Persuasion

- One day I was speaking with a law school professor, and asked if he knew a particular person from his home town. Know him? The professor exclaimed: "What a pr*ck."

- With difficult judges, trial master Steve Rench applies the basic and effective lesson of the magic mirror. If a judge knows s/he has a poor reputation with lawyers, that presents all the more reason for the lawyer to empty the mind of any such thoughts, and to give the judge a clean slate that day. Oversimplistically, it is like trying to find the thorn in the lion's sole and to pull it out, rather than trying to slay the lion.

- A person arrives home one evening, looking forward to be greeted by her dog, and instead the dog starts angrily attacking her, and never changes from thereon in. How does the person avoid feeling devastated?

In the foregoing three scenarios, the person being affected by the challenging situation has an opportunity to attach to the image of a reprehensible person, an impossible judge, and a dog turned bad. Similarly, the affected person has the opportunity to empty the mind, the feelings, and the vessel, in order to acknowledge that we are all connected in one way or another, that it is difficult to compartmentalize a single person or non-human animal as awful or great, and that true happiness is not found by searching for it externally. How else can one win in the courtroom, in the battlefield, and in life by doing anything other than working towards such non-attachment?

T'ai chi teaches non-attachment in terms of harmonizing an imbalanced situation rather than about vilifying and trying to decimate the opponent. Buddhism covers non-attachment through non-dualism, including the concepts of no birth/no death, no coming/no going, and no increase/no decrease. The more we give up our desires and the more we give up our expectations of others, the more we can successfully practice non-attachment. And therein lies the rub. How can one deeply love another without feeling attachment? How powerful can people be if they feel no love? How can one immerse himself or herself into years of academic study, years of a work project, and years of investing one's assets and still feel no attachment when the heart is shattered, the academic study bears no diploma, and the investing collapses? That may be easy for someone content to live in a cave without possessions and ready to do a good deed for parentless lion cubs by donating his or her flesh to them so they may eat another meal. But what does everyone else do?

It is hard to live without attachment to anything. On the other hand, too many people are too attached to their bodies, to the point that many will rush to plastic surgeons to fight ageing, let alone fighting against their own ultimate mortality. Too many people are attached to the fear of a roller coaster even when it is clear that the roller coaster at worst might turn the stomach. Too many people are attached to their comfort zone. Too many people are attached to anger. Non-attachment to youth, the illusion of immortality, comfort, fear, fear of death, and anger are very achievable levels of non-attachment, but certainly far from easy to reach.

When I began practicing criminal defense eighteen years ago, I was angry at the criminal justice system that inflicted so much injustice. I was dumbfounded that even a lawyer for animal rights causes had no interest in hearing my deep reservations about prosecuting after he recommended that one could not beat being an assistant United States attorney if I wanted to get on the path of criminal defense. I was jolted to reality when I learned how many criminal defense lawyers do not see themselves as crusaders for any cause rather than as advocating as best they can for each client. All of this was attachment.

Practicing t'ai chi in the courtroom reminds me of a scene from a World War II movie where an American soldier, hidden from view of his opponents, guns down opposing soldier after opposing soldier, calmly chomping on his unlit cigar at every step of the way. As much as we must be sensitive about any violence, had this soldier lost his calm to anger, fear or yelling, he would have been a dead duck. His calmness, together with his shooting skill, gave him strength. So much for anti-tobacco crusades. This fictitious character's cigar holds deep meaning for me.

In Cheng Hsin: Principles of Effortless Power Peter Ralston makes total sense in declaring that problems between people "are really a parallel to what occurs in martial interaction and in fighting." If this is so, how can a trial lawyer afford not to learn, study, practice and apply martial arts in court? Choose the martial art you want, but forego martial arts in court at your own peril. 

