UNDERDOG - Criminal Defense Lawyer in Virginia & Maryland

Meeting my teacher and friend Jun Yasuda is a transformative experience in itself. Joining her for a peace walk is all the more incredible. 

Once again, Jun-san helps lead a peace walk starting on September 11, and finishing Septmeber 21. This walk will begin on September 11 at Ground Zero, going through such places as Syracuse, Onandoga, Saratoga Springs, and the Grafton Peace Pagoda, ultimately finishing at Troy on the International Day of Peace celebration. 

I will be in court almost every business day during the peace walk. If you go, please let me know. 

S.R. Sidarth and Jon Katz (Copyright Jon Katz.)  

I kept my composure when encountering such excellent and accomplished people as Lou Jacobi (through a storefront window), Geoffrey Holder (on a SoHo street), and Madeline Kahn (in the audience of Aunt Dan and Lemon).

A rare group of people leave me awestruck. Tears welled in my eyes when I met McCoy Tyner, who made musical and cultural history with John Coltrane. When with Jun Yasuda, I try my best to restrain myself from doing a full questionography of her life. When Pramoedya Ananta Toer strolled into Olson’s Books, I pinched myself.

Shekar Ramanuja Sidarth has joined that group that leaves me awestruck. He is an accidental mini-celebrity who contributed to George Allen’s downfall by merely being present to lead Allen to blunder into Macaca-gate.

I met Sidarth, as he calls himself, for the first time, today, as he was filing something for the law firm he works at, as he continues his second year of George Washington Law School. The descriptions of him as a low-key man who apparently does not seek the limelight seem accurate.

At first, Sidarth seemed so low-key that I wasn’t sure how he would respond to a request for a photo together. But then I remarked how he was accustomed to training the camera on Allen during his failed re-election campaign, and he seemed happy to accept my request for a photo, which turned out to be rather fuzzy in the courthouse’s dark café area, with my cellphone. 

As Time said a few weeks after Allen’s defeat:

“It was definitely not Sidarth's idea to put the clip [of Allen’s macacagate] on YouTube. ‘Getting drawn out into the limelight was really surprising," he says, and he means it. He's an intensely private person, and he declined to answer quite a few of the questions put to him by TIME. He's focused on keeping his head down and getting into law school. ‘Ultimately I'd hope people wouldn't pay as much attention to things like this, instead caring more about who can serve the country or the state better,’ he says. ‘Of course,’ he adds, ‘character plays into that. And this event reflected on Allen's character.’”  

Where Sidarth was an accidental catalyst to Allen’s downfall, Mike Stark sought to get Allen’s goat during the campaign, got tackled by some goons who were either present to support Allen or possibly were asked by his campaign to provide security or order, and helped further the unravelling of Allen’s reelection bid. Sidarth told me he knows Stark. 

 

On Jeopardy two months ago, Sidarth told Alex Trebeck about going on a religious pilgrimage with his mother to Tibet. 

Although I am not crazy either way about Jim Webb, who defeated Allen, I think an Allen reelection would have been much worse. Sidarth wrote a great piece a few days after Allen’s defeat, turning an ugly situation into an inspiring look forward.   

Numerous times I have written about my friend and teacher Jun Yasuda (see all articles here).

My fateful 1991 meeting with her as she fasted across from the White House, for peace during Persian Gulf War I, was a critical turning point. It came near the time that Ram Dass came more fully to my attention, a few months before t'ai chi came more fully to my attention, a few years before I started getting more of a sense of the meaning of Tao, and just months before I left a corporate law firm job to become a public defender lawyer. Jun-san was the main catalyst for me to move in the direction of powerful, peaceful, and effective harmony.

Before meeting Jun-san, I was obsessed and angry over all the rampant human rights violations throughout human history. Jun-san -- and, later, t'ai chi, the Dalai Lama and Gandhi -- showed me not to be any more angry at injustice than I would get angry at a devastating hurricane, tornado, or earthquake.

Jun-san seemingly imparted with me the lessons she has needed to impart and then left me on my own to pursue them as I wish, and since then we have crossed paths once in awhile, which for me recharges my batteries with her teachings. Just around four miles down the street from my office is Jun-san's fellow Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist nun Takako Ichikawa, who arrived several years after I first met Jun-san, and who also is a wonderful inspiration.

Through @BuffaloPost on Twitter, I learned of one of Jun-san's latest peaceful efforts for justice. Recently, Jun-san fasted and prayed for a week at the University of California-Berkeley for the return of the remains of Native Americans to their tribes; the university apparently holds thousands of remains not only of Native Americans but of many other people from various parts of the world, as well. Joined by other demonstrators, Jun-san said: "The Native American spirituality and prayer are the center of this land," said Yasuda during a pause in her drumming. "What has happened in this country to Native Americans from the beginning has not been peaceful. So this is a reminder that there is a limit to all the taking we are doing on this planet."

