As many of you know or may have noticed from this site, I’m a lawyer and a (bad) Buddhist. Some people think this is contradictory, but really, it’s not. My Buddhist practices enhance my lawyering skills.
Now, I say “(bad) Buddhist” because I’ve never formally “taken refuge” (formally taken vows) and consider myself secular and still struggle greatly with the idea of reincarnation; but I have to say that studying Buddhism and practicing as I do has made my life, including my work as a lawyer, immeasurably better.
For example, in lawyering I have to deal with people who get nasty, who lie, and who generally would have made the 30-year-old me react by verbally ripping them to shreds in very personal attacks. Now, I don’t take their behaviors personally but instead take a more objective view of it all. Those people are experiencing their own suffering and striking out–like a reactive dog. That doesn’t mean I let them walk over me/my clients, not at all, but I do stick to the law and the facts rather than attacking the people themselves. Oddly, this often has the additional result of frustrating the hell out of the opposition as I don’t rise to their bait and works as a sort of intellectual jiu-jitsu making them stumble. More often than not, their further attacks just make me laugh to myself at the absurdity of their actions while I stay on-point and get the job done for my client.
In an example from my personal life, I’m pretty sure I would not have gotten through the medical stuff I just went through (I’m actually not fully healed yet, but well on my way) without a strong meditation practice. It doesn’t make pain magically disappear or anything like that, but it does help to remind me that all things are impermanent, including pain and fear, and learning to focus on the breath helps when relaxation is much needed. I suspect that I got off the heavy meds a lot sooner for it, but that’s just a guess.
Anyway, in an effort to help others, in some posts this year (and maybe longer) I’m going to pay less attention to the law and more to some Buddhist and Buddhist-adjacent topics and tools. I’m calling the series Buddh-ish, because I’m a goofball and like the linguistic shorthand. The point of all this is not to convert anyone (any Buddhist who tries to convert someone to Buddhism is doing it wrong, IMO) but rather to offer up some of the tools/practices I’ve used and have found helpful so that you can try them out for yourself if you choose. None of it requires changing your own religious/spiritual beliefs and all if it is offered with the best of intentions.
The first post will go up in the next few days. Until then, I’ll leave you with what I say at the end of every meditation:
May all beings be happy;
May all beings be healthy;
May all beings live with ease and in safety;
May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.
One Reply to “New Series for Creatives and Lawyers: Buddh-ish”