Early on in his martial arts life, Ralston  discovered -- whether he is speaking hyperbolically or not --that when he lost the fear of getting hit while sparring, and stopped focusing on whether he would win or lose, he stopped getting hit. Cheng Hsin: Principles of Effortless Power. Ralston writes that he ultimately reached even greater martial heights, already in the 1970's, by visualizing his opponents' next moves before those moves were even made, and then advancing further to moving without knowing why he had moved in that particular way, but then realizing that the particular move gave him a sparring advantage over a martial arts opponent. Ralston also speaks of realizing by the 1970's about the level of nothingness, connectedness and oneness in which we all live. 

Two weeks ago, I mentioned the foregoing passage about fearlessness of getting hit, to a much more advanced t'ai chi practitioner who had recommended the book to me, after we had been doing sensing/pushing hands. He responded by asking me why, then, was I tensing up so much that morning against being pushed. For the next six days, I focused more of my t'ai chi practice on applying the t'ai chi lessons of fearlessness, yielding, neutralizing, using no more than four ounces to push a thousand pounds, and not deviating from the t'ai chi principles in fighting (e.g., not grabbing with the fingers, and not moving in all sorts of non-t'ai chi directions to avoid being pushed). When sensing/pushing hands the following Saturday with this same fellow practitioner, I was getting pushed less, yielding and relaxing and sinking more, and better understanding the long and never-ending road of learning t'ai chi.

T'ai chi master Cheng Man Ch'ing -- whether speaking literally or figuratively -- said that a baby laying in the wilderness cannot be harmed by a person's spear or a tiger's claw, because the baby knows no fearlessness. Certainly, one finds greater strength by maintaining the fearlessness, joy, and wonder of a child; to do otherwise can be fatal.

In T'ai Chi Dynamics, Robert Chuckrow -- one of Cheng Man Ch'ing's more junior students -- theorizes that had Professor Ch'ing lived beyond his seventy-five years (passing away in 1975), he might have taught his most senior students to achieve even higher levels of martial accomplishment, to the point that more force than four ounces would be needed to move an opponent who uses hard energy. Similarly, at the last push hands gathering that I attended two Saturdays ago, another fellow practitioner advised that I follow through more when pushing and pressing against my opponent, in that this extra physical follow-through can be necessary to put the opponent off balance. I imagine all this can be done while still applying all the t'ai chi basics, including being as soft as a water, wind, or cotton, but as devastatingly powerful as a tidal wave, hurricane, or needle hidden within the cotton.

In Cheng Hsin: Principles of Effortless Power, Peter Ralston talks of the power of the muscular softness involved in internal martial arts to being akin to the softness of an electrical wire through which the powerful electricity runs through.

Clearly, a judge will be more willing to tolerate a lawyer doing cross examination, for instance, that appears to use respectful words and a respectful tone of voice, that still packs a wallop. How can a judge, under such circumstances, tell a lawyer to "stop badgering the witness"?

How can clients and witnesses be taught a crash course in using the benefits of the internal martial arts when being cross examined by the opposing lawyer? One of the most important principles for such witnesses to apply is to relax and sink any tension into the tan t'ien, "located approximately two inches below the navel and in the center of the pelvic area." Let tension roll off the back as does water off a duck's back. Be no worse than centering one's gravity so that the person is no more likely to fall down from a push than a weeble, which at worst wobbles but does not fall down.

Relaxing and sinking is one of the five t'ai chi principles, with the other ones being keeping the body upright, turning from the waist, separating the weight into yin and yang, and keeping the wrists softly unbent.

Thanks to Lee Scheele for posting the following on relaxing and sinking:

"Attributed to T'an Meng-hsien, 

as researched by Lee N. Scheele

'The Song of Peng

What is the meaning of Peng energy?

It is like the water supporting a moving boat.

First sink the ch'i to the tan-t'ien,

then hold the head as if suspended from above.

The entire body is filled with springlike energy,

opening and closing in a very quick moment.

Even if the opponent uses a thousand pounds of force,

he can be uprooted and made to float without difficulty.'"

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.