I have long known about Jun-san's close connection with Native Americans, and now learned her view that "[t]he Native American spirituality and prayer are the center of this land." Jun-san's temple and peace pagoda grounds in Grafton, New York, include testaments to her close connection with Native Americans.

This Nipponzan Myohoji page says: "[Jun] Yasuda had been close to Native Americans, and her stupa was dedicated to their survival. Before building the pagoda, Yasuda had walked across the country four times in support of peace and Native Americans, beating her hand drum as she chanted the Odaimoku. In 1983, she was fasting and praying in New York [apparently at the Albany statehouse on behalf of Dennis Banks], when she met Hank Hazelton, a long time activist for Native Americans. Hazelton offered her a parcel of land. In October of 1985, work began on the structure soon to be called the Grafton Peace Pagoda. The pagoda was dedicated in 1993. Native American symbols ring the pagoda, while other images inlaid into the dome depict various aspects of the Buddha's life and teachings."

Competing with seizing life's opportunities and challenges are work, mundane daily tasks, and fatigue. Perhaps I met Andrew Wales yesterday as a reminder to keep focusing on transcending the latter hurdles in life. I met Andrew yesterday at the annual underground comics Small Press Expo at the North Bethesda Marriott on Marinelli, or perhaps I should say he found me and my boy, who is now 3 1/2-years-old, and had more of an interest in getting lunch at the bagel carryout up the street than taking this backyard visit to which many others had driven hundreds of miles.

As I scanned Andrew's exhibit table at the show, he offered to draw my boy's favorite superhero, which he chose as Spiderman rather than SpongeBob. He deftly magic markered a variation on the theme,which my son kept close to his side the rest of the day.

Wales has been an art teacher for over two decades. I bought the July 2009 issue of his Eclectic Comics, where he writes of visiting the classroom of a veteran art teacher, and asking him about the teacher's drawings exhibited in his classroom. The teacher guaranteed to Wales that as an art teacher -- and especially as a parent -- he would no longer have time to make his own artwork: "I haven't drawn in years."

Wales successfully set out to prove him wrong, and encourages those interested in making art to find at least one form to enjoy their whole lives. He underlines that artmaking does not require taking away from family time; it can become a family activity.

The visual artform I have chosen -- leaving aside whether my Internet work counts -- is origami, which I have been doing for a decade, after being inspired to do so by a story of my friend and mentor Jun Yasuda folding origami peace cranes, and later learning of the healing power associated with the folding and presentation of peace cranes.

As an aside, and by coincidence/divine coincidence, at the exhibit table right next to Andrew's was Sakiko Judge -- whom I met at the 2007 SPX -- folding and offering origami cranes. As much as I seek logical explanations in life, I experienced a compelling confluence yesterday of Andrew's reaching out to us, his comic's encouraging people to keep their creativity alive, and Sakiko's acting that out with her peace cranes.

As to what this has to do with my practice of criminal defense, I have repeatedly blogged about the personal and persuasive power of finding and maintaining the child within, finding daily enchantment, and creating beyond our daily professional work. Jon Katz

Numerous law schools have American Indian law classes. Mine did not. I have wanted to learn more, including the law concerning treaty rights, land rights, gambling, and sacred medicine, and also about the past and current mistreatment and slaughter of Native Americans and efforts and accomplishments to reverse such mistreatment.

I took a particularly greater interest in Native American issues from reading Dennis Banks's Ojibwa Warrior (written with Richard Erdoes), and then meeting him in 2006 at the conclusion of the Sacred Run, and again in 2008 near the end of the Longest Walk II. We are both friends of Jun Yasuda, who joined Dennis from California when he went "underground to the Onondaga Reservation in New York" after California's Jerry Brown -- who refused to extradite Dennis to South Dakota concerning criminal charges over the Wounded Knee event -- left the governor's office.

In Ojibwa Warrior, Dennis Banks details his life from childhood, to being ripped by the government from his family and forced into a faraway United States government school meant to take the Indian culture out of Native Americans, and to his ironic joining of the military defending the same government that had forced him to that boarding school.

With the foregoing background, yesterday, September 17, I attended a meeting at the National Museum of the American Indian, where a roomful of lawyers shared ideas for creating an effective upcoming exhibit on the many treaties between the United States government and tribes. Many of the lawyers present have represented American Indians for years. Some previously worked at the Interior Department, and at least one still does. Several attendees are American Indians, including museum director and moderator Kevin Gover, who has worked in various posts involving Indian affairs.

