SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Beat the Prosecution, presented by Northern Virginia criminal defense and DUI lawyer Jonathan Katz, where we are here to regularly present you information and ideas for beating your prosecution as best as possible. Nothing on any of our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or for individuals who have paid for a consultation. And now for your host, John Katz.

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Hello, everybody. This is John Katz. I'm a criminal defense and DUI defense lawyer in Northern Virginia. I tell it to you all the time, and I'm telling it to you this time. I am having a lot of trouble controlling my excitement over our guest here. But of course, if we engage in non-attachment, non-dualism, and/or non-duality, I'm not supposed to be more excited over one person than the other, but I am. This is Jonathan Faust. He shares my first name. Why do I like him so much? I know him as a mindfulness teacher. He is also married to one of my other favorite mindfulness teachers, whose name is Tara Brock, who I've also met. Perhaps he's going to tell me that I mispronounced her first name. I don't know. And let me tell you what I particularly like about Jonathan. Now, uh people look for mindfulness andor dharma teachers or whatever you call it for different reasons. Some people have suffered the trauma, tragedy. Now, if Jonathan has had trauma and tragedy and trying situations, I don't know about them. But still, even with people who don't have trauma, tragedy, and trying situations, it is very helpful for them to have a mindfulness teacher. I've spoken many times before about how this helps me as a criminal defense lawyer. And I just see a lot of this just positive and optimistic energy with him. But but he'll let us know if he's gone through trauma, tragedy, and trying times. I guess all of us do to certain extents. We're also going to start with Jonathan as he directs with a, I guess, a quiet time, because that is very important to mindfulness. And with that, Jonathan, please introduce yourself.

SPEAKER_02 2:10

Oh, John, thank you so much. What a great introduction. Really appreciate it. You know, the first thing that strikes me is, you know, it's our challenges that grow us. And either either our challenges shut us down or we can open to them as teachers. So yeah, I've had my share of uh, shall we say, growth opportunities through this life.

SPEAKER_01 2:34

Okay. Uh I'm letting you start with uh with this part of our discussion.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

So here's an interesting. So we're going to start with a very short meditation. It doesn't take long, you know. It's like, can you feel your breath? Well, okay, you just started. Um, but I like to think of meditation in terms of three, three, you could say, qualities. One is focus or concentration. That's present moment awareness. The second element is flow, which is what does it mean to be the observer of your experience? And then the third is letting go. Is it possible to let things be? So what I like to do is uh maybe offer this as a series of questions. So um, if you like, you can close your eyes. Not necessary, especially if you're listening to this driving a car. So the first question is where do you feel the breath the most predominant on the inside right now? Is it possible to relax the muscles of your face and feel your face expressionless? Could you relax the root of your tongue down into your throat and let your tongue fill your lower jaw? Right now, to to relax right at the point where you feel the breath the strongest inside. Naturally, the mind generates thoughts. When you notice the mind ca making a commentary, is it possible to just celebrate a little bit and bring your attention back to the breath? You're back, you're here. Now it's impossible to imagine what some traditions call taking the seat of the witness. Can you sense who you are as the one who's aware of what's changing? And now is it possible to let things be just as they are? And now, as you refresh the breath again, where do you feel the breath right now? It's impossible to relax and soften and feel the breath even more intimately. And can you sense what's changing? And who you are is the one who is noticing. And again, is it possible to let things be just as they are? Now you might just take a moment before we end. Just to notice what's the quality of your experience right now? If you could give it a name. And is it possible to let this be? And then when you're ready, you can deepen your breath and and you can open your eyes.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

I want to keep going for an hour.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

I know, I know. See, that's the trick. You know, I have this thing where I wake up in the morning and my mind says, You should do some yoga. And I think my second thought is I hate yoga. But if I can make myself do it in about three minutes, I'm thinking, I love, I love this. I should do this every day.

unknown 6:58

Right.

SPEAKER_02 6:58

And I do the same thing every single morning. So sometimes the shorter little practices are really, really helpful because they kind of inspire you to do a little more.