On May 25, I wrote about Jan Diepersloot's Warriors of Stillness, This book further says:

"Both in the conduct of his life and in the methods of his teachings, Master Cai [Song Fang] epitomizes how knowing one's own center and that of those we come in contact with in push-hands and energy field play can be used to shore people up rather than upsetting them, stabilizing rather than destabilizing them."

Nevertheless, such internal martial arts as t'ai chi can deliver devastating blows, as Diepersloot also writes in Warriors of Stillness:

"The martial art therapy of the wuji-taiji method of awareness has a yin and yang side to it. Its greatest achievement is the yin aspect, the development of awareness and control in the skill of neutralizing and keeping the peace. However, in its yang aspect, the wuji-taiji method of awareness delivers the power to enforce the peace through the development of the power of deadly integral force that can be discharged with a mere intention."

I have previously related the foregoing ideas to the practice of criminal defense as follows:

Some clients think they need a lawyer who will go into the ring growling, baring fangs, and showing fresh blood on the fingernails. Other clients feel uncomfortable seeing their lawyers yuck it up with cops and prosecutors who are trying to get them convicted and locked up. I respond to my clients that the goal is neither to seek to draw blood that does not need to be drawn for the client's benefit, nor for me to find a new friend for happy hour. Instead, the goal is to harmonize my client's problem to my client's best advantage. If this can be done without harming the other side, wonderful. If this can only be done by seriously -- and at all time ethically -- damaging the other side, so be it. Jon Katz

As I said yesterday, t'ai chi ch'uan is essential for my life and law practice.

Here are some powerful passages from Wolfe Lowenthal's biography of t'ai chi master Cheng Man Ch'ing, entitled  Gateway to the Miraculous: Further Explorations in the Tao of Cheng Man Ch'ing:

"Whatever abuse or oppression we may experience, its effect on our balance is still in our hands."

"The only real opponent exists inside each of us."

"A demonized opponent implies a condition of fear."

 "Egotism and arrogance are weak because they are too expansive."

"Where there is tension, the body is dead."

"There is nothing that in and of itself need destroy our sense of well-being."

For my trial law practice, the above passages teach not to get angry at the judge nor the opposing lawyer or opposing witnesses. That weakens the lawyer's ability to persuade them.  Jon Katz

Long ago, I learned that t'ai chi ch'uan is essential for my life and law practice. Consequently, I decided to incorporate the t'ai chi symbol in my above-displayed law firm logo, after having toyed with a tidalwave or my initials in bamboo shape. The tidalwave symbolizes t'ai chi's lesson to be as hard to push against as water or air, but as powerful as a tidalwave or hurricane. Bamboo symbolizes the t'ai chi lesson to be yielding to an attack but always strong. My final logo enabled me to incorporate the scales of justice of the law field into the t'ai chi symbol.

In the Washington, D.C., area, I know of four weekly t'ai chi practice gatherings, aside from the many classes available during the week. They are the Capitol Hill t'ai chi group, which I have been joining for several weeks; the Cabin John Park group; the Glen Echo Park group; and the McLean, Virginia group. I started in 1994 with the Glen Echo Park group, before starting to take lessons there with my teachers Ellen and Len Kennedy. Only the first two groups include sensing/pushing hands practice, and the Capitol Hill group meets more consistently than the Cabin John Park, and at a more reasonably early hour. All meet on Saturday morning. After returning to the Glen Echo Park group, I have found much more benefit with the Capitol Hill gathering.

At the Saturday morning t'ai chi practices is a man who has been practicing t'ai chi much longer than I, who starts his t'ai chi practice each day at 4:30 a.m. He suggested the very real extra benefits of my practicing t'ai chi for ninety minutes daily instead of my previous average of fifteen minutes.

Yesterday and today, I followed his advice. The ninety minutes gives me time to self-practice several rounds of the t'ai chi form; perform standing meditation; hold t'ai chi postures for several minutes each -= no burn, no earn/no pain, no gain, as t'ai chi master Ben Lo happily says; and circle my house like a cat, so that the front foot is empty when first landing on the ground, to prevent tripping on obstacles and losing balance if an opponent kicks the leg that is off the ground.

