UNDERDOG - Criminal Lawyer for Fairfax, Virginia/Maryland/Beltway. DWI/DUI.

Cabin John t'ai chi practice court. Photo copyright Jon Katz (August 2011).

Criminal defense is war, and I know of no better martial art for that war than t'ai chi ch'uan, which I have been practicing for nearly seventeen years.

Recently, my five-year-old son and I revisited Cabin John Regional Park in Bethesda, Maryland, and took the amusement ride train which circles much of the park.

For over a dozen years on Saturday mornings, a group of local t'ai chi practitioners has gathered by the train depot there for form and push hands practice, benefitting from the extended roof to protect against wetness on rainy days. I went there once, but found more beneficial the earlier Saturday morning schedule for the Glen Echo Park practice (7:30 a.m.) and Capitol Hill practice (8:00 a.m.), which is preferable to the Glen Echo practice for including push hands and for being led by David Walls-Kaufman (here including his feelings about David Chen, discussed below), who is a highly-skilled practitioner and is generous with his time and focus during these practices. I now focus my group practice time with Julian Chu's group, both for the excellence of Julian (pictured here at 64, doubtlessly being all the more youthful from his t'ai chi and long distance running practice) and many of his students, and for the convenience of the practice locations and times.

Now I have a reason to resume t'ai chi practice at Cabin John Park, whether solely or with a group. After years in the planning, the finishing touches are being put on a t'ai chi practice court (drawn here) in memory of local t'ai chi teacher David Chen. After our recent train ride in the park, my boy and I went to visit the court as the final cementing and digging was being done at the stone court, which is in the design of the t'ai chi/yin yang symbol that is part of my law firm's symbol. David Chen exuded much positive energy, as does the court.

This t'ai chi court apparently is one of a handful, if even that many, in the United States. There is apparently one in Texas made of cement. On September 17 at 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. will be the opening ceremony for the t'ai chi court. For those, like I, who wish to skip the politicians' segment, you can arrive at or after 10:45 a.m. Martial arts demonstrations and a potluck picnic will be part of the program.

The Washington, D.C., area is a great place to practice Cheng Man Ch'ing's t'ai chi ch'uan yang style short form that I practice. First, Cheng Man Ch'ing's first Western student Robert Smith studied with Professor Cheng in Taiwan while stationed there with the Central Intelligence Agency, and later taught scores of students at the Bethesda YMCA parking lot each weekend after returning to Bethesda and continuing with the CIA in the Washington area (which goes to show how t'ai chi helps me transcend political differences with others). Then several of Mr. Smith's students set up their own t'ai chi schools in the area. Second, at least three top-notch students of Cheng Man Ch'ing's senior student Benjamin Lo (see here and here, too) ended up living and teaching t'ai chi in the Washington area, those being my current teacher Julian Chu, David Walls-Kaufman, and Arnold Lee, a teacher of David Chen. Every t'ai chi teacher from the Cheng Man Ch'ing lineage whom I have met has been tremendously generous of their time and focus in teaching others and teaching them correctly.

T'ai chi practice and push hands are very demanding to do right and to derive their full benefits, and the t'ai chi form requires daily correct practice. The benefits of devoted practice are tremendous and everlasting. I do my best to apply t'ai chi principles to my every waking hour, both in and out of court.

INTRODUCTION

When I told t'ai chi Master Ben Lo that, time permitting in the morning, I sometimes circle the courthouse where I am scheduled and conclude with t'ai chi, he asked if some people think I am crazy. I told him of my temporary police detention last June, when I was a suspected t'ai chi terrorist. He suggested that I not practice t'ai chi in airports. Of course, practicing t'ai chi is anything but crazy. It is the Supreme Ultimate.

The editor of a state criminal defense lawyers association newsletter recently solicited articles. In the ongoing spirit of my applying t'ai chi to criminal defense and everything else I do, I submitted the following article that incorporates material from my previous blog entries with some additional ideas and realizations:

MAINTAINING CALM IN THE EYE OF THE STORM

Consider being in trial against the most underhanded prosecutor you have ever battled against or, perhaps worse, a prosecutor with a reputation for fairness acting the complete opposite. Add to that a judge who merely wants to move the case along, even if that means only allowing the span of a lunch hour to review a mountain of Jencks material. Complete the picture with a bunch of lying witnesses fingering the wrong person, your client.