During the discussion, I acknowledged that I remain very new to American Indian law, but that I feel it very important that the treaties exhibit include coverage of broken treaties, rather than just on their creation. It appears that the exhibit will indeed do this, and that in conjunction with or separate from the exhibit, the museum under Mr. Grover's leadership will, in his words, "deconstruct" numerous court opinions that get American Indian law wrong, as he sees it. A basic view of those in the room is that the treaties must be honored no less today than a treaty with France or any other sovereign nation, but that many Americans do not share this view.

Kevin Grover issued an apology in 2000 for the Bureau of Indian Affairs' role in the civil rights violations, when he was an Assistant Secretary at the Interior Department. Here is a viewpoint on Mr. Gover by Steve Russell, who has written extensively on American Indian law.

In addition to the many treaties between Indian tribes and the United States, many treaties were also entered into between tribes and Britain, and tribes and Canada. The museum apparently will include that area at its branch in Manhattan. The treaties exhibit will be both online and presented at the museum. Many issues various tribes focus on today with the treaties include water rights, fishing and hunting rights, and gaming/casino rights.

ADDENDUM: At my request, one of the attendees recommended two texts for learning more about American Indian law. One is American Indians, Time and the Law, by Charles Wilkinson. He also recommended a book by a writer named Washburn; I am not sure if he was referring to Red Man's Land; White Man's Law, by Wilcomb E. Washburn.

Today, I was minding my own business waiting for a traffic light to turn green when there was a light tap on my driver's side window. There was a time when I would have tensed up in defensiveness with my armor under the same circumstances, before knowing who was there, lest it be someone with a knife or otherwise. Having increased the time I spend on t'ai chi, I thought nothing suspicious of the tap, and opened my window after seeing what appeared to be the driver of the tourbus to my left, asking the meaning of my license plate's acronym, NMMHRGK. I replied: "It is a Japanese Buddhist prayer for peace," which seemed to tickle the gentleman at minimum. (The acronym represents the odaimoku of Na-Mu-Myo-Ho-Ren-Ge-Kyo, which is the essence of the Lotus Sutra; I first learned it from my friend and teacher Jun Yasuda, who is peace personified; chanting it daily helps me approach that level of internal peace.)

It is hard to persuade judges, jurors and other people to trust me any more than I trust them. What good does it serve for tension to be visible in me by the people I am trying to persuade, especially if they think they are the ones making me feel tense? Tension has no place in t'ai chi, and makes it harder to sense and listen to the situation at hand.

Similarly, this past week, I stayed calm while dealing with a prosecutor who was more than happy to have me listen to his every word as he made a guilty plea offer -- which my client rejected, followed by the wise decision of going to trial -- which I was obligated by basic ethics rules to convey to my client, even though he reacted sharply dismissively when I came back soon thereafter with a counteroffer. Had I done otherwise, I would have been tense, which does not serve the process of battle and persuasion, and does not help one sense, listen to, and follow all essential battle-related events.

There was a time when I thought that acting calmly in the face of an insulting opponent might sometimes make me look weak to my opponent and colleagues. Sure, I call opponents on this from time to time, but the difference now is that I do it calmly, and with an effort not to lose the ability to hear my opponent between the lines as well as in the lines of communication.

In t'ai chi, we are taught not to tense up when under attack, just as we do not help ourselves to tense up when a car seems about to hit us, when we are trying to avert or minimize harm. All that does is to make it easier for us to be pushed by our opponents. When we soften ourselves up -- like water or wind -- to our opponents to the point that they cannot find anything to push against, the opponent's attack is at the very least neutralized, and sometimes is thrown off balance to my client's benefit. Jon Katz.

Jun Yasuda.

Last week, I posted on my family's visit to my teacher and friend Jun Yasuda's peace pagoda and temple, east of the Hudson River. Subsequently, I found the following five-part video series from the pagoda's fourteenth anniversary celebration, which event I unfortunately missed. The clips are here, here, here, here, and here.

Part II, displayed above, conveys some more of the essence of Jun-san. 

Copyright  Jon Katz.

Up the pagoda steps with my boy (Copyright Younghee Katz)

Drumming up peace in the temple, with my boy (Copyright Younghee Katz).

The rustic setting is offset by a soothing woodfired traditional Japanese bath up the road and behind the temple. (Copyright Younghee Katz).

Last weekend was my fourth trip to my friend and teacher Jun Yasuda's awe-inspiring peace pagoda and serene temple in rural Petersburg, New York (pictured above), east of Albany on the other side of the Hudson. This was the first time I went along with my wife and son.

No matter one's religious or non-religious focus, the visit for many people is calming and harmonizing, to the point that my law school friend's otherwise constantly friendly-hyper dog even went serene on first seeing the pagoda. I write here about my first journey to Jun Yasuda and the now-replaced temple and pagoda in 1996.