Ben Lo emphasizes the importance of relaxing and practicing, and advised me to practice t'ai chi in the morning and the evening when it was an accomplishment for me to even do one round of the form each day. Through reading Wolfe Lowenthal's Gateway to the Miraculous and talking with the 4:30 a.m. practitioner, I have learned of the importance of spending at least ninety minutes daily with t'ai chi practice. I have also learned about the importance of such practice to get not only the upper body relaxed, but the legs relaxed enough so that I will be using not more than four ounces of force even to perform the kicking parts of the t'ai chi form. Practicing t'ai chi for ninety minutes daily is a realistic time commitment when considering that this is the minimum time usually consumed to exercise at the gym and to travel there and back When the weather is good, I practice on my backyard patio. In bad weather, I can practice inside my house, or can drive to Cabin John Park, where an extended roof by the mini-train station protects against the rain.

Here are some further t'ai chi lessons I have learned, in addition to my dozens of blogpostings on t'ai chi ch'uan:

- The 4:30 a.m. t'ai chi practitioner recommends Robert Chuckrow's t'ai chi books, which are here and here. He also recommends reading Peter Ralston (see here, too) on t'ai chi, but so far I have only found Ralston addressing t'ai chi in book form through his preface to Ron Sieh's T'ai Chi Ch'uan: The Internal Tradition. (UPDATE: The 4:30 a.m. t'ai chi practitioner confirmed that he recommends Ralston's Cheng Hsin: Principles of Effortless Power; here is Ralston's Cheng Hsin page).  

- Here are beneficial t'ai chi videos:

-- Videos of Fu Zhongwen, who was a student of Yang Cheng Fu. Fu Zhongwen later married one of Yang's family members; I am wondering whether the family relationship led Yang Cheng Fu to share even more t'ai chi secrets with Fu Zhongwen than if the family relationship had not existed. Yang Cheng Fu taught t'ai chi to Cheng Man Ch'ing, who taught Robert W. Smith as his first Western student, who taught Ellen and Len Kennedy, who taught me starting in 1994. Fu Zhongwen videos are here, here, here, here, and here,

-- Videos of Fu Sheng Yuan, the son of the above-discussed Fu Zhongwen: Fu Sheng Yuan and Fu Zhongwen sensing hands together. See also here, here and here.

-- Cheng Man Ch'ing doing t'ai chi sword practice. Wolfe Lowenthal lists the sword form postures here.  

-- Yang Sau Chung, eldest son of Yang Cheng Fu.  

- Internal martial artist Fong Ha included t'ai chi study with Yang Cheng Fu's eldest son Yang Sau Chung and Yang's student Tung Ying Chieh. Fong Ha also studied yiquan with Han Xing Yuan, who was a student of Wang XiangZhai. Videos of Fong Ha are here, here, here, here, and here,

- I am currently reading Jan Diepersloot's Warriors of Stillness Volume I: Qigong of the Center, Essence of Taijiquan -- The Teachings of GrandMaster Cai Song Fang. Diepersloot studied with the above-discussed Fong Ha and Cai Song Fang, both of whom eventually focused heavily on the martial and meditative benefits of standing meditation and holding t'ai chi postures rather than doing the t'ai chi form as interconnected movements. Diepersloot focuses heavily on the wuji posture. Wang Tsung-yueh wrote that: "Taiji (The Great Ultimate) comes from Wu Chi (Undifferentiated Oneness) and is the mother of yin and yang. In motion Taiji separates; in stillness yin and yang unite and return to Wu Chi." The Nine Dragon Baguazhang page further discusses the relationship between wuji and taiji. Whether accurate or not, here is diagramming of the wuji symbol and t'ai chi symbol. As I understand it, the wuji posture is the starting t'ai chi posture in the Cheng Man Ch'ing-style t'ai chi ch'uan that I practice.

