Ron Greenberg, a retired judge, says he’s learned to embrace silence and “not-knowing” in a job that demands fast answers and snap judgments. “Over and over I’ve heard prosecutors and judges say, 'I’ve heard that story before.’ But if you’ve heard it before, you weren’t listening.” Greenberg, who has practiced law for thirty-two years, eighteen of them on the bench, and whose meditation practice has been informed by vipassana training and the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, ran an innovative court in Berkeley, California, dedicated to hearing drug cases involving defendants who are addicts. He would begin each session by dimming the courtroom lights and sitting in meditation for five minutes. The effect of this technique, he explains, helped defuse the tension that lawyers, defendants, and their families bring to the session.
Of course, tension, and even anger, are staples of the legal process. Many young law students view moral outrage as a wellspring for fighting injustice. At the Yale Law School retreats, says Goldstein, the roles of tension and anger were the most controversial. “I was trying to put forth the possibility that compassion for suffering might be a more productive and sustainable energy than anger at the injustice,” says Goldstein. “But there were many people who felt they needed righteous anger in order to be effective. One student said he was really cultivating anger, that he needed that energy as an antidote to his fear [of failing as a lawyer]. So we talked about accepting that fear, of getting okay with it as a way of freeing oneself from it, rather than using anger as a way to suppress it. This was the hardest notion to swallow.”