The above pictures are displayed in reverse chronological order. Starting at the bottom is the welcome sign to the temple grounds, where people park unless they have handicaps that necessitate driving closer. Next is a view inside the main room of the temple, which building also contains sleeping quarters and a large kitchen. This and all Nipponzan Myohoji temples include a large prayer drum and hand-held drums of the sort pictured, for chanting the Odaimoku of Na-Mu-Myo-Ho-Ren-Ge-Kyo, which is at once a profound prayer for peace and the essence of the Lotus Sutra. Like most traditional drums, they are made from animal skin, which challenges my veganism.

Next comes our walk up the steps to the pagoda, which is an empty structure that Jun Yasuda relates contains relics of Buddha Shakyamuni. Above that is a view of the pagoda and the surrounding grounds. The benches in the foreground are on the right side of the temple, suitable for such gatherings as annual celebrations of the Buddha's birthday. At the top is the English description of the last or second to last of the eight or so reliefs on the sides of the pagoda that tell the short story of the life of the Buddha. For a YouTube video of the pagoda, see here.

How was the land for the temple and pagoda obtained? This Nipponzan Myohoji page says: "[Jun] Yasuda had been close to Native Americans, and her stupa was dedicated to their survival. Before building the pagoda, Yasuda had walked across the country four times in support of peace and Native Americans, beating her hand drum as she chanted the Odaimoku. In 1983, she was fasting and praying in New York [apparently at the Albany statehouse on behalf of Dennis Banks], when she met Hank Hazelton, a long time activist for Native Americans. Hazelton offered her a parcel of land. In October of 1985, work began on the structure soon to be called the Grafton Peace Pagoda. The pagoda was dedicated in 1993. Native American symbols ring the pagoda, while other images inlaid into the dome depict various aspects of the Buddha's life and teachings."

The top picture above shows a sign at the pagoda that claims the Buddha's last words were the following haiku: "Life is a river/ Always moving. Do not hold / onto things. Work hard." A google search suggests that other Buddhist traditions might differ over the content of his last words.

The first line of the Buddha's last words depicted above is significant both to Buddhism and the t'ai chi Chinese martial art that I practice. Life constantly changes, just as a river does, which highlights the impermanence of life that is a focus of Buddhism, and the need in t'ai chi to work with change at every turn and never to fight the change with hard energy. The admonition "do not hold onto things" is part of the Buddhist focus of non-attachment in such areas as non-attachment to our bodies, personal relationships and possessions; and letting go our desires and expectations of ourselves, others, and circumstances. Similarly, t'ai chi teaches its practitioners to empty the clutter in their minds. The final sentence "work hard" reminds me of a story of t'ai chi megamaster Cheng Man Ch'ing, who once pointed out to his students while on a walk that they have plenty of time in the future to rest (gesturing towards a cemetery) but that much is left to be done while on this Earth. 

ADDENDUM I: Speaking of t'ai chi, here is my t'ai chi update: This weekend, I returned to the weekly Saturday morning t'ai chi push hands practice on Capitol Hill, where I learned more about neutralizing the opponents' push through softening the body, dealing with the ever-changing river of surrounding challenges and pushes, generally moving with a circle as part of one's defense, and sinking into the ground when doing the press and push hands moves.

Also, I got two excellent books in the mail this past week to add to my t'ai chi library. The first is Wolfe Lowenthal's second entry of his two-volume biography of his teacher Cheng Man-Ch'ing: Gateway to the Miraculous: Further Explorations in the Tao of Cheng Man Ch'ing, which follows Lowenthal's There Are No Secrets: Professor Cheng Man Ch'ing and His T'ai Chi Chuan. Among Wolfe's interesting disclosures in Gateway to the Miraculous is his heavy antiwar activity. Paul Krassner says Lowenthal was a Yippie organizer. At the Chicago Seven trial, the late singer Phil Ochs testified about having been arrested at the 1968 Chicago Democratic convention along with Lowenthal, a pig, Jerry Rubin, Stew Albert, and three others.

Cheng Man Ch'ing followed both Confucius and Lao-tzu (whose Taoism heavily influences t'ai chi), the latter being said to have been the author of the central Taoist book entitled the Tao Teh Ching. According to Mark Hennessy's translation of Professor Cheng's Master of Five Excellences, Professor Cheng once reviewed all translations of the Tao Teh Ching and I Ching (Paul Gallagher calls the latter book "the central source book for all Chinese Philosophy and Science") at the Columbia University library, only to find them all "translated completely wrong." Therefore, I went out of my way to obtain Cheng Man Ch'ing's commentaries on the Tao Teh Ch'ing, which is entitled My Words are Very Easy to Understand. The volume is an English translation by Professor Cheng's late interpreter and disciple Tam Gibbs both of the Professor's commentaries and of the original text of the Tao Teh Ching, which suggests that it might be a reliable translation. If you know of a reliable translation of the I Ching, please let me know.