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Absolutely. Well, Jonathan, I I came to this practice of mindfulness from a few different directions. When I was a uh entering my senior year of uh high school, I met this man at the Cornell Summer School, and he told me about having read uh Herbert Benson's relaxation response. And I heard you use that uh phrase relaxation response in discussing chakras on one of your uh podcasts. And then I became a Tai Chi Chuan practitioner starting in 1994 through the lineage of uh Chiang Man Chang to Robert Smith, to my teachers, and then uh another lineage of Chiang Man Chang to Ben Lo to two of my teachers. And then I got into the sitting meditation, especially starting with when uh Sharon Salzberg's with Krishna Das for the Buddha Fest back around 2011, and during her guided meditation for the first time in my life, I felt like I was infinite with time and space, in infinite time and space. And the only time I felt that again with the guided meditation was with uh Alan Locos, who may be, I think, one of her cohorts or students, who made me feel like I was the only person on the planet. And I didn't even want that to end because when I opened my eyes, I found out I wasn't the only one on the planet. And then in uh 2012 to 13, I was actually the uh the coordinator of the then-named uh contemplative lawyers association of the DC area. So that was pretty cool. And I'd attend Sharon Salzburg's uh Dharma talks, uh monthly Dharma talks sometimes before I moved over to Virginia, and uh I attended some of uh Tara's uh sits, and I met you at the uh 2015 or 16 Mind for Leadership uh conference where you had a great Dharma talk and sit, and I handed you a peace crane that I folded. You may or may not remember that. I remember, I remember that. And your reaction was so cool because you were talking about uh you called the peace crane this guy. And I just think that you're so full of uh of the positive energy, like I said. So please tell us uh what is the path uh that you took to uh to get where you are with uh mindfulness or whatever you call it. And uh why don't you start off with where are you physically located and what is your URL and uh and and what are you doing with teaching, with where people can find you?

SPEAKER_02 9:43

Yeah, I'm uh I'm here in Northern Virginia. Um my wife and I live right by uh right by the river. It's just fantastic. And um I do my weekly, my weekly podcasts. Uh gosh, I've got I think I've got over 600 talks. And I keep asking myself, do I have anything more to say? Uh, but it seems that I do. So I just kind of keep going. And I offer, I do a number of I offer a number of offerings, you know, here and there. But what's interesting to me, just in hearing you share about the different practices that you've experimented with, you know, obviously you've got a very curious mind, you know, a curiosity around the the nature of reality, so to speak. And there's there's a certain thing that that jumps out for me. There's some traditions where they say, um, you should just, if you want water, dig one well. You know, don't don't dig a hundred wells, you know, dig one well, go deep. But one of my teachers said, actually, it's really important to explore all different approaches and all different techniques, and then find out what resonates for you, and then give yourself to it fully. And my particular um experience in in if you the spiritual marketplace, if you might say, has been very similar to yours, and that different traditions have been really instructive for you know for a while. And I I really feel that when we when we really start looking at our stress levels and what are the techniques that not only help us reduce our stress, but actually become more awake to what's most important in our lives, that different different traditions and techniques are going to show up at different times. Do you find that to be so?

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Yes, because my first uh main Buddhist teacher, uh, she's with the small niponzan myoji uh tradition, and and they don't even do meditation, they constantly do the mantra of Namum Yohor, Namum Yohorengeo. And of course, you know, Christian Das is big on uh mantra himself, and so uh Tai Chi Chuan, that's my main meditation, that's moving meditation, and then there's the sitting quiet meditation, which I don't do on a daily basis, but I can go really deep there. Uh, and doing Namum Yohorenge Kyo. I mean, my license plate's acronym is NMMHRGK. I don't know how no one else snagged that one. It reminds me not to give the finger to anyone while they're tailgating me and uh just just to uh be more understanding and compassionate towards them. So there are three uh three traditions right there.

SPEAKER_02 12:27

That's fantastic. You know, I'm I I don't call myself a Buddhist, I don't see any reason why, but I'm very informed through you know Buddhist psychology and Buddhist philosophy. And one thing the Buddha allegedly said, and again, allegedly, no one wrote anything down until 100 years after he died, but he said that what we need to do is to give ourselves to a practice or a discipline and then evaluate is the result more wholesome or less wholesome? Yes, and and as as as a practice matures, you realize you've got different techniques for different times, you have different techniques for different states. Like when I'm really, really stressed, I need something really physical, you know, and that's where like the you know, maybe working out or some like physical yoga is exactly what I need to release those deep-seated tensions in order to kind of uh get it, get them out of my system and help me feel more settled.

SPEAKER_01 13:26

Right. Yes. So I've tried to read a little bit about you. I don't think you've written written any books yet. So I found articles and listened to you. So my understanding is that you um uh were in the Peace Corps over in Africa, planning on riding your a bike. Uh I'd be what was it, a bicycle or a motorcycle across the Sahara? And somehow you found some book. I'd really like to know a little more about whether that was a bicycle or a motorcycle and what the name of that book was.

