To me, groundlessness as a wisdom practice is challenging. It’s an invitation to forget every concept, let go of everything I know, and sit in the direct experience of my life. I love the idea. But as a practical matter, how do I make dinner if I live in a non-conceptual reality, let alone how do I walk into a courtroom and present evidence?
On the other hand, what if the aspiration to let go at this level, in the relative sense, is about just letting go of unwholesome concepts like that we, and others, are bad, wrong, difficult, not enough? To me this feels like a powerful enough letting go, for me and for now, because it points to a powerful level of freedom: the freedom to connect compassionately with others, and the freedom to be connected to my own luminous self.
What about you? If you have a practice of letting go at this level, where does it feel like it leads?
(Dedicated to letting go of any sense that we’re right, they’re wrong, and the fight is to the death; and to cultivating love and compassion in all directions on our small blue planet.)
Hi everyone, it’s Judi Cohen and this is Wake Up Call 440.
Even though Pema talked about wisdom, the sixth of the six paramitas, in Chapter 17 of The Places That Scare You, she sees wisdom paramita, or prajnaparamita (prajna is the Sanskrit word for wisdom), as worthy of greater exploration and offers that in Chapter 18, which is called Groundlessness. I’m calling this Wake Up Call Groundlessness/Feet on the Ground, though, because in my limited experience of prajnaparamita, or wisdom, for householders like us, who live in the world, there is an important and complimentary give and take between letting go completely, or as well as we can – groundlessness – and being fully (inter-) connected to one another in the courtroom or conference room, in a feet-on-the-ground kind of way.
Pema begins with a story about the Buddha taking his community to a place called Vulture Mountain and essentially rearranging their thinking. Although they had been studying with him a long time, understood impermanence and “ego-lessness,” understood that nothing, including our “selves,” is solid – that we are simply ever-changing, ever evolving beings in the same way that all of nature is never solid, always changing; knew that suffering comes from not believing this is true and from trying to thirst and grasp for pleasure in the mistaken belief that if we can control for the forces that cause us momentary happiness, we can actually be permanently happy.
But on Vulture Mountain, the Buddha said, now that you understand these three characteristics of being human, suffering, impermanence, and egoless-ness, let go of those ideas, too. According to Pema, he told his community that “whatever they believed had to be let go, that dwelling upon any description of reality was a trap.”
For me this is a little bit like training for years and years to finally fully understand the rules of evidence. Studying them, and also putting them into practice over and over. Seeing for myself how they work, what will be permitted, how I can work within the rules to get the evidence I need admitted. And then one day, I step into the courtroom and find out that there are no rules. That to understand the causes of harm and how to repair harm, the whole group of us in the courtroom: judges, jury, prosecutor, defender, accused, victims, families of both (or all), are instructed to drop our identities, positions, and beliefs; all the rules that held up our system; plant our feet on the courtroom floor, breathe, listen carefully and with great love, and from there, without knowing anything, sort whatever needs sorting.
This completely imaginal moment of prajnaparamita might look like the ritual Jack Kornfield shares in The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace. He says, "In the Babemba tribe of South Africa,” Jack says, “when a person acts irresponsibly or unjustly, he is placed in the center of the village, alone and unfettered. All work ceases, and every person in the village including children gathers in a large circle around the accused individual. Then each person speaks to the accused, one at a time, each recalling the good things the person in the center of the circle has done in their lifetime. Every incident, every experience that can be recalled with any detail and accuracy, is recounted. All their positive attributes, good deeds, strengths, and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length. This tribal ceremony often lasts for several days. At the end, the tribal circle is broken, a celebration takes place, and the person is symbolically and literally welcomed back into the tribe."
The Buddha’s message is that holding onto anything: a belief in who we are as a fixed and solid prosecutor or defender or trial lawyer or family law lawyer or even mediator, even peace-maker; a belief in what pain and suffering are and the ways harm should be recompensed or punished, or a belief in *just* rehabilitation or in what justice means at all; and also any belief in impermanence or interconnection; that any fixed ideas at all, block wisdom. And that to unblock the very wisdom we need in our lives, and probably to save – or at least to best serve – society and the earth right now, we have to let go of all of that, too.
What might this look like inside our legal system? Can a lawyer let go at this level, considering all we’re responsible for, all we have to hold onto, hold up, uphold? Can we learn how to enter into a room or into any situation really, not knowing; having let go of all concepts and even of the concept of letting go itself; enter with “don’t know mind,” as San Francisco Zen Center founder Suzuki Roshi said?
Pema says “the only way to fully understand the [teachings of compassion and wisdom], the only way to practice them fully, is to abide in the unconditional openness of the prajnaparamita, patiently cutting through all our tendencies to hang on.”
I’m sharing this, and my more or less wild interpretation of what this level of letting go might look like inside the law, not as a suggestion for what to do. You already know what to do – we all do. What to do is to practice: to meditate, to learn how this heart/mind actually works, to gain insight into the causes and conditions of your own life, to learn to let go of all the grasping, clinging, and suffering, and to cultivate a loving, compassionate mind.
And then see for yourself. See what you discover. See what, if anything, that I’ve shared today or anytime, is useful. What’s useful, you keep practicing with. What’s not, you let go. This is the most ancient of the teachings: ehipassiko, come see for yourself! All of the ancient teachers said this, and all of our modern teachers say this. Ehipassiko – come see for yourself what is true. See for yourself if letting go is worthwhile, and if letting go at this deeper level that Pema is talking about, and that I’m weirdly extrapolating into the law, is useful – and if it’s not wholly useful, what parts are useful. And with the useful parts, practice. And see what happens, when you do.