- Wolfe Lowenthal recommends Richard Wilhelm's translation of the I Ching, which influenced the Tao Teh Ching. Taoism heavily influences t'ai chi ch'uan. Links about Wilhelm are here and here. This page purports to present Wilhelm's I Ching translation. I have ordered Wilhelm's translation in hardcopy.

- Practicing t'ai chi ch'uan helps one loosen attachment to one's body, to desires, and to material things, in that in t'ai chi one must deflate the ego, softness is valued and muscular strength is not sought, and this martial art is suitable for practitioners of any age and any level of physical health or lack thereof. As the above-discussed Jan Diepersloot writes in Warriors of Stillness: "The accomplishment of the training in the meditative and martial arts is precisely the ability to transcend and suppress the functioning o the sympathetic, pituitary-adrenal system and continue to operate with calm equanimity in the face of extreme danger, including, ultimately, the encounter with death itself."  Jon Katz

Although most of my time is spent on criminal defense, my strong civil libertarian bent has led me to do in-depth civil litigation over the years, as well, particularly defending free expression rights of political activists, adult entertainment industry members, and libel defendants.

My first experience with civil litigation was in the late 1980's with my first law firm, which represented financial institutions and transportation companies. There, my legal research often found opinions about the American rule that each private party must bear its own attorney fees, and that the attorney fees sometimes are available from the government under civil rights laws and the Equal Access to Justice Act.

In the area of civil rights litigation, some statutory schemes make prevailing plaintiffs eligible to obtain an award of attorney fees from the defense. No matter how counterintuitive it may or may not be, such exposure sometimes extends to defeated plaintiffs, as well. As recently recounted by the Fourth Circuit, here is the state of the law on the matter:

Pursuant to [42 U.S.C.] § 1988(b), the "prevailing party" in certain civil rights proceedings is entitled to recover attorney’s fees. Although the explicit provisions of § 1988 do not distinguish between a prevailing plaintiff and a prevailing defendant, the courts have nevertheless drawn such a distinction. Under controlling precedent, a prevailing civil rights plaintiff is ordinarily entitled to receive an attorney’s fee award as a matter of course. See Hensley v. Eckerhart, 461 U.S. 424, 429 (1983) ("[A] prevailing plaintiff should ordinarily recover an attorney’s fee [under § 1988] unless special circumstances would render such an award unjust." (internal quotation marks omitted)). A much stricter standard applies, however, when a court is requested to make such an award to a prevailing defendant. See, e.g., Jones v. Continental Corp., 789 F.2d 1225, 1232 (6th Cir. 1986) (describing fee award to civil rights defendant as "extreme sanction" reserved only for "truly egregious cases of misconduct").

In order for a prevailing defendant to be entitled to recover attorney’s fees under § 1988, the plaintiff’s claim must have been either "‘frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless,’" or the plaintiff must have "‘continued to litigate after [the claim] clearly became so.’" Lotz Realty Co., Inc. v. U.S. Dept. of Housing & Urban Dev., 717 F.2d 929, 931 (4th Cir. 1983) (quoting Christiansburg Garment Co. v. EEOC, 434 U.S. 412, 422 (1978)). Indeed, the mere fact that a civil rights plaintiff lost her case does not render her claim frivolous, unreasonable, or groundless. As the Supreme Court explained in this regard:

[I]t is important that a district court resist the understandable temptation to engage in post hoc reasoning by concluding that, because a plaintiff did not ultimately prevail, his action must have been unreasonable or without foundation. This kind of hindsight logic could discourage all but the most airtight claims, for seldom can a prospective plaintiff be sure of ultimate success.