SPEAKER_02 13:58

Thank you for bringing forward a moment of supreme idiocy in my life. Uh yeah, I was I was in uh teaching in a university in Niger in West Africa, right on the border of the Sahara Desert. And and I lived just four doors down from the uh Surreté Nationale, which is kind of like their FBI. And everyone have everyone would have to check in after crossing the Sahara Desert. So I met a lot of people, you know, who were traveling uh in Africa. And I just happened to befriend this guy who was the first American to cross the Sahara Desert on his bike. Uh he was really sick. He stayed with me for like a month. He got me really inspired. So I thought, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna, I'm gonna be the first guy to do it from the south. And um there are these uh harmaton winds, these like dust-laden winds that come down off Algeria, and it was it looks like really, really intense small uh fog, but it's dust. And the hot season came early, and so I I I took off and uh boy, I got so beaten down. I actually tried twice and and failed. So I did end up crossing the Sahara Desert just in an airplane with my bike in the baggage.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

So this bike, this was a bicycle.

SPEAKER_02 15:15

Bicycle, yeah. Got it. Okay. And this was before there were like sealed bearings or anything like that, before mountain bikes. So uh I had I I'd customize my bike and I had to repack the bearings every week. And it was a it was an intense thing, but it was very tied into a spiritual quest. Uh, I really wanted to, I wanted my life to be different, you know, on the other side of it. And and the hilarious thing is I was gonna be my first major stop was going to be stopping at a place called uh Les Frères de Sekram, the brothers of a sacrum, which is this spiritual retreat in the Atlas Mountains in uh Algeria. And then I was going to be going to different spiritual communities. I ended up going back to Paris. I didn't get better. I went back to the last place on earth I wanted to go, which was my parents' farm in Pennsylvania. And my mother said, Hey, there's this homeopathic physician who lives in this ashram over the hill. And I thought, I wonder if a homeopathic physician is kind of like a psychopathic physician. But uh, but I went anyway, and here was this ashram, you know, with hundreds of people practicing. And um, so as I like to say, I I went for I went for a lunch and I stayed for 24 years. So I got a very deep immersion into intensive yoga meditation practice.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

And this was in the uh uh how do you pronounce the Kripalu uh tradition?

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Yes, the in the Kripalu tradition, yeah. We were initially we were in Pennsylvania, and then uh we moved to Western Massachusetts and bought this uh uh Jesuit seminary that had been vacant for like 20 years, and then we converted it into this uh program center, which is still alive and thriving.

SPEAKER_01 16:59

And was your mom from the Quaker tradition? If so, why would she want to refer you to another tradition? Or is that part of what Quakerism is about? It's about being open to different uh approaches to uh uh spirituality.

SPEAKER_02 17:12

Yeah, well, you really did do some uh homework here. Yeah. Um my parents were Quakers, uh and I was raised in the Quaker tradition and went to Quaker boarding school. And it was interesting, you know, like your first taste was with Herbert Benson. Um, my first taste was with transcendental meditation. And from the moment I learned transcendental meditation, I suddenly realized, wow, the Quakers talk about this still small voice within, but here's the technology to help me get in touch with it. And I knew from that moment meditation was going to be a really important part of my life.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

My understanding is you um took on quite uh, should we call it an ascetic or Spartan lifestyle that included even years and years of celibacy?

SPEAKER_02 17:58

Yeah, I had a celibacy vow and I had uh a poverty vow or a simplicity vow, which was um in your 20s and 30s um a wee bit of a challenge.

SPEAKER_01 18:12

So, what led you to go to the next stage from there?

SPEAKER_02 18:15

Well, there initially there was a requirement that you that they did have this marriage quote unquote program, you know, but it was but that was like four or five years down the road. And the depth of the meditative and yogic experiences I was having were so powerful. I just thought uh this is what I have to do to stay, this is what I'm gonna do. And it was a revelation for me because I was very much caught up in you know, sort of that that binaural, you know, makeable, not makeable scanning device that some people have. And I realized that I was presenting this false front, you know, that you know, that whole stance of if I say this and she says this and I say this, maybe it means that. All that was removed from the equation. And what I noticed pretty quickly within like six to eight months was there were all these sisters in the ashram that I would have pursued in the past, and I never would have had the emotional maturity to maintain a relationship. And they started becoming friends. And I started to, I became a little bit of a zealot around it because it it sort of kept me focused, it kept me from being distracted, and my meditations were going deeper and deeper. So it was it was a profound experience, but not easy, uh, as we would have said in the ashram, company is stronger than willpower.

SPEAKER_01 19:44

Okay, so I jumped ahead of myself but asked what went to the next stage. So what was your daily practice like, or or was it changing from day to day and week to week?

SPEAKER_02 19:55

You know, living in an ashram is kind of like being in the military. Um, it's very, very regimented, um, it's very action-oriented. Um you kind of have a uniform, you know. We all, you know, we all kind of like wore yoga whites. Um pretty much, I forget, I think we were like up at 5:30 and we did a lot of yoga, a lot of meditation, a lot of chanting, a lot of pranayam, a lot of really intense breathing stuff. That was the morning, and then um we pretty much worked from you know, from after breakfast until like uh 5.30, then we did more yoga and meditation, and then dinner, and then there was always a community gathering where we had meditation and chanting and teaching, and it was six and a half days a week. We had we had Sunday noons off for personal time.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

So, what year was this you started uh at Krapallu, and what year was this that you uh uh transitioned away from Krapallu?

