My Routine

Inspired by the notion of making every moment a meditation, I generally follow the same daily routine. 

The foundation is a late-night sequence that takes about 15 minutes before going to bed. First I relax in my recliner and do my modified version of the 4-7-8 breathing that I learned from Andrew Weil, who learned it from Indian mystics. I close my eyes, breathe in through my nose for a count of four, hold that breath for a count of seven, exhale through my mouth for a count of eight, and repeat eight times, primarily paying attention to my breathing and quickly letting go of any thoughts that come to mind. To simplify matters, I keep track of the number of cycles with my fingers.

Then I do Basic Practice, as learned from Dick Price at Esalen Institute. With my eyes closed, I pay close attention to each of the following for two breaths: smells (if any), sounds, the flow of air through my nostrils and into my lungs, my body, my emotions, my thoughts, and lingering images.

I then recite, usually silently, the Lord’s Prayer: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

Then I identify three gratitudes, either individuals or recent facts in my life for which I’m grateful.

Lastly, I ask myself a question to sleep on and go to bed, usually at midnight.

When I wake with no alarm, usually around eight, I pay attention to whatever is on my mind, including remembered dreams. Often what I notice relates to the question from the night before.

Then I write spontaneously in my journal for 15 minutes, as prompted by Julia Cameron’s “morning pages” that she recommended in her The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. With this journal, I mostly brainstorm to-do tasks and sort out my feelings about recent events. Sometimes I just record those events “for the record.” I consider this “contemplative journaling.”

I eat breakfast while reading my tweets, mostly Giants-related and those posted by Jesse Eisnger. I glance at the online Chronicle to see if there’s anything of interest there (usually, no) and read their items about the Giants while I digest my food. Roma Guy once commented on the value of mindful eating, but I’m afraid I fail here with my multi-tasking.

I then jog for 30 minutes. A comment by Rhonda Magee about her running style prompted me to no longer listen to music when I jog. Instead I pay attention to my breathing, my posture (leaning forward enables one to run faster), my feet landing on the ground (I prefer landing flat-footed), and any thoughts that come to mind. I’ll reflect on significant thoughts for a half-minute or so before letting them go and trust that important ones will pop up again later. Lately, I’ve shifted back to interval training, running as fast as I can for two minutes and then slowing down for two minutes.  I consider this “contemplative running.”
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William Styron once reported that he divided each day into three two-hour segments: writing, reading, and correspondence. I consider that schedule quite sensible and try to follow it, though I often mix the reading and correspondence.

After an invigorating shower, I write for 90-120 minutes, often for Wade’s Weekly or other substantial pieces.

Then I prepare and eat lunch while streaming “The Daily Show,” which is delightful and often informative. Then I lie down for 15-30 minutes, often sleeping for 15, using an alarm clock. Some sleep studies have found that the body has a natural tendency to nap half way between waking and sleeping. So maybe traditional cultures that used siestas knew something modern cultures neglect.

Next I look at and process my email. Lately I try not to open my email program until after I write for 90-120 minutes, for otherwise the audible notifications too easily distract me. First I look for personal and other pressing emails. Then I go through the remaining emails in chronological order.

On days that I drive taxi I process my email while riding the bus to work and waiting in line for a passenger at the airport, where I also use my Kindle to read the New York Review of Books, New Yorker, New York Times Book Review, and books.

When driving taxi, I often do my 4-7-8 breathing and some elements of Basic Practice at traffic lights and on the freeway. As much as I can, I try to do “contemplative driving.”

I often repeat mantras to myself to keep myself grounded. My favorite one now is: “We can only do what we can do.”

Though the real world often interferes with me following this routine, I find that I do much better when I can.

I share this report in case any of you find anything here that is of use to you. Most of my life, I was relatively undisciplined. Now that I’m developing some self-discipline I wonder how my life would have gone if I had done so earlier. But it is what it is.

Meditating Lawyers

In her fascinating “Educating Lawyers To Meditate?” article published in Spring 2011 by the UMKC Law Review, Rhonda V. Magee offers an incisive critique of the legal profession and an encouraging report on efforts to transform it. Her analysis applies throughout society and is strikingly relevant to progressive political activism.