Christiansburg, 434 U.S. at 421-22; see also Sensations, Inc. v. City of Grand Rapids, 526 F.3d 291, 303 (6th Cir. 2008) ("The Sixth Circuit affirms awards of attorney fees [to prevailing defendants under § 1988] only when plaintiffs relitigated already-settled legal matters, and we reverse the award of attorney fees when issues of law remained unresolved or when a plaintiff had an arguable basis for pursuing his or her claim." (internal quotation marks omitted)). The purpose of distinguishing between a fee award being made to a successful plaintiff, on the one hand, and such an award being made to a prevailing defendant, on the other, arises out of the legitimate concern for the "chilling effect" that the latter type of award would have on potential civil rights plaintiffs — and their lawyers — in deciding whether to initiate lawsuits. See Lotz, 717 F.2d at 932. We have explained, however, that "[w]hen a court imposes fees on a plaintiff who has pressed a ‘frivolous’ claim, it chills nothing that is worth encouraging." Hutchinson v. Staton, 994 F.2d 1076, 1081 (4th Cir. 1993).

 Unus, et al. v. Kane, et al., __ F.3d _ (4th Cir., May 6, 2009).

Consequently, it is essential, before filing any lawsuit, to determine the attorneys' fee recovery landscape and other possible landmines for the case. That does not mean to be fearful to file suit, but to be knowledgeable about potential pitfalls before doing so.

Several years ago, the Dalai Lama provided material for The Art of Happiness at Work, which sequels The Art of Happiness.

How many people truly enjoy their work? How many are miserable in their work? One of the Dalai Lama's themes in The Art of Happiness at Work is to see the bigger, optimistic picture of the work we do, including work as basic as folding shipping boxes.

Today, I stopped off at the Annapolis, Maryland, Trader Joe's on the way back from court. I heard and saw a man ask a set of customers how best to know if limes are fresh. He then squeezed the lime and it honked the sound of Harpo Marx's honk. (What type of sound effect would he have used if squeezing the beans?)

I wound up in this man's checkout line, and remarked how I enjoyed the honking. It turned out we both enjoy performing magic, and he proceeded to perform a three-card monte routine for me and the person behind me in line.

This man was putting The Art of Happiness at Work into practice perhaps even without ever having read the book.

People do better work when they are happy in their work. How many times do we see grumbling judges, grumbling jurors, and grumbling courtroom personnel who would like to be anywhere else but in the courtroom? We can start turning that around by showing them empathy, humility, some humor, and our own zest for life. That is what the magician at Trader Joe's would do in front of a jury.

Until around fourteen years ago in particular, I too often saw life in shades of gritty, sometimes depressing, sometimes heavily empty, and sometimes constraining gray. When driving through beautiful parts of Maryland's Eastern shore to or from court, I would obsess about how much more unjust criminal defendants tended to be treated in those courts than in the already unjust Maryland courts closer to Baltimore and Washington, D.C. I would see a beautiful tree and dwell on how environmental degradation left us with fewer trees, dirtier air, fewer wild animals, and dirtier water than a century before. I would go to a wonderful concert, and sometime obsess about all the people who did not have the money to be there.

Part of this conundrum came from not wanting to be in bliss through ignorance. Another part came through my human rights and civil rights work particularly starting with Amnesty International in college, and later my full-time criminal defense work. Recognizing the depths of worldwide and local human rights violations, and the depths of cops, prosecutors, judges, probation and parole agents, and jailers treating criminal defendants like cattle at best, I found myself in a deep, dark often lonely-feeling pit.

The lessons were always present for getting out of that pit and for connecting with the world in a much more harmonious way without sacrificing my devotion to social justice. Amnesty International consistently spoke of lighting a candle rather than cursing the darkness. The Dalai Lama -- whom I learned more about as I was reaching greater harmony with myself and the world -- is a living example of being happy even in the face of some of the most vile violations by people against people. Gandhi spoke gently and peacefully as British soldiers cracked the skulls of peaceful Indian demonstrators.