ADDENDUM II:On April 27, I e-mailed the above-discussed Wolfe Lowenthal, who confirmed that he very much likes Richard Wilhelm's translation of the I-Ching. Carl Jung writes the foreward to Wilhelm's translation. 

This evening, I stopped by the local Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist temple (I maintain the temple's webpage here) during its annual flower festival, where I met up with the local nun and my friend and teacher Takako Ichikawa, my longtime friend and mentor Jun Yasuda, and Brother Kato and Brother Toby from the Leverett, Massachusetts Nipponzan Myohoji temple.

As inevitably happens when I visit with these folks, I learn more than I anticipated. Jun-san underlined that a fourteen-year-old and sixteen-year-old man were among the two-month walkers for the annual fifteen-to-twenty mile daily Walk for a New Spring from Massachusetts to Washington, D.C. that just arrived in Washington after beginning in mid-February. This annual walk began after the September 11 tragedy, and symbolizes the transition of life to buds and full bloom, starting in the winter and ending in the spring, and starting in the colder climes of Massachusetts and ending in the South, which is where Washington, D.C., is located.

At the temple close to my boy's bedtime, I did not have a chance to speak with these high-school-aged peace walkers, nor with Manodan Hirose, a retired postal worker who flew from his native Tokyo to join the walk.

In high school, I kvetched too much about world injustice without taking enough positive action beyond sending my Congressional representatives an occasional protest letter. (Fortunately, I found positive social justice activist outlets through such activities as Amnesty International once I arrived at college.) These two high schoolers have gotten off their butts and on their blistered-to-calloused feet to make their voices heard, apparently missing out on two months of class time in the process. Good for them.

Fourteen-year-old peace walker Kieran O'Sullivan told the Trenton Times: "'There's a lot of people that I see every day that are against nuclear weapons and want to end war, but I've never seen anyone actually take any action... I didn't want to be like that.'"

Sixteen-year-old Hai Palar is also on the walk. He said: "'There's something that just feels really good to me . . . it feels fulfilling to me.'"

Decades-long peace walker Jun-san said: "'Walking is our method and also our prayer...Prayer has the power for miracle, so when we walk, step-by-step, we see a lot of miracles.'"

As the York Daily Record reported: "The mission of the walk is three-fold, Buddhist nun Clare Carter said. It calls for the abolition of nuclear weapons, the renunciation of war and to convert the U.S. economy from what they call a war-based one to a peace-based economy. For the past eight years, the walks have been organized by members of the New England Peace Pagoda. They stem from the days just after Sept. 11, 2001, when the United States, and likely parts of the world, were gripped with fear, Carter said. 'Nothing good could come out when we're frozen in fear,' she said."

More articles on this peace walk are here and here. A video posted a few days after the start of this year's walk is here and above. A video from the 2008 walk is here. Jon Katz

When someone says "I want to get it over with," is the person doing nothing but merely chasing after an illusion?

Let us consider the ultimate effort to get it over with: suicide. My spiritual guru and friend Jun Yasuda told me that one day a man walked up to her teacher, the late Nichidatsu Fujii Guruji, and proclaimed that he was going to kill himself. Perhaps against the advice of those at suicide helplines, Fujii Guruji laughed, and said something along the lines of: "You think it is that easy to get away from your problems?" Of course, Fujii Guruji and Jun-san believe in reincarnation. I did not learn whether this man ultimately decided not to kill himself; because of their belief in reincarnation, I do not know how much that question mattered to Jun-san and Fujii Guruji.

Whatever the inclination might be for people to confess their suicidal plans to Nipponzan Myohoji clergy, on a separate occasion, a man approached Jun-san, telling her his plan to kill himself. Her verbal reaction was along the lines of: "Great. If you are going to kill yourself, you will no longer need food, so you might as well fast." He did fast, and he returned to Jun-san telling her that during his fast he decided not to kill himself after all.

We are so cluttered up with excess junk, psychologically, physically, and spiritually. When a person fasts -- and the fast can be enhanced by a vacation from the Internet; phone; all other technology driven by electricity, batteries, and petroleum; and newspapers -- s/he has no choice but to slow down due to the reduced physical energy caused by the fast. With such slowing down comes the opportunity to empty the excess mind junk and spiritual junk. Competing with the benefit of slowing down is the tug-of-war often presented to -- but avoidable by -- trial lawyers with the constant demands to drive to all sorts of court appearances (and then often to wait and wait in court); to visit clients in jail and to meet with them in the office and offsite; to meet merciless court filing deadlines for motions, opposing motions, and appellate briefs; and to investigate and prepare for clients' cases, while still meeting the demands of the lawyer's personal life. The trial lawyer's time and personal challenges are well capture by my late friend John Johnson in his poem "A Meeting with Mother Earth," including this line: "The life of lawyering is filled with noise and turmoil. Peace is hard to find - even in seeking after justice. Modern mankind runs amok in anxious pursuit of an elusive technological happiness..."

