Observe your thoughts as if they are white clouds passing over a blue sky. "Observe them as they come and observe them as they go," suggests Charles Halpern. Halpern begins all of his talks with a brief period of meditation, acknowledging that such a practice may seem "a bit odd." But for this lawyer and public advocate, meditation has become a way of life.
On Monday, Halpern delivered his lecture, "Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom," to an intimate audience in MacMillan 117. From his childhood, to encounters with the Dalai Lama, to meditating with judges, Halpern discussed the forces that shaped his life as an activist. He also spoke about the place for meditation and wisdom in contemporary society.
Halpern founded the country's first public interest law firm, the Center for Law and Social Policy, and litigated cases affecting an Alaska oil pipeline and the mentally disabled. He went on to be the founding dean of the City University of New York School of Law and a founding board member of Demos, a progressive think tank.
Halpern's beliefs on meditation don't exactly jive with his upbringing, he said - he was raised to be a lawyer. He explained how he was groomed to be, "analytic, unemotional, clear," and to frame his thoughts as "arguments." These skills carried him through Harvard and Yale, he said, where they were sharpened to an even greater degree, compromising a "neck-up" education in an environment where trying to expose oneself to the human experience through silence, introspection and meditation was unheard of. Doing "predictable things," his education landed him in a large corporate law firm in Washington.
Halpern's childhood seemed to lack any contemplative nature, he said. That lack influenced him when he would go on to lead a new law school.
"We wanted to educate lawyers to be whole people," he said. Halpern said he felt he was given the opportunity, "to create a public interest law school and to think through how we wanted to educate lawyers."
Though Halpern was innovative in bringing together unique people interested in activism and social justice with values of their own, he found challenging the conventions of education difficult.
"There was a lot of stress and tension in the situation and I had to develop strategies to deal with it," he said.
The stress led Halpern to meditation and contemplation as he searched for methods of dealing with his anxiety, "emotionally, morally and psychologically," he said. The simple strategy of meditating in the morning eventually transformed his perspective on how people can approach issues - that is, with wisdom - and led him to see people as more than simply analytic machines.
Wisdom is a word that hardly appears in academic or political discourse, Halpern said, adding that he is "discouraged by the fact that wisdom has so much fallen out of favor."
But he said the term is gaining momentum. Both Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and poet Toni Morrison have endorsed Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., based on his "wisdom" or his "quality of reflectiveness," Halpern said.
Halpern continued by saying that cultivating wisdom involves aligning one's life with one's values. If he had stayed in corporate law, he would never have cultivated wisdom, he said.
"A life out of balance, I don't believe, is consistent with a cultivation of wisdom," Halpern said.
Halpern sees meditation and this philosophy of the practice of wisdom as resources necessary for being a whole person.
"I think that meditation hones a set of skills," he said. He noted that meditation is practical for lawyers since it teaches attentiveness and makes one centered. "A lawyer who is angry at his adversary is less effective than one who is not," he added.
During a lengthy question-and-answer session, Halpern said that this sort of perspective of wisdom can be distinguished because it is "less strident, less impatient" and "less self-righteous."
"Self-righteousness is the black lung disease of activists and public-interest lawyers," he added.
Halpern also spoke of contemporary issues such as climate change. A wise person will draw away from the approach of finding "villains and heroes," since this is not a logical approach and can cause one to become angry or frustrated, he said.
It is easy to see "oil companies as bad guys" and "us as good guys," Halpern said, adding that perhaps everyone is part of the problem of greenhouse gas emissions.
Students had mix reactions to Halpern's speech.
"I didn't know what to expect when I came," said Karen Kovalevich '10, a religious studies concentrator. Though she said she "didn't necessarily learn anything new," as a member of the Darfur Action Network, "it was nice to see someone connecting activism and wisdom."
Jon Mitchell '09, a contemplative studies concentrator, said he found the lecture to be lackluster.
"I was sympathetic to his cause, but I was sort of disappointed with the substance of the talk," he said. "It seemed geared to people who are not very familiar with contemplative practice."