SPEAKER_02 20:58

I think it was like around 82, I think, when I stumbled in. So, like 24 years later, and then we had a huge scandal. Um, it turns out that our our guru um was not quite living um the teachings he was having us live, put it that way. There was some financial indiscretion, there was some sexual indiscretion, and um the community was strong enough to ask him to leave. And then um I elected to stay on to help reinvent Kropalu as a as a non-ecumenical, non-sectarian program center. And I'm happy to say it's it's alive and thriving in western Massachusetts. So I I served as president for three years during that transition.

SPEAKER_01 21:45

Yes. And uh and so when did you uh finally uh go somewhere else in your the next stage in your life? And what did you then do?

SPEAKER_02 21:56

Well, it was interesting because I had um I I gave notice, I realized I don't I want to be the guy coming here to teach, not the guy worried about the strategic plan and what the fuel bill was paid. I was just not my not my temperament. So I had let I let the board know and um um and so it was like a six-month process. And we had this conference called East Meets East, Yoga and Buddhism. And I was one of the keynoters, and I remember saying to my assistant, um, well, you know, I'll I'm gonna do a killer keynote, but don't schedule me for the staff meetings. They're just gonna be a bunch of dried up Buddhists. And uh and one of those dried up Buddhists was uh Tara Barak. How about that? Yeah, so we met uh right when I was letting go of my job. She was just finishing her first book tour, her father had just died, and we were it was just one of those amazing things. We both kind of knew immediately there was something really, really powerful here. And that that was that sort of set me up for when I had declared I would never move to a metro area, I would never move somewhere where I didn't have a job, I would never get married, and I would never ever renovate a house. Well, so after that Yeah, so after I moved down to DC without a job, renovated Tara's house so we could sell it so we could get married, here I am.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

Wow. Um are you uh spending all of your um time helping people with what you described? Or you are you uh or are you do you have a uh uh another profession or is this pretty much uh it what you've told us about?

SPEAKER_02 23:45

You know, what when people ask me how's your how's your business? You know, I I always say, well, I'm in the suffering industry, you know, business is booming. Um and uh I try I try to be available. And so I, you know, I have my talk, I do a lot of work with uh on a for on the kind of on the corporate level. Um I work privately with people some. Um I did a course for many, many years called A Year of Living Mindfully uh here in the DC area. That was a very kind of in-depth exploration of um of practice. And right now I'm actually working on a program which I hope to have out maybe in about three months, called uh transforming your relationship to pain, which is uh meditative strategies for working with uh working with physical pain and and with the emotional mental pain that's associated with it.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

And what is what is your experience with pain?

SPEAKER_02 24:42

You know, I I started getting chronic migraines when I was like six. Um so for about every four months for most of my life, I would have kind of debilitating pain. And I tried all different kinds of strategies, and some of them work, some of them still don't work, uh, but a few of them do. And uh I realized that if I could just be a warm guiding voice in someone's ear when they're have that debilitating you know feeling inside, uh, I would I would like to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 25:18

So what do you do when you have those migraines and any other kind of pain?

SPEAKER_02 25:24

Well, a number of strategies. You know, sometimes sometimes just too much, you know, and it's kind of overwhelming and like the CPU shuts down. But one of my go-to techniques uh and I just find this to be so so helpful, is r recognizing that sensations show up in three categories. Uh there are the pleasant sensations and then the uh the unpleasant sensations and then the neutral sensations. And of course the mind fixates on the unpleasant sensations. You know, you go to the dentist, you're focusing on, you know, when's the when's the drill gonna start? And like what are they what are they scraping and are they taking flesh as they're scraping, that sort of thing. And so because the mind instinctively focuses on the unpleasant, the particular technique that I like using is to first identify the unpleasant sensation. Like, where is it? Can I locate it? Does it have a shape? Does it have a color? And so let's say if I have a headache and it's sort of at the base of my skull, you know, I'll kind of feel it as this like red hot, radiating pain that's kind of like a blob, it's kind of amorphous. And so I've identified the unpleasant. So that's kind of like zone one. And then I look through my body for the pleasant or the neutral. Like is there anywhere inside that actually feels good or anywhere that feels neutral? And the the practice is uh to keep my attention in what I call zone two. So when when I s when I fix it on the on the unpleasant, I just let my attention move around like a butterfly. You know, oh my right elbow is tingling, my left palm is warm, my forehead is cool. And and a very curious thing happens when I do that. The first is this sense of like if I keep doing this, I can bear it. Pain's not going away, but I can bear it. And then sometimes the the um the barrier between zone one and zone two starts to shift. There'll be either like an expansion or a melting or a or a softening. That's really quite extraordinary. And then sometimes I can actually go into the zone one and I'll sort of name name name the sensations there, like uh left occiput, you know, radiating back of the head hot. And when it feels like it's too much, I go back to zone two. So it's kind of like my go-to now is when I'm at the dentist, is my basic mantra is my hands feel great. Excellent. If I keep my attention in my hands, we're I'm fine. And then that'll invoke a whole body relaxation, as opposed to what are they gonna do to me now?