No matter how much stagefright a lawyer might have about a case -- and it is critical for lawyers to adjust their lives and relationships with the world and themselves to diminish those fears -- a criminal defense lawyer's client is likely to be more fearful than that. The more the lawyer earns the client's trust, confidence, and comfort, the more the lawyer will help not only to reduce the client's fears, but to help the client make decisions from a position of strength, patience, and full willingness to share all ideas, concerns, questions and fears with the lawyer. For a lawyer to reach such a quantum level with his or her client, nothing substitutes for spending quality time with the client, with the lawyer listening empathetically, actively, respectfully, and deeply, and responding empathetically and with the best and directly gentle of bedside manners while seeing the client as the lawyer's equal. Investing such time and energy is a commodity that too many lawyers fear investing, lest they have insufficient time left to do their other work and to earn a living. However, nobody ever said that being a criminal defense lawyer is an easy ticket to financial stability. Moreover, the lawyer who puts clients ahead of money will earn more money or other good fortune in the end than the lawyer who does the opposite.

The Silver Spring, Maryland, YMCA has become an eerie place of sorts. On September 11, 2001, I was working out there before starting the workday. On my way to the locker room to the office, I saw the television playing the horrifying footage of the World Trade Center attack and collapse, and learned that the Pentagon -- just about ten miles away -- also had been attacked.

 Yin Yang

On a rainy September morning a dozen years ago, with a few days left between leaving my public defender post to return to private practice, I pondered which way to drive for a mini-vacation. "Where do I want to visit that I have not yet visited?", I asked. Then, I remembered Jun Yasuda's telling me five years before about being in the process of building a peace pagoda, and that her teacher said it is a mere structure if she asks for help. Jun-san has the magnetism for people to offer to drive her hundreds of miles, but somehow I was still made of copper when told of the monumental volunteer pagoda build.

Through divine coincidences, I tracked down Jun-san's phone number through the local temple of her Buddhist order, which I discovered in my midst for the first time that morning. Through another divine coincidence, she answered the phone, even though Jun-san spends months total each year in other states and countries spreading the message of peace. Early in our conversation, she told me it was Gandhi's birthday, and invited me to stay at the temple, where I ended up sleeping for two nights on a loft overlooking the altar, with my loftmates being wasps slowly tracing the window frame in the cold weather.

My full day there in upstate Grafton, New York, was occupied by waking at 5:00 a.m. for morning prayers chanting the Odaimoku and voicing excerpts from the Lotus Sutra, eating toast done atop the wood-burning stove, buying material to insulate the cabin-type temple for the winter, stacking wood, eating miso and rice for lunch, napping off a late night arrival, stapling insulation to the temple, taking an amazing wood-burning traditional Japanese bath after getting there in the frigid night, praying before dinner, eating more miso and rice for dinner, and going to bed early to start the next 5:00 a.m. with prayers.  

The next morning during breakfast, I was surprised to find myself eating alone with Jun-san, when the day before she had so many visitors, bringing breakfast items, helping build the new temple, and joining for evening prayers and dinner. It was as if Jun-san had asked them to give time for me to learn some lessons, but I doubt such deliberateness had taken hold.

Ever since I first met Jun-san during her one-month fast for peace across from the White House during Gulf War I, I was drawn to her peaceful essence, when I felt so much imbalance over world turmoil, rampant domestic and global human rights violations, and frustration with not feeling I was giving much of a net benefit to society while helping financial institutions and transportation companies line their pockets through litigation and federal regulatory work.

Now I had my chance to learn how she had reached such calm while focused daily on reducing people's suffering, through prayer, through peace walks, and through spreading her infectious peacefulness. I asked many questions, perhaps too many. I recognized front and center what I had already realized peripherally, that much of people's dissatisfaction with life comes from their desires, and that many of those desires, particularly expectations of others, can be shed. I recognized all the more how much my problems pale in comparison to those who struggle daily to provide their families enough nutrition, and to have them clothed and housed.

I learned about melting away so many of the layers of my then utter terror of my inevitable death. On the one hand, I could not automatically internalize Jun-san's view that life and death are artificial boundaries. Certainly life continues when others die, so in that respect it may be an artificial boundary. On the other hand, I recognized all the more how my fear of death was so closely connected with my being self-centered, my over-attachment to my body, and my lack of enough internal peace and balance.

Two hours later, it was time to depart. Jun-san bowed three times as I drove away, and her peaceful karma spread to me all the more.