Magee wants her profession to live up to its stated ideals. According to the American Bar Association, "A professional lawyer is an expert in law pursuing a learned art in service to clients and in the spirit of public service; and engaging in these pursuits as part of a common calling to promote justice and public good.” In line with this spirit, Magee wants lawyers to “increase our awareness of the complex humanity at the center of the work of lawyering and to maximize our capacity to engage practical wisdom in the course of our service as lawyers, leaders, and human beings.”

The Carnegie Foundation shares her concern. In 2007 the foundation published “Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law.” In that report, William M. Sullivan and his co-authors argue:

Law is a tradition of social practice that includes particular habits of mind, as well as a distinctive ethical engagement with the world….. The moral development of professionals requires a holistic approach to the educational experience that can grasp its formative effects as a whole…. How can we best combine the elements of legal professionalism – knowledge, skill and moral discernment – into the capacity for judgment guided by a sense of professional responsibility?

Given the profession’s unique interest in justice, a significant degree of social responsibility is implied. The Carnegie report therefore calls for the “moral development of practitioners” and strengthening “moral character” through “ethical-social apprenticeship.”

In 1993, Yale Law School Dean Anthony Kronman coined the phrase "lawyer-statesman" to capture the ideal professional identity of the early common-law era, which emphasized "the value of prudence or practical wisdom.” According to Magee, Kronman focused on the profession’s recent “failure to adequately form lawyers with a sense of themselves as civically-committed members of a socially-critical profession, who gained self-respect, and the respect of others, by their capacity to discern wisdom in the face of life’s perennial conflicts.” He defined "practical wisdom" as "a subtle and discriminating sense of how the (often conflicting) generalities of legal doctrine should be applied in concrete disputes." Therefore, prudence, "a trait of character and not just a cognitive skill," is key.

Kronman argued that “the scientific law reform movement” undermined the concern with practical wisdom that is focused on particular situations. Instead, this movement (which is reflected in modernization throughout society) has prioritized “theoretical understanding,” “knowledge in the abstract,” “quantification over qualification,” and “intellectual competence,” while neglecting nurturing growth in “temperament or character.” These dehumanizing trends are also seen in the leftist Critical Legal Studies movement (as well as the progressive movement in general).

Ironically, an alternative to this modernization can be found in the ancient Greek philosophy that gave birth to the dualism that afflicts the modern world. As Pierre Hadot sums it up, for Socrates (who would sometimes become totally absorbed in meditation, withdraw from society, stand motionless, and/or reflect for an entire day) knowledge was “not just knowing, but knowing-what-ought-to-be-preferred, and hence, knowing how to live.” In this spirit, Magee affirms “educating the whole person [to] fulfill a pre-existing sense of moral commitments.” This learning that is rooted in “values-based knowledge” arises not only from Socratic dialog as “American legal education has made famous, but also from inner reflection.”

Socrates appears to have believed that only through rigorous and repeated self-examination might one live a life of meaning: “An unexamined life is not livable for man.” As Hadot summarizes, the capacity for morally grounded living depends upon ongoing self-examination:

There is, moreover, every indication that such wisdom is never acquired once and for all. It is not only others that Socrates never stops testing, but also himself. The purity of moral intent must be constantly renewed and reestablished. Self-transformation is never definitive, but demands perpetual reconquest.

…Importantly, self-examination of this sort…was not conceived as being for the benefit of the so-called “individual” alone. Indeed, the development of moral people…was aimed at better preparing such people for civic engagement and service to the common good…. Contemplative practices are essential to the well-educated human being…. 

…The ancients saw even the study of texts…as contemplative practice…. [As Brian Stock put it:] “Reading and writing are a means to an end, the making of a better person.”

Fortunately, Magee and her associates in the contemplative-practices-in-law movement are making headway in their efforts to reclaim law’s wholesome roots, especially by encouraging law students, lawyers, and judges to practice mindfulness meditation. This form of meditation helps practitioners develop what Dan Siegel calls “mindsight,” or “our ability to look within and perceive the mind, to reflect on our experience.” 