What is the most powerful way to approach such a state of injustice? Critical ingredients are calm, non-anger, and fearlessness. To go to battle in a state of mental and physical limpness will amount to a limp performance. To go to battle tense, stiff, or angry will give the opponent a huge area of the defense to push against and to topple, and will close off the channels of energy and strength. To be mindfully calm, on the other hand, gives the opponent nothing to push against, and gives one tremendous strength.

In the West, for too long the power of calmness has been underrated, perhaps as a hallmark of laziness, weakness, and the antithesis of non-stop capitalism. The transcendental meditation craze that particularly flourished in the 1970’s helped make calmness a normal goal. Today, yoga is widely embraced as a way to reach calm. Over a decade ago, I chose the t’ai chi path.

Soon after joining the Maryland Criminal Defense Attorneys Association in 1991, I met the late Victor Crawford, who had a law office in Rockville. By then, he had been practicing the Chinese internal martial art of t’ai chi for many years. Vic was no touchy-feely, wooly-headed new-ager, which intrigued me all the more about what drew him to t’ai chi. Curiously, one of Vic’s main teachers did not fit that mold either; he is Robert Smith, who, while working with the CIA in Taiwan in the 1950’s became the first Western student of a legendary t’ai chi master named Cheng Man Ch’ing. Eventually, at my request, Vic gave me the names of some local t’ai chi teachers, with a note that I was about to embark on a journey that would open amazing doors. The doors t’ai chi opened were many. For trial battle, t’ai chi has provided me the best anchor for powerful calmness that I have found.   

At first glance, t'ai chi might look like overly-simple slow-moving calisthenics for those who do not want to, or cannot, break a sweat. In reality, this martial art involves slow movements, a soft body, and an emptied mind on the one hand, and mindfulness, strength, and quick reflexes on the other, which all are critical to effective trial battle. The physical movements of t’ai chi better prepare practitioners to be calm and powerful at all times. T’ai chi is suitable both to make strong people stronger and to reverse weakness in the unhealthy.

When applying t'ai chi to trial work, the practitioner neither chases an opponent's power nor hides from it. Instead, the practitioner uses the opponent's power and energy to the best advantage, while seeking to sense the opponent's strategy and planned attack, to give the opponent nothing to push against, to find the opponent's weaknesses, and to neutralize the opponent. This fighting aspect of t’ai chi is called pushing hands, or, better still, sensing hands, because the idea is to keep the opponent close enough to be able to sense the opponent’s strategy, next move, strengths and weaknesses. The phrase sensing hands also is more apt than pushing hands, because the most accomplished t’ai chi practitioner uses mind energy over physical energy to win a battle.

Some people seek calm by avoiding conflict. I seek to use calm to harmonize conflict to the advantage of me and my client. By applying the principles of t'ai chi to my law practice, I do my best neither to chase an opponent's power nor to hide from it, but to use my opponent's power and energy to the best of my advantage, by doing my best to anticipate the opponent's strategy and attack, to give the opponent nothing to push against, to find the opponent's weaknesses, and to neutralize the opponent.

Related to this approach of neither chasing nor hiding from an opponent, t'ai chi master Benjamin Pang Jeng Lo (pictured here, second from the top) once said: "Normally we think that if [our opponent] has 100 pounds of force or power, I better have 150. But then if I get 150 pounds of force, he may have accumulated more himself. Or there’ll be somebody else with more. So next time it will be my 150 against his 200. Then I’ll need to go to 250… and still, there’s always going to be somebody with more than me. So I need to reverse my approach. I need to take my own power down to 0. Then there’s no chasing or spiraling. Nothing can change. If he has 100, I have 0. If he has 150, I have 0. If he has 200, I still have 0, on and on, whatever he has, I’m always beneath it, it doesn’t change or affect me. I’m not chasing his attributes, or competing, or catching up, or exceeding him. That’s Taijiquan.”

A student of Sun Tzu reaches the same destination by taking the following path: "Sun Tzu's ideal military leader is calm in the midst of chaos, being able to even appear chaotic to deceive his enemy. The ultimate skill is separating oneself from the stresses of everyday life. Thus, a strong leader's response does not correlate and follow with the stimulus, which in effect, is quite impressive to his or her people and to the competition. With this ability, one can think clearly without influences corrupting the process in bringing about the best solution. He or she has inner peace in a world of perpetual turbulence. How many times do you find yourself so wrapped up in present worries, you can't seem to think clearly, and that the decision was made based primarily from the tension?"