SPEAKER_01 28:21

Right when I'm in the dentist, I just focus on my breath and I'm here now, and I'm well, I like my dentist a lot. He's really excellent. I'm sharing the good energy with him, but then when I got sent for root canal because I was too afraid to go to the dentist for four years after uh COVID, and as a result, uh a crack in my tooth that could have been saved turned into being a root canal. After I found out the root canal is rarely painful, it was just a little uncomfortable. I don't know if you've had root canal, you know, open your mouth with those rubber stuff. I was just in the now and I just uh went through with it.

SPEAKER_02 28:56

Yeah, yeah. It's so interesting because pain has there's the experience of pain, then there's everything we add on to it, you know, all of the all of the mental process that goes with it.

SPEAKER_01 29:10

And my father, he would have such a bad back for decades after his second or third uh parachute jump in the army that the severity of that lower back pain would get so bad that he almost never, if ever, asked for Novocaine when his teeth were being drilled to uh put uh uh to fill cavities because that pain was nothing in comparison with the back pain he would get. And he said to me, I want to be in touch with what's happening right there, and I can bear that pain.

SPEAKER_02 29:41

Wow, wow, man, that's that generation.

SPEAKER_01 29:46

I tried that once, it didn't last long before I said, Please give me the Nova Cain.

SPEAKER_02 29:51

Yeah, there's a story of someone who said, like, like in his whole practice was be totally in the moment, yeah, with like deep drilling. And he did it, but uh he's a he's a different person than I am.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

You have a URL. What is that?

SPEAKER_02 30:10

Oh, it's uh jonathanfaust.com.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

And Faust is spelled F-O-U-S-T.

SPEAKER_02 30:16

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:17

And uh you uh teach now virtually once a week, is it, or have Dharma talks or whatever you call them once a week?

SPEAKER_02 30:25

Yeah, Monday nights. I it's a it's a web, it's a webcast. Um, so um that happens at uh 7 p.m. And there's someone who leads Mindful Movement beforehand, which is kind of nice if you wanted to be uh kind of really beautifully guided into yoga before um like a 15-minute meditation and then a talk.

SPEAKER_01 30:48

And did this all go online only because of COVID?

SPEAKER_02 30:51

Yeah, yeah, it's amazing, it's amazing what happened.

SPEAKER_01 30:57

And uh so what are the circumstances under which people can be with you in person?

SPEAKER_02 31:03

Very limited, very limited these days. Although I am looking at uh um offering some day-long retreats live in the DC metro area. Um, that's something that uh I hope to do kind of probably spring and summer. And I know Tara and I are going to be doing a day long together in the fall. And then I'll probably be launching my Year of Living Mindfully program in the fall as well.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Okay, so the program you're talking about doing with Tara in the fall, is that going to be in person?

SPEAKER_02 31:35

Yeah, that'll be in person, most probably at um oh, where do we normally use um one of the local universities? We you use one of their big halls. It's a big, it'll be a big group, probably like four or five hundred people.

SPEAKER_01 31:52

Now, the name of this show is Beat the Prosecution. People who've listened to all or most of my podcasts uh know that uh for me, a big part of beating the prosecution uh for the criminal defense lawyers and the criminal defendants is not just prep uh preparation for the case, but preparation for ourselves, strengthening of ourselves. But every single uh mindful teacher who's been on here has had some great ideas that I haven't thought of offering myself. So what ideas do you have beyond what I've just talked about?

SPEAKER_02 32:26

There's a great saying that says the more you've got going on in life, the more you need to be on retreat. You know, because when you're in that role, you're in a role where your intuition has to be turned on.

unknown 32:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:39

You have to be you have to be able to sense what's over the horizon. And the only way you can do that is when you are centered and clear. So there's there's this great Zen master, uh, and he was asked, How long do you sit? How long is your sitting practice? And he goes, Well, I sit for 30 minutes in the morning unless I'm really busy. And then I sit for you know I think I've heard that one. Yeah, it's you know, the old Quaker adage of don't do something, just sit there. Um but I but I really feel that you know, particularly in in your profession, you need to be able to think clearly, but you also need access to your intuition. Okay, which is to really just sort of like filling in the gaps. It's like reading someone's body posture. It's just sensing a possibility where one wouldn't exist when you're when you're um too hyper, you know, what when when you're caught in hypervigilance.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:37