Around one or two weekends later, I visited the local temple that is part of Jun-san's Nipponzan Myohoji order, bringing oranges for the altar. Brother Shiumi-san opened the door, and ultimately invited me inside, apparently while trying to figure out what made me tick. We prayed the Odaimoku for a few minutes. When I told him I had visited Jun-san and was wondering if I could visit sometimes for prayers, he permitted me one weekly weekend visit.

He then said he would be unable to teach me about Buddhism. When I last saw Jun-san this past June, she told me how her order is one of action, praying for peace, walking hundreds of miles spreading that message, and not spending years to get ordained. In fact, Jun-san was ordained when she had not even applied for that path. Her teacher "threw her a yellow robe, saying, 'Jun, hurry up.'"

I offered Shiumi-san to help cut the grass from time to time. During a gathering two years later to celebrate Shiumi-san's transition back to Japan, he looked at me and laughed, saying something in Japanese. Someone translated, saying he tried making sense of a lawyer offering to cut the grass. For me, it was the least I could have done to show my gratitude to Jun-san, and I do not see any honest work as beneath me.

What is the secret to winning trials, and what does any of this have to do with offering a septuagenarian priest to cut his temple's grass? Are there any secrets beyond finding, tapping into, and applying the vast reserves of strength and ability within each of us, supplemented by welcoming the teachings from everyone and everything around us? Are they really secrets, or is it more a matter of knowing the roadmap to winning, and finding a way to apply the roadmap and to improve upon it? Is it any different than my t'ai chi teacher Len Kennedy's view that the principles of t'ai chi are simple to learn but profound to apply. Is it any different from knowing how to slim down and actually doing it?

Wolfe Lowenthal's biography of t'ai chi legend Cheng Man Ch'ing is entitled There are No Secrets. Pete Gately aptly describes this concept: "Lowenthal tells how Professor Cheng maintained that there were no secrets in Tai Chi Chuan, but would then add, 'But if there were a secret it is [that the hands do not move when doing push hands].' Thus secrets are not really secret, but are readily available information, open things, but things that tend to pass unnoticed. Take the above example of the hands not moving. It seems, on the surface, to be an absurd statement; we all know that the hands move in Tai Chi. They move as we do, roll-back, push, press, single-whip. We may think the hands move in every move we make. Well, maybe - but we shouldn't make them move at all. All movement in Tai Chi should begin with the waist turning, all movement should start at the Dan-Tien. Nothing moves without being initiated by the movement of the waist; then, if the waist turns, the hands turn. The legs do not step unless the movement is initiated by the waist, so all movement comes from the Dan-Tien." "Secrets" by Bill Gately (emphasis added).

In the same vein, there probably are not any secrets to winning trials, but there are skill sets to learn, revelations to find, new levels of caring to attain for clients, more fearlessness to gain, more internal and external journeys to take, more joy to experience on the path, more ego to shed, more willingness to collaborate with other lawyers and non-lawyers in seeking the path to victory, and more of the tapping of the joy, fearlessness, and giggling of the child within.

My trio on this path is the overlapping lessons and practices from the Trial Lawyers College, t'ai chi, and the peace and harmony experienced even when walking into the eye of the storm as exemplified by Jun Yasuda. I am also helped along the path when imagining at various difficult times in court that I am accompanied by different combinations of SunWolf, Steve Rench, Jun Yasuda and Cheng Man Ch'ing. My path also is helped through my daily writing, when I often expect to go in one direction, and then often take a very different path and often reach a different destination, including with this blog entry, when I initially was going to comment more briefly than this in reply to Bobby Frederick's invitation to discuss the secrets to winning trials against all odds. Much self-revelation and self-discovery come my way through the writing process.

One thing is for sure. Do not waste time listening to how important to winning are the colors of your clothes, the model of your car, or the cut of your hairstyle. Tony Serra exemplifies that it's not how you dress, but how you persuade. Jon Katz

ADDENDUM I: Gerry Spence's recent blogging on winning trials sparked an interest in some other bloggers to cover the topic, including Gideon, Mark Bennett, and Scott Greenfield.

ADDENDUM II: Here is the full relevant excerpt from Wolfe Lowenthal's above-referenced discussion in Gateway to the Miraculous of Cheng Man Ching's assertion that t'ai chi involves no secrets:

"'There are no secrets in the Tai Chi Chuan that I am teaching you,' said Professor Cheng, 'but if there were a secret, it is that the mind moves the ch’i.' Sometimes he would say, 'There are no secrets in this Tai Chi Chuan, but if there was a secret, it is that the hands don’t move.' This was yet another one of those times when I initially thought he was contradicting himself, only to realize later that in both cases he was saying the same thing: 'The hands don’t move' and 'The mind moves the ch’i' are the same and the secret of our Tai Chi Chuan. 'The hands don’t move.' It is rather the mind, or more precisely the idea that directs the waist to produce the movement. The energy only emerges from the hands, which move from the waist like spokes on the hub of a wheel. 'The waist is the commander,' it says in the Tai Chi classics, and the hands should submit totally to the command of the waist – never moving independently."