Magee states, “Contemplative practices [may] naturally lead to increased ethical consciousness,” because meditators not only accept whatever is present, they also notice what is beneficial and what is not. A basic grounding in humility, love, a sense of interconnectedness, and reverence for life underlies contemplative meditation.  In this way, we minimize egoism and calm our emotions, which enables us to make wiser decisions, handle our fear, and exercise the courage that we need to honor virtue consistently.

By “contemplative practice,” Magee refers to regular behavior that assists people “in being more deeply present and capable of choosing their responses to stimuli…[by] developing self-knowledge, as well as awareness of the psychological or emotional states of others in our midst.” As Siegel puts it, being mindful is “paying attention to the present moment without being swept up by judgments…. People move towards well-being by training the mind to focus on moment-to-moment experience….” Mindfulness meditation has been widely adopted and its benefits have been established by scientific studies.

One risk, however, is the use of contemplative practices to facilitate unethical behavior and/or the strengthening of Western hyper-individualism. Such efforts help practitioners focus merely on “personal self-management” in a way that undermines

the power to catalyze practitioners toward the more aspirational objectives of the movement – such as promoting more ethical and moral conduct, more compassionate and empathic judgment, social justice and transforming the world in support of the more altruistic tendencies within human nature.

In her article, Magee concludes that contemplative practices “tend to lead to spiritual and moral growth – if not inevitably, then more often than not.” Nevertheless, she supports efforts to  ground contemplative practice within an ethical context “while at the same time affirming freedom of choice in religion and human autonomy.” Along this line, she reports that Arthur Zajonc

argues persuasively that contemplative practices should be introduced only after obtaining commitment to grounding them in a universalist ethical framework based minimally on two pillars: 1) humbly setting aside self-interest and acknowledging the value of the other in our midst; and 2) a sense of reverence for the high task of which we are endeavoring: to live more consciously and deeply.

Though the Golden Rule, to love others as we love ourselves, may be a preferred alternative to “setting aside self-interest,” an ethical framing of this sort does leave “every person free to connect that grounding with a religious or spiritual tradition, or not, according to the dictates of one’s own conscience.” In this way, ethical contemplative practice affirms autonomy and demonstrates a way for “the continued integration of contemplative practices into the central institutions of our nation’s infrastructure.”

In Spring 2010 the University of San Francisco School of Law, where Magee teaches, supported her offering a course on “Contemplative Lawyering.” Magee reports:

In each of these classes, we combined sitting meditation with lawyering-in-context role-play exercises, in which students were called upon to handle a hypothetical challenge in light of the contemplative perspective. Afterwards, we discussed their experiences with the meditations and role-play exercises…. We closed each class with a final meditation and poem…. Anecdotal evidence indicates that we succeeded in helping our students begin to grow into more emotionally aware, civic-minded, ethically-engaged lawyers.

The contemplative-practice-in-law movement may have begun in 1989 when Jon Kabat-Zinn offered a program on meditation to judges. But Magee considers “the seminal year” to be 2002 when the Harvard Negotiation Law Review hosted a forum and published a major report on the movement by Leonard L. Riskin, who has taught courses on meditation at Yale and Columbia law schools and held well-attended five-day retreats between 1998 and 2002. Since then groups of meditating lawyers have formed throughout the country, nearly a dozen law schools are offering for-credit courses, continuing education courses are being offered, and associated groups have formed within bar associations. 

In 2007 the California Law Review became the first “top-ten” school to publish an article on contemplative lawyering. Magee reports:

The authors see “mindful lawyering” as “not preoccupied with winning or losing; but it is also not necessarily about smoothing our conflict and avoiding suffering.” Instead mindfulness in the practice of law “provides a framework for thinking about how individual action is tied to group process, how group process connects to institutionalized relations of power, and thus how transformational change at the interpersonal level is linked to transformational change at the regional, national, and global levels."

In 2010 the Nevada Law Journal published another major collection of articles on the issue.