I possibly needed to go through the stage of shades of gray before getting to my current stage of finding harmony from within. It did not help, of course, that at the age of just seven or eight, I saw a televised and very vivid Holocaust documentary, including, to my best recollection, scenes of dead victims and emaciated victims at death camps. My free expression fanaticism says not to censor such material. That still does not change the years of trauma that I felt from it, and that it would have been better for me to have had at least two or more years to be exposed to that.

In any event, we give up too much control of ourselves to say that we will only be happy if we get that job or this person as a friend, get into this college, or see torture come to an end. Human vileness, horrendous natural disasters, sickness, old age, and death will always be part of life. When people ask me how I can feel so content when there is so much sh*t in the world, I respond that I might as well go in that direction now, because tons of sh*t will always be around, although each of us can try to reduce the sh*t, prevent the sh*t, stunt the sh*t, shovel away the sh*t (cover your nose and mouth with a bandana if you need), and convert sh*t to fertilizer for better things.

What I do not need is Shirley Temple-type overly rosy glowing views about the world. I would still prefer breaking bread with a fascinating cynic than with a glowing Shirley or Shemp Temple. We need to maintain a realistic and critical view of the world, others, and world events in the process of harmonizing ourselves. Otherwise, we will not recognize the social and environment injustices that need fixing.

Of course, it is important for each of us to recognize, come to terms with, reduce and remedy the sh*t that we ourselves dole out intentionally or not to others and ourselves, both through action, inaction, and failure to act. Thich Nhat Hanh spoke of an American Vietnam veteran who was emotionally debilitated that he had killed many children in Vietnam. Thich Nhat Hanh responded that the man now had the opportunity to change course, and to help people. Likewise, on the one hand, none of us should deny or minimize the sh*t we have caused others and ourselves up to now, but on the other hand, our past sh*t production should not debilitate us from moving forward in a positive way.

Few things in life are black and white. There are few total angels and few total villains. People are better persuaded when they do not feel that they must put themselves in a defensive or skeptical posture with the person they are dealing with, and when they are not constantly worried about whether they are at risk of being humiliated, demeaned, or defeated by the person trying to persuade them. If I do not find a way to like or at least care about the person I am trying to persuade, to empathize with that person, and to feel the person is able to do the right thing, why would that person -- including the judge and jurors with my client -- care about me or my client, or listen to me? I continue working on this; it is a never-ending process, including to get to the level of accepting that we are so interconnected that it is okay for us to kindly greet a person we know still to be constantly urinating on people's rights and dignity, and that it harms us and everyone else when we flip the bird or do something worse at even one person. This, of course, does not mean one should not seize the opportunity to bring one's grievances to a wrongdoer; important moments must be seized. Ram Dass had already reached that level of kindness, compassion, and interconnectedness when the worst thing he would say about George Bush, II, when I heard him speak in 2003, was that Bush must have been undergoing a difficult reincarnation.

Everyone can improve. Nobody stays the same, just as a river constantly changes; the water molecule that is in front of us in the river at this moment will be miles away later today, and the riverbanks will continually be changed by the river. Few people are a**holes, even though most people sometimes or more often than that act like a**holes. The more we free ourselves of the chains of cynicism, then the more we can change the course of the river, of people's actions on others, and our own actions and thoughts for the better. Jon Katz

As I previously wrote about a lesson from Count Basie, excess verbiage should be pared down, so as to becomes a stepping stone to an in-the-moment argument that is tighter, more confident, and more persuasive than just getting up and winging the argument.

Extraordinary musician-pianist Ahmad Jamal exemplifies that concept with the moving simplicity of the trio performance of his decades-old classic "Poinciana", played above in 2005.

When I experienced Ahmad Jamal in 1981 at the Tinker's club in Boston, he and his band poured their hearts and excellence into the performance, which had one long set, as opposed to the common economics-driven practice today of many jazz musicians doing two or three separately paid-for sets at music clubs.

Thanks to Ahmad Jamal and the many other amazing music creators who make this world a better, more inspiring, and more magical place.