That's why it's so, so profound to be able to slow down. And it's the difference, it's it's the difference between reacting and responding. You know, everything is stimulus response. And what mindfulness does is it just opens up that gap just a little bit between stimulus and response.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Well, you know, Jonathan, just as you uh benefit uh in so many ways by being in your marriage with uh Tara, I benefit so much with my wife, including that uh we both believe in the many paths to the one destination, which is relates back to what you're talking about with the uh uh trying the various practices. And my wife appreciates it so much when I'm making sure to do the Tai Chi Chuan or any other energy practice on a daily basis. She likes it so much when I'm spending at least two minutes a day uh listening to or reading uh mindfulness teachers, whether it's you, Ram Das, uh Wayne Dyer, anyone else. And when I do that, I I just feel just so much more grounded. And there's this thing about anger, of course, the importance of non-anger. I thought it was amazing, Jonathan. Captain Paul Watson, who was one of the co-founders of Greenpeace, who was on this show about two or three weeks ago, he said he doesn't get angry. And I don't know of many people who don't get angry. I know of people who believe in non-anger are good at controlling it, but to not get angry, and he said that was in part a reaction to his father, who was so abusive and angry. And something unusual happened last week was there's this uh prosecutor uh who was just uh yelling out F-bombs left and right to one of his colleagues about a criminal defense lawyer, not me, who he was so upset about. And I I just thought to myself, does he realize that he's really not getting any net benefit here? Uh and I I saw the reaction because I was waiting to talk to him about my case. I saw the the uncomfortable, seeming reaction of his colleague. And it's just this whole thing, it's like, right, you put a pebble in the ocean and and and the waves go out. If you put a negative pebble in there laden with F-bombs and anger, look at what happens there. But when you do the opposite, look what happens there. I can't tell you how many times I've had uh prosecutors and cops and and judges and other opposing witnesses acting angry towards me and me just shifting them around by me not amplifying the anger by not reacting in anger, by even doing Tai Chi, giving them nothing to push against. Now, one example about turning someone around where it wasn't anger, but it was just finding that commonality, like you said, Jonathan, about uh reading a person. I wanted to talk to this man who was allegedly a witness of my client touching the uh the outer clothing right on the breast of this, I think she was a real estate agent who was coming to his mom's home to to maybe be involved with appraising it or whatever. And I walked up to the man, I introduced myself. One of the first things he said before I even asked him a question, he said, I'm not talking about the case. But he said it nicely, so nicely that I said, totally understandable. I said, You seem to just live in a sea of calm. And all of a sudden, I just opened up the floodgates to the point where I almost had to ask him to shut up. He said to me, My grandmother was a sea of calm, and I just learned from that. And then he said to me, So what do you want to know about the case? And after I asked him all my questions and he finally answered me all my questions about what his testimony would be, he said, What else do you want to know? What else do you want to know? I said, Well, you know, I have to go talk to my client. I think I found out everything I want to know, but he seemed disappointed. He wanted to keep talking to me and tell me anything I wanted to know. What a metamorphosis.

SPEAKER_02 37:28

Well, and what a powerful moment where you had a lot more emotional bandwidth. And and and I think part of like when you're in that place, a more spacious, non-reactive place, you're more sensitive to other people's unmet needs. Yes, unmet needs. And when, and because you were able to look for the good, refle reflect, see something in him that you could reflect back. Wow, what a magical thing. What a magical thing. And when I contrast that with like if you were to hit him, you know, hit him with the same energy he came at you, it would have gone in another different in a completely different direction.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

Yes. And well, another big inspiration there that I learned about uh 29 years ago is from my teacher, Steve Rynch, who's this great criminal defense lawyer in Denver. He must be in his 80s, if not 90s, by now. And one day I said to him um when I first was knowing him, I said, Steve, how do you deal with a fascist judge? He said, John, I don't have problems with judges. I said, Come on, Steve. He said, a challenging judge is like a boulder in the middle of the road. He said, you can either give yourself a hernia moving the boulder or just drive around the boulder. Now, it sounds overly simplistic, but then he gave me some examples. So he said, if a judge is yelling at me, I smile and I say, Judge, I was just trying to persuade you. Or um if uh he tries to say something nice to the judge that's genuine, it doesn't sound like he's kissing anyone's butt. So after he finishes with the judge, if he has something nice to say about the judge, judge, I know that I gave you a 30-page filing. Thank you so much for taking the time to read it. Uh perhaps it uh uh uh dried your eyes out uh for a while, but I I really appreciate it or made your eyes numb. Or if he has nothing to say nice about the judge, he might say, you know, this is my first time at your courthouse. Your staff has been super with helping accommodate me with figuring out how your procedures work here. And he tries to do something. Now he's able to do it genuinely, he tries to do something to put to put it in the positive. And uh my former law partner uh was talking to me about uh, I think about this, I think even on the podcast of a few months ago, uh talking about just this positive energy, this positive energy. And one of the first things he said to me about a month or two entire law partnership, which started around 1998, he said, you know, John, just remember, you know, any any negative uh any negativism you put there out into the universe is going to keep spreading and spreading and spreading. And the idea that we were that we're able to stay friends, uh, how long after our partnership ended? 16, over 16 years after our partnership ended, not only we're still friends, but we still share the same sophomoric humor that we've been doing years and years together. I mean, what what a great, great energy I had with him for the 10 years together.