The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, for whom Magee currently serves as Board Chair, has advanced much of the movement’s work with its Law Program. For more than ten years, the Center has sponsored annual retreats, occasional gatherings with invited participants, and the first national conference on meditation and law in October 2010.

To “continue the process of bringing these practices from margin to center,” Magee believes law professors need to “increase opportunities to develop the skill of metacognition or reflection to law students in all classes (without the need of mentioning mindfulness or meditation)….”

More deeply, a paradigm shift is needed away from the reliance on learning “based on revelation, external observation and reasoning, to one which includes internal observation” as a way of “knowing the world, and for knowing how to do well by and with others in it.” This shift “would open the door wider for responses to injustices and patterns of justice,” such as replacing “adversarial with restorative justice methods.”

Toward the end of the article, Magee takes her argument to the next logical step and suggests that

legal education must take place within smaller settings or “base communities,” wherein the knowledge, skills, and values that lead to the sound practice of law may be conveyed though deep engagement with real people and real issues—clients and lawyers in the locality struggling with real world problems….

In her article Magee affirms the need to nurture open-ended self-development grounded in universal ethical principles with methods that reinforce self-determination. This approach does not narrow its focus on developing certain skills, such as developing courage or “leadership development,” as do other projects. Rather, it asks each individual to define her or his own goals concerning how to become a better person as well as support others in their own personal development efforts.

Moreover, her article does not limit itself to a single issue, like law or education. Rather, it proposes, it seems to me, the comprehensive and fundamental, or holistic, transformation of our entire society, including all of our major institutions, our culture, and ourselves as individuals.

A network of community-based, multi-issue lifelong learning centers based on these principles would be an exciting development. I stand ready to help with any such effort.

Thurman, King, and Deep Nonviolence

Howard Thurman was an African-American theologian who was extremely popular and influential in the Black community until his death in 1981. He led the first delegation of Blacks to meet with Mahatma Gandhi, was a classmate and friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s father, and advised Dr. King throughout his life. Reportedly, Dr. King carried Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited with him when he traveled. 

In 1944, the year I was born, Thurman co-founded the first multiracial church in the United States, the Church for the Fellowship of all Peoples in San Francisco, where I'm a member. The head minister is Rev. Dorsey Blake, a former classmate of mine. Though the congregation is now small, the spirit is strong and we are exploring possible new, groundbreaking projects.

Published in 1949, Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited is basically a self-help manual for activists. Thurman understood that deep nonviolence requires constant striving to develop the emotional and spiritual abilities that are needed to resist injustice. The book has had a profound impact on me, helping me in particular to better understand the need for reconciliation.

In the introductory chapter, “Jesus—An Interpretation,” Thurman addressed how dualistic Greek philosophy threatened holistic Judaism and states, “The crucial problem of Judaism was to exist as an isolated, autonomous, cultural, religious and political unit in the midst of the hostile Hellenic world” while at the same time trying to give to all basic security, both economic and spiritual.

Thurman wrote, “The urgent question was what must be the attitude toward Rome…. This is the position of the disinherited in every age. What must be the attitude toward the rulers, the controllers of political, social, and economic life?” Jesus responded to this issue with a message that “focused on the urgency of a radical change in the inner attitude of the people…. [H]e placed his finger on the ‘inward center’ as the crucial arena….”

We face a similar dilemma today: How can we maintain alternative communities rooted in a holistic worldview within our fragmented, modernized world, while we establish economic justice and nurture equality (what Thurman called “the simple practice of brotherhood in the commonplace relations of life”), in a society that denies full citizenship and claims that someone must always be in charge, that one must either dominate or submit?  What must be our attitude toward “the system,” our global social system composed of our major social institutions, our culture, and ourselves that work together to concentrate wealth and power? There is no enemy we can demonize, for our main problem is the system itself and each of us is complicit.

As was the case with the Jewish minority when Jesus lived, we have two alternatives: “resist or not resist.” If we choose not to resist, we can imitate, assimilate, capitulate, or “reduce contact with the enemy to a minimum” while keeping “one’s resentment under rigid control [with] a terrible contempt.”