Fortunately, like myself, plenty of other lawyers seek calmness not out of any new age, bead-wearing philosophy of life, but out of a realization that this is the only sensible path, and is a necessary path. In Washington, DC, on a regular basis a contemplative law group meets. Similar gatherings take place in other parts of the nation, as well.

One lawyer who has inspired me with his holistic approach to law practice is Michael Dolich. He is a fellow attendee of the Trial Lawyers College, and I became intrigued to follow his spiritual travels on the TLC's listserv, and to talk with him about his approach to life. Ultimately, Michael left the law and found a way to incorporate his holistic approach to his new path of baking professionally. As Michael tells it, "You might not know I used to be a trial lawyer; 10 years I was in the courtroom. I still shake inside a bit when I say 'used to be' before that word 'lawyer;' but I am much more comfortable with that concept now. I liked the law practice with its constant intellectual feeding and occasional intense courtroom dramas which always moved me beyond my comfort zone and challenged me. But something always seemed missing; and for many years I didn’t understand what it was. Now I understand that I need to work with my hands and on my feet; at least part of my working time." For me, I use my hands and feet literally when practicing t'ai chi every day, and figuratively, by incorporating the t'ai chi principles and practices involved in pushing hands, protective kicking, and sparring, into my law practice.

Describing the teacher of the teacher of my two t'ai chi teachers, an Australian teacher says: "As one famous taiji teacher (Cheng Man-ching) once put it, drawing on the Taoist image of the soft overcoming the hard, water and air are amongst the softest of Nature's elements, yet massed wind (cyclone) or water (tidal wave) can overcome the hardest thing! The taiji practitioner if properly trained is able to harness or access realms of psychophysical energy (qi) unavailable through mere muscular exertion. Another leading taiji exponent (Bruce Kamir Francis) once compared the power capable of being generated by the internal versus the external arts to that of the atomic energy of Quantum physics that results from splitting the atom, as compared to Newtonian, mechanical energy."

Robert W. Smith -- who studied with Cheng Man-ching, and who taught my two t'ai chi teachers -- talked of Professor Cheng being the softest of the soft who directed his chi through the concrete, to make pushing the Professor little different than pushing concrete, that is, if a person were able to find anything to push in the first place when sparring with Professor Cheng, rather than feeling no differently than pushing a ghost. 

Some people do sitting meditation to achieve calm. I prefer the meditation involved in the internal martial art movements of t'ai chi. As Cheng Man-ching once said, doing yoga might relax a person, but it is t'ai chi that makes a person ready to neutralize the opponent at any time, and it helps me be calm in the eye of the storm. Jon Katz.

On July 8, I blogged about jazz master Andrew White. For those interested, he performs live at Washington, D.C.'s Twins Jazz October 12-13, 2007.

Last year, I briefly blogged about Zippy the Pinhead. Zippy's creator, Bill Griffith, will be at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland, the same weekend Andrew White performs at Twins Jazz. I hope to catch at least one of them, and plan to report back here. Jon Katz. 

ADDENDUM: Adding to the foregoing stimulating weekend lineup is t'ai chi supermaster Benjamin Pang Jeng Lo, who will be presenting his annual D.C.-area class October 13-14. Rarely do so many people who inspire me so much appear live locally on the same day.

Practicing life and law as a harmonious whole.  

As I inform my clients, our court cases are not about us against our opponents, but are about persuading the judge and jury.

In that regard, t'ai chi master extraordinaire Benjamin Pang Jeng Lo (pictured here, second from the top) once said: "Normally we think that if [our opponent] has 100 pounds of force or power, I better have 150. But then if I get 150 pounds of force, he may have accumulated more himself. Or there’ll be somebody else with more. So next time it will be my 150 against his 200. Then I’ll need to go to 250… and still, there’s always going to be somebody with more than me. So I need to reverse my approach. I need to take my own power down to 0. Then there’s no chasing or spiraling. Nothing can change. If he has 100, I have 0. If he has 150, I have 0. If he has 200, I still have 0, on and on, whatever he has, I’m always beneath it, it doesn’t change or affect me. I’m not chasing his attributes, or competing, or catching up, or exceeding him. That’s Taijiquan.”

In other words, t'ai chi and trials should be about harmonizing our situation, rather than focusing on winning. If winning is needed for us to harmonize our situation, so be it. If unavoidable harm to our opponent is needed to harmonize our situation, so be it again. If harmonization is possible without any loser and without harm to anyone, all the better. Jon Katz.