SPEAKER_02 40:36

And that's and part of that is a training, you know, we're we're we're training ourselves to look for the good. And that's what I find, you know, there's this, you know, this this great joke. I don't know if it's a great joke, but in the mindfulness community, they say, you know, when you meditate, you feel better. You feel your anger better, you feel your rage better, you feel your depression better. But you also feel your joy better, you know, you also feel your empathy better, you feel you feel happiness better. And I think part of it is that the more that when you practice, you be just become more sensitive. And you start becoming more sensitive to what doesn't work, but also more sensitive to what does work.

SPEAKER_01 41:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 41:18

That's part of the magic of staying fresh and open in a profession that can be uh very, very challenging.

SPEAKER_01 41:26

Well, this is interesting, Jonathan. Uh a very uh beloved colleague of ours committed suicide around uh 2021, losing his battle with depression. I had seen him just one or two days before in the courthouse. He looked the same as always, but then I got to know him too well. And of course, people were getting online and elsewhere commiserating with each other. One colleague said to me, Hey, John, you know, if you ever need a listening ear, uh, you know, I'll be there for you. He had people to listen to. And so I sent out uh a notice on one or two of our listservs saying, um, I am interested in doing sitting practice before court starts for the day. I can do this uh hybrid in my office andor by Zoom. If anyone wishes to do this, this is one way to handle to help handle uh you know any disconnect or discomfort or discombobulation we're feeling. A few people uh showed an interest, but nothing happened from it. I have no complaints about it because, right, I'm supposed to work on myself, not try to change other people. And everyone has their own practice, of course. And I thought that was really cool that for that year that I was coordinating the uh the Mindful Lawyers or Contemplative Lawyers Group in DC, that was really cool. We'd have anywhere from five to twenty five people join, sometimes at a restaurant, ultimately the insight meditation, insight meditation community of Washington, right? Yes, that's your group, IMCW in Tenley Town in DC, and it was so cool. We'd start out with a sit together and we then we'd have a discussion. Uh when I moved over to Virginia, it was harder for me to continue with that, but it's wonderful for me to know that I have this community that's available of lawyers and non-lawyers to sit with. Of course, what I mean is amazing with the Insight Meditation Committee of Washington, there are all sorts of opportunities. That's imcw.org.

SPEAKER_02 43:19

That's correct. That's correct, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:21

And I I remember that the uh the the member of IMCW, beyond our lawyers group, which included Mary Aubrey, uh, was there was this one day that uh what's it Hugh Byrne? Hugh Byrne, I think he was involved with maybe the the DC uh uh DC bar, maybe with dealing with people with substance and alcohol issues. And I he was he was just wonderful. I mean, there are just so many wonderful people uh to learn from and to be with.

SPEAKER_02 43:50

You know, I read this article many years ago that said if you take your take your five best friends, average out their income, it's Probably your income. And I read that and I thought, oh boy, I need new friends. But the but the main purpose of the article was saying that you resonate with whom you spend the most time. And it's like living in the ashram was like being surrounded by people who want what I want is so important. You know, and like the group that that you created, the offering that you created, it's a wonderful thing. And I would just say for anyone who's who's interested in this stuff, you know, um, to really find some other people who are interested because um it is invaluable to be around someone who shares the same, the same, same interests and the same passions.

SPEAKER_01 44:44

I agree. And as I said before, uh I've been to two lawyers' uh uh mindfulness retreats. One the first was in 2012 at Blue Cliff Monastery, where it was partly silent. And I did find with that, so I went in deep in 2015 at the Garrison Institute, where everything was silent except for when we were in group talks and uh in question and answer period. And um people didn't think I could survive that. The only exception I made was it was recommended uh not even to use our cell phones, but I did got on the phone the the two or three nights I was there to say goodnight to my wife and son, but didn't look at any of the texts or emails. I just loved it.