The other alternative, resistance, involves “the physical, overt expression of an inner attitude.” When this resistance is violent, driven by “a great and awful assurance that because the cause is just it cannot fail,” it “is apt to be a tragic last resort.”

Jesus instead preached nonviolence and assured us that “the Kingdom of Heaven is within.” He 

recognized with authentic realism that anyone who permits another to determine the quality of his inner life gives into the hands of the other the keys to his destiny. If a man knows precisely what he can do to you or what epithet he can hurl against you in order to make you lose your temper, your equilibrium, then he can always keep you under his control…. [Jesus] announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them….

He projected a dream, the logic of which would give to all the needful security. There would be room for all, and no man would be a threat to his brother…. The basic principles of his way of life cut straight through to the despair of his fellows and found it groundless. By inference, he says, “You must abandon your fear of each other and fear only God.  You must not indulge in any deception and dishonesty, even to save your lives….”  

The next three chapters, “Fear,” “Deception,” and “Hate” elaborate on these key themes – overcoming fear, hypocrisy, and hatred – by offering incisive guidance.

Concerning fear, Thurman states:  

Fears are of many kinds—fear of objects, fear of people, fear of the future, fear of nature, fear of the unknown, fear of old age, fear of disease, and fear of life itself…. 

The ever-present fear that beset the vast poor, the economically and socially insecure, is a fear of still a different breed. It is a climate closing in; it is like the fog in San Francisco or in London. It is nowhere in particular yet everywhere. It is a mood which one carries around with himself, distilled from the acrid conflict with which his days are surrounded. It has it roots deep in the heart of the relations between the weak and the strong, between the controllers of environment and those who are controlled by it. 

When the basis of such fear is analyzed, it is clear that it arises out of the sense of isolation and helplessness…. [I]t is not the fear of death that is most often at work; it is the deep humiliation arising from dying without benefit or purpose. 

Fear…among the weak in turn breeds fear among the strong and dominant. This fear insulates the conscience against a sense of wrongdoing…..  

The result is the dodging of all encounters…. 

[T]his fear which served originally as a safety device…becomes death for the self.

Jesus responded to these realities by dedicating himself to “set at liberty them that are bruised” and by preaching, “Take therefore no thought for the morrow” in order to foster a “sense of belonging, of counting” that establishes “the ground of personal dignity, so that a profound sense of personal worth could absorb the fear reaction…. He senses the confirmation of his roots, and even death becomes a little thing.”

These words apply as well to those who are economically secure. Lack of self-confidence, for example, leaves us afraid of what others think of us. Fear of failure paralyzes. Concern that our lives may ultimately be meaningless or at least ineffective leads us into a downward spiral. We fail to speak our truth, leading to more self-doubt that undermines our effectiveness. But if we dedicate our lives to doing serving others as well as we can, we can find a rock-solid foundation and let the chips fall where they may.

We can truly trust ourselves and stop placing others on a pedestal. Thurman said, “One of the practical results following this new orientation is the ability to make an objective, detached appraisal of other people… In a conversation with me Lincoln Steffins once said that he was sure he could rear a child who was…a habitué of a ghetto so as to immunize him against the corroding effects of [idolizing others]. He said: “I would teach him that he must never call another man ‘great’; but that he must always qualify the term with the limiting phrase ‘as to’…”

“[I]f a man’s ego has been stabilized,” and he humbly sees himself as a child of God, Thurman wrote, “he is in a position to appraise his own intrinsic powers, gifts, talents, and abilities” and experience “a profound faith in life that nothing can destroy…. It is true that a man cannot be serene unless he possesses something about which to be serene…. Here are the faith and the awareness that overcome fear and transform it into the power to strive, to achieve, and not to yield.”

In the chapter on deception, Thurman articulates themes that are seen today in the call for greater openness and transparency in all relations. “Deception is perhaps the oldest of all the techniques by which the weak have protected themselves,” Thurman declared. “The weak have survived by fooling the strong.”