My four key gurus -- the pantheon, my law partner, Jay Marks, calls them -- are Steve Rench (trial battles), Jun Yasuda (peace, compassion, and eliminating my fear of death), Cheng Man Ch'ing (t'ai chi), and Victoria Boutenko (healthy and harmonious living and eating). I have spent time with all of them --- except Professor Cheng, who died before I took up t'ai chi -- particularly many times with Jun-san and Steve. 

When things get heated in court, sometimes I imagine that Steve Rench is on my left for confidence, Jun-san on my right for compassion to all (even my enemies), and Cheng Man Ch'ing behind me for full fighting power.

I have many other key teachers. including a sampling described here. One of my key teachers has taught me one of my most important lessons without my ever getting a chance to meet him. He is Bhagavan Das.

Bhagavan Das was born Kermit Mike Riggs in California in 1945. Then John Kennedy was assassinated, and he left the country for what became a multi-year journey, first in Europe, and ultimately spending several years in India as an ascetic holy man. He tells his fascinating story in It's Here Now -- Are You?, which describes his whirlwind ride soaking in spiritual life in India, coming under the tutelage of Neem Karoli Baba, seeking out Richard Alpert/Ram Dass for the acid he was sharing (and introducing Alpert to Neem Karoli Baba, and the rest is history, recorded in Be Here Now), and ultimately returning to fame in the United States through the story about him in Be Here Now.

The ride continued. Bhagavan eventually cut his hair and became a whiz at selling used cars, followed by encyclopedias and insurance. The Eastern holy man made an even more abrupt self-revolution when he became a born again Christian and dumped his Eastern religious objects in the water, including his begging bowl made from a human skull. Ultimately, Bhagavan left an exclusively Christian path to focus on spirituality itself, no matter the source.  

Why am I drawn to Bhagavan Das? The most important reason is his view that he never needed to spend all those years in India to learn what he learned there, while at the same time, his journey in India was fascinating. He did not need anybody else to make his life complete, even though many people helped enrich it all the more. He did not need to convert to a used car salesman from an ascetic holy man, but he did, and he made huge profits from it.

Whether intentionally or not, Bhagavan Das underlined to me how I do not need to meet and spend time with my teachers to learn from them. In April 2006, I drove to a Philadelphia yoga center, which was one of the stops on his tour. I arrived late, and the rest of the night involved seemingly endless responsive chanting called kirtan. My eyes glazed over with limited interest after the initial excitement of being in the room with Bhagavan.

Once the program ended, I tried to meet Bhagavan, with his autobiography in my hand. Many wanted a piece of him. One man told him he had driven all the way from farther than I, and Bhagavan said: "That's devotion" and ended up inviting him to stay overnight where he had been provided lodging. Yet with me, he seemed to remain elusive. The drive back would bring me home for limited sleep, so I left without meeting him. 

On reflection, I don't know if Bhagavan was just tired late in the evening and could not give a piece of himself to all, whether he was responding to my not looking plussed over all the kirtan chanting, or whether he was trying to teach me that I can learn from him and other teachers without needing them to autograph their book and without needing to talk to them.

Sometimes, one's learning truly begins after leaving one's teacher. In Hollywood, this was exemplified in the Kung Fu series -- which I religiously watched -- when Kwai Chang Caine had to leave the Shaolin temple and his cherished teachers once he was able to snatch the pebble. Closer to home, many of Cheng Man Ching's t'ai chi students apparently moved from being more unified when he lived to running various autonomous schools after he passed away. One of his senior students, Benjamin Pang Jeng Lo speaks reverently about Professor Cheng, while demonstrating his own powerhouse abilities, including successfully defying anybody to be able to move his extended arm when it is relaxed.

Further about Ben Lo, five years ago, at one of Ben's annual weekend seminars in the Washington, DC, area, I managed to get a seat at his table during lunchtime. He seemed amused to learn I was a lawyer, telling me that another lawyer t'ai chi practitioner was stiff; a new line of lawyer jokes, perhaps. I asked him how a person unable to bend much (because of replaced knees) can perform t'ai chi. He advised to focus on the lifting hands movement.

A repeated message at the Trial Lawyers College and the National Criminal Defense College is to share our learning with other like-minded lawyers. The taught become the teachers, while simultaneously learning from those they teach. Jon Katz.