ideas we get in our heads, and then can't let go of. Like keeping our clients out of jail or from being deported, or like getting our deals done. It's our job, so we do need to do it. But is there a way to do it without so much longing? And without so much affection for our no doubt stellar abilities, and infatuation wit...

What could be more natural than that exultant feeling of victory? I love it, even if I've learned to hide my triumph. Athletes do that really well. Mostly baseball players don't pump their fists when they hit a home run, they just jog the bases and pretend it's all nothing. I always wonder what they're really thinking. Or what we're all really thinking. Because another way...

Who knows what 2022 will bring? Today is the anniversary of the January 6th assault on the U.S. capital. Last year, who could have predicted that? Sometimes I'm so sad or exhausted or afraid. I just want to take refuge. Do you ever feel that? There's just always so much going on. But what if refuge is right here, right now? What if the Wizard was right, and all we have to remember to do,...

What's your most audacious intention for 2022? Think big. Think even bigger. Zen students chant, "Beings are numberless. I vow to save them all." What's your chant? What if your chant - your intention - is to end greed, hatred, and delusion? What if your intention is to save our beautiful planet? What if it's both? What if it's bigger than both? Let's see how big...

This time of year - the end of the calendar year - always feels quiet, and sacred, to me. Maybe the holidays, maybe being with family, and this year, like the last two, also feels sacred and precious because things are once again, precarious. Last week I was wondering about all of that in terms of inter -connection. This week I'm wondering about it in terms of connection to self.  Is it possi...

As we inch towards the end of 2021 without any idea what's next, in terms of the pandemic, the climate, or the political situation, I've been thinking about the importance of our practice. It feels like there's a big part about wellbeing - that's crucial. And, there's a lot more. Because we have the potential, as practitioners, to set an example, and even share directly, w...

There are so many times I've said something tinged with meanness, hostility, even violence. It's hard for me to write those words, but I know they're true. Do you see that in yourself? If you do, let's talk about how to say things differently, without judging or retaliating against ourselves. If you don't, maybe listen anyway.

One way to think about evil thoughts is to corral the mind and not let them in. Good luck with that.  Or I should say, I haven't had good luck with that.  My own mind is capable of conjuring up evil thoughts without much provocation at all, then blithely letting them go forth and multiply. Here's another idea. What about literally crowding out the evil with the good? What if, instead of...

It's always easier for me to be grateful to someone else than to be grateful for my own good heart. And yet we all have such good hearts. On today's Wake Up Call, which is prerecorded, I want to offer space and time for you to be grateful for your good and beautiful heart. I hope you give yourself that time and space. You can listen to today's recorded Wake Up Call here, and whereve...

Gratitude again, this time with a few ideas. Because again, it's easy to be grateful for the good stuff. Or is it? Yes, and. And: it's also easy for me, anyway, to miss the good stuff. To take it for granted - to take people for granted - and to forget that we're just here for a minute. And to forget that because of that, now is the best time to say thank you. Today is the best day...

Gratitude, that old topic. Really, I was thinking, there must be a new take. I could talk about how grateful I am for the people I love, the land that supports us, my mini-labradoodle, Bleue, who just turned 14..., but it's the hard stuff that makes gratitude more interesting. It's so much easier and in some ways, more natural, to complain about the hard stuff. Because it's hard. Bu...

The ancient Japanese art of Kintsugi is all about the beauty of brokenness. When a vessel is cracked, or even smashed to bits, Kintsugi is about piecing it back together with gold. Far from being perceived as flawed, the vessel, in its brokenness, is then considered better than before, even luminous. What if mindfulness could help us to approach our own brokenness in this way? Just imagine the lig...

Anne Lamott says, "My mind is like a bad neighborhood - I try not to go there alone." I sometimes feel that way about the law. There's almost nothing about practicing law that I can recall, that's about creating good neighborhoods or safe neighborhoods, or safety in general.  What if that changed? Could mindfulness support the creation of an adversary system, or could it work w...

Are there people at your firm, organization, school, or courthouse, who deserve your respect? If so, are you expressing it as freely and frequently as you'd like? Mindfulness invites us to do that - to focus our energies more on showing respect to others than on burnishing our own reputations. Counterintuitive, or does it make sense?

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...

Podcasting from New York City, where there are countless humans, bumping into one another, day in & day out, creating their own realities. I wonder if any of it is real. To me it looks like countless worlds colliding into being, then dissolving, right before my eyes. It looks like the three characteristics of mindfulness, alive and well on the streets of New York: an object lesson in impermane...

Does your mind move as fast as mine, when you’re in conversation with someone? Often, I think I know what the other person is going to say.  I’m impatient, waiting from them to just get it out.  What if we could be more patient with one another? What if we could slow down and simply listen when someone was talking? What if we could not be so sure we knew what they were about to say? We might be of...

How diligently are you practicing? How steady is your mind? Are these questions useful? And why do we even ask them? I was asking myself these questions all the time. Kind of relentlessly. Then a teacher asked me why I was putting myself on trial. :0 That's exactly what I was doing. We do want to be diligent and we do want to steady our minds. But let's not put ourselves on trial. Or at...

I don't doubt for a minute that your practice and mine bring us at least a little peace, sometimes. We're fortunate in that way. And also, here at the Wake Up Call we're sharing tools & strategies to help others find peace, and maybe you're doing that, too, in your office, at home, maybe a lot of places in your life. But what if, not "in addition" (because: that e...

Just when I think I'm saturated, something else happens. Is it possible to be with whatever is going on in the world, and in our lives, without getting overwhelmed? Because even when we learn how to do that, there's still so much work to be done: work that to me sometimes feels empowering, but sometimes, endless. Or maybe it's both. Has it always been both? Or is it just that from n...

There is so. much. smoke. The air is unbreathable in the Sierras, and only just ok down in the San Francisco Bay Area. My heart is broken. Equanimity feels like a tall order. I've eaten far too many peanut butter cookies, as solace. On the other hand, where there's smoke, there's fire. How do equanimity and motivation work together? What if we could find a balance between the two, t...