 Yin Yang

Practicing non-anger is easier said than done, but is fully essential to being powerful (and healthy) as a person and persuasive trial lawyer.

One approach I try to use in staying consistently calm and not angry is in focusing on how everyone ultimately is interconnected. Those who reach such a view from a deeply-held religious perspective -- which I do not, still remaining an agnostic who is into Judaism and Buddhism nonetheless -- might have an easier time sticking to the view than I do.

In any event, the more we see that we are interconnected, the less we will be tempted to cause disharmony to others and the more we will want to help everyone rise as we rise, and not to try to pull them into a ditch even if we find ourselves in one.

Yesterday, I was leaving the Barnes & Noble with my two-year-old son. We were in a true state of bliss. For over an hour, he got his fill playing with Thomas trains (you try having children and avoiding America's crass commercialism and its many suburban, mindnumbing pockets), and then moving to dancing to the rhythms of books that play tunes to the touch of a button, while we interacted together alternatively with my reading Ernest Gaines's A Lesson Before Dying (not exactly light reading or viewing (see here, too), but among the many great books I have still yet to discover and read). We rode the elevator up and down, which is like a carnival ride for him. We left as we arrived, with him riding his tricycle.

As we drove off, a pedestrian was waiting to cross the parking lot where the law gave me the right of way, but where I waved him in front of me just as I appreciate others doing the same for me, and just as I believe strongly in returning manifold the kindnesses others have shown me over the decades. I then started thinking about how I could transfer that feeling of goodwill to every waking and sleeping hour and to everyone with whom I interact. I realized that if I could see a part of me in every other person, that would help me want to support their well-being all the more. If that is too abstract an approach for me, then I can also try to see a part of my loved ones and closest friends in every other person. If that still is too abstract to me, I can leave room for the possibility that this is a person who shares some of my deepest core beliefs, values, interests, feelings, and passions, and has done, is doing, or will do some great things to benefit many people. Alternatively, I need to leave room that this person might some day become a close friend or confidante to me, may already be a close friend or confidante to a person who already is close to me, or may be someone who has or will help me or someone close to me in profound ways, whether it be as a teacher, someone who helps others medically or psychologically or spiritually, or someone who helps in innumerable other ways. By turning to such a visualization, then I can step back in a more non-selfish way, to see the person as precious in and of himself or herself, no matter how much the person seems to be devoid of caring or feeling or unselfishness, and capable of doing immediate and serious harm.

Certainly, some of my criminal defense clients not only are accused of doing heinous and despicable acts, but some of them have in fact committed such acts. Consequently, I best be ready to care about everyone -- even my apparently worst enemy -- or how else will I be able to care about such clients, beyond the abstract concept of knowing that I protect everyone's Constitutional rights every time I successfully defend a criminal defense client? Moreover, I must find a way to care about each client, because if I do not, why will the judge, jury, or prosecutor care?

This is all easier to write about on a Sunday when I am not being bombarded with court battles, phone calls, humdinger arguments in opposing counsels' court filings, staff needs, and a slew of other demands on my time, and sometimes on my patience and calmness. This is easier to write about when I am not dealing with people who do not care -- or at least do not seem to care -- about truth, about covering each others' backs, or about true justice. As I do so many times, I can summon up the calming voice and caring of my friend and mentor Jun Yasuda when the day gets chaotic and when I deal with seemingly hostile and dangerous prosecutors, cops and opposing civilian witnesses, but she acknowledges that even she gets angry at times. Consequently, each day that passes with me staying calm in the face of challenges to my becoming angry, is an accomplishment, sort of like the accomplishment an alcoholic reaches upon finishing another day sober.

It is folly to believe one can act out in anger and then have that anger just disappear. If somebody sees me being angry and does not know the context of that anger, the person might think I am being a hothead, a nutball, a whackjob, or worse. If my son sees me acting out in anger, it does not give him harmony, and does not help him learn by example to achieve a life of non-anger. If I lose my cool, my client can suffer. Conversely, when I live with non-anger, even some of my opponents may wish to work more harmoniously with me, as some of them try to absorb the good karma of the non-anger and harmony.

Living a life of non-anger is not a new-age, namby-pamby ideal for me. It is a necessity that I did not recognize sufficiently until I was well into adulthood. I have no other choice, nor do you. Jon Katz.

ADDENDUM: Thanks to David Tarrell for his posting on non-anger, including words of wisdom from Fred Rogers, of all people.

Connecticut, or is that Quinnehtukqut? (Image from Energy Information Agency's website).

Having blogged a few times about the Longest Walkers, here is an update on their activities and my meeting with some of them today.