But we pay a price. “The penalty of deception is to become a deception…. Life is only a tale told by a fool, having no meaning because deception has wiped out all moral distinctions” and life is cheapened by an “artificial and exaggerated emphasis upon not being killed.”

Thurman recommends instead “a complete and devastating sincerity” as recommend by Gandhi in a letter to Muriel Lester where he stated, “Speak the truth, without fear and without exception,… You are in God’s work, so you need not fear man’s scorn.” Inspired by Gandhi, Thurman wrote:

Be simply, directly truthful, whatever may be the cost in life, limb, or security. For the individual who accepts this, there may be quick and speedy judgment with attendant loss. But if the number increases and the movement spreads, the vindication of the truth would follow in the wake. There must always be the confidence that the effect of truthfulness can be realized in the mind of the oppressor as well as the oppressed.

Dr. King surely bore those words in mind throughout his life.

By refusing to be dishonest with and thereby give status to those who are more powerful than us, we can relate as one human being to another. “A man is a man, nor more, no less,” Thurman insisted. “The awareness of this fact marks the supreme moment of human dignity.”

In his chapter on hate, Thurman analyzed the origins of hate (which it seems to me is anger that persists and calcifies) as a defense mechanism that “distills an essence of vitality [that provides a] basis for self-realization…. Hatred becomes for you a source of validation for your personality [and] gives you a sense of significance…. [T]hey declare their right to exist, despite the judgment of the environment.” Hatred provides a “tremendous source of dynamic energy [as] a strange, new cunning possesses the mind, and every opportunity for taking advantage, for defeating the enemy, is revealed in clear perspective.” When this dynamic flourishes, “the illusion of righteousness is easy to create…[and] all moral judgments of behavior [is] out of bounds… It is open season all the time… eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth.” 

Once again, however, though “hatred seems to serve a creative purpose,” we pay a price. Thurman wrote:

Hatred destroys finally the core of the life of the hater…. At last it turns to ash…. It blinds the individual to all values of worth…. Hatred bears deadly and bitter fruit. It is blind and nondiscriminating…. Once hatred is released, it cannot be confined to the offenders alone…. Hatred cannot be controlled once it is set in motion…. 

Above and beyond all else it must be borne in mind that hatred tends to dry up the springs of creative thought in the life of the hater, so that his resourcefulness becomes completely focused on the negative aspects of his environment. The urgent needs of the personality for creative expression are starved to death.

But it is the final chapter, “Love,” which moved me most and helped me better understand the focus on reconciliation advocated by Gandhi and King. Along with Adam Kahane’s Power and Love, this chapter motivates my interest in problem-solving dialogues that involve all stakeholders, including corporate CEOs.

Thurman wrote:

You must abandon your fear of each other and fear only God.  You must not indulge in any deception and dishonesty, even to save your lives….  The religion of Jesus says to the disinherited: ‘Love your enemy. Take the initiative in seeking ways by which you can have the experience of a common sharing of mutual worth and value. It may be hazardous, but you must do it.

Thurman declared that both privileged and underprivileged persons must liberate themselves from their assigned role in society, because “love is possible only between two freed spirits.” They must undo their conditioning, remove barriers, and create “real, natural, free” social situations that enable them to be “status free” and experience their common humanity. 

Thurman said, “We are here dealing with a discipline, a method, …an over-all technique for loving one’s enemy.”  He called for those in need to cry out, “The [human being] in me appeals to the [human being] in you.” 

Whenever a need is “laid bare,” Thurman wrote, “those who stand in the presence of it can be confronted with the experience of universality that makes all class and race distinctions [irrelevant].” He insisted that this “personality confirmation” is essential for “lasting health” in a democracy.

Applying these principles to our current situation will be one of our greatest challenges. How can we create social situations that enable wealthy individuals and low- and moderate-income individuals to deeply encounter one another, witness their needs laid bare, and consider how they can work together to define fair and practical solutions? 

But as Thurman said, “Wherever [Jesus’] spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred…need have no dominion over them…. You must abandon your fear of each other… You must not indulge in any deception or dishonesty…. Love your enemy.”

If we practice those principles, the future may hold unknown miracles.