SPEAKER_02 45:25

It's amazing silence. It's amazing. I always tell people when if you if you elect to do a silent residential retreat, it is one of the best investments you can make of time and fortune. And you never know what you're going to what you're going to encounter because you're just you just release so much tension and so much mental, you know, mental processing.

SPEAKER_01 45:52

So what my son, yes.

SPEAKER_02 45:55

No, so what was the big what was the biggest takeaway from that retreat for you?

SPEAKER_01 46:01

The biggest takeaway is I didn't have didn't get to have a conversation with Norman Zoquezzo Fisher, who's one of the main reasons I went, because everything was silent, but beyond that beyond that, the biggest takeaway is there can be the talkative me and the quiet me, and the me who is just with uh other people soul to soul, and people need to know that if I'm just being quiet with them, it doesn't mean I'm just interested in them, that I'm that I don't care about them if I'm not being very inquisitive. Uh, my wife understands that. I my son understands that, not everyone else does, but it's just this the the quieting the mind and helping me go deeper and deeper in what I've been advocating for a long time and will for the rest of my life, which is finding calm in the eye of the storm because I love the work I do. And for a person to love the work that I do, the person has to welcome the battle. I welcome the battle, I mean, right? Uh what do they say also in the um mindfulness community? If you want to see how high you've achieved, spend a week with your family with me after I come back from the uh the the through the long weekend uh quiet retreat. How am I going to deal with those same judges, same prosecutors, and same everyone else who haven't gone through the experience I've gone through?

SPEAKER_02 47:23

Exactly, exactly. You know, the analogy, it's kind of it's simplistic, but this whole idea of you know, my cup runneth over, you know, the the times when you just you just feel so good you can't not be nice to people, you know. Like when people say, you know, meditation, yoga, tai chi, that stuff is so self-indulgent. My response is that it's it's our responsibility to fill our cup so it's overflowing.

SPEAKER_01 47:51

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 47:52

And whatever it takes to fill that cup where it's overflowing, and you can come from a place of goodwill, you have you can come from a place of creativity, you come from a place where you're naturally seeing the good around you, you can problem solve faster. All of that, all of that comes from these internal practices.

SPEAKER_01 48:13

Well, furthermore, when I do Tai Chi, right, I'm doing it daily, which I've generally been doing lately, and uh there's more uh non-self-indulgency than self-indulgency because this form of Tai Chi, which is Tai Chi Chuan, Yang style, uh uh Yang style uh Tai Chi, uh this is uh this is very martial uh form of Tai Chi. This involves sparring, this involves holding postures to the point where your knees are burning. Uh, this is this is not self-indulgency whatsoever. This is more like preparing for the Iron Man.

SPEAKER_02 48:50

That's fantastic. That's fantastic. And when you have that in the context, like the real context of yoga, like practicing in the context of Raja Yoga, the whole idea is you're moving from the gross to the subtle, you know. So so like the very base of the mountain is first, it's your ethical behavior. Every tradition has ethical behavior, you know. You'll have better meditations if you're not murdering people, you know, you'll feel a little bit clearer if you're not stealing what other people have. But then the next thing is the body. It's it's like releasing the deep-seated tensions in the body, it's getting energy aligned, getting energy moving inside. And when you do that, according to yoga, that starts to uh open up more subtle awareness. And then you can start using your breath as a tool for concentration and changing your state, and then that cultivates absorption, and then meditation begins, you know, with and and back to back to the beginning where you start with focus and concentration. And when you've arrived, you let your awareness widen and you open to flow and be the witness, and then ultimately you let things be. And you're in that sense of just effortless wakefulness, yes, hypothetically.

SPEAKER_01 50:04

So I think it was in one of your podcasts from uh around the middle of 2024. You were talking about chakras and about someone saying we can talk when your chakras are aligned. Can you tell us about that? Because I only know a little bit about chakras, including that I guess maybe they total seven.

SPEAKER_02 50:23

Yeah, well, there's so many systems around chakras, and uh, you know, there's a little bit of woo-woo around this whole thing. But there is something very interesting, it's a very interesting reflection, you know, that you know, our issues are in our tissues. You know, we well, our our emotions, our thoughts, they live on the inside. You know, you can't think a thought without a corresponding feeling. So in the yogic system, you have these different energy centers where we tend to feel. And so quite often, you know, when when something touches you emotionally, you know, expansive or contracting, you'll feel it in your heart. You know, if there's something you can't say, you'll feel it in your in your throat. And so each of these centers has has a corresponding certain corresponding qualities of human experience. You know, the base chakra is around survival, it's the fear, it's like the the fundamental desire to stay alive, you know. The next chakra has to do with with sexuality, you know, and creativity. You know, the third chakra is around manifesting things when you're it's coming from the gut, it's around manifesting things in the world, and then the heart, and then the throat, and then the the third eye, which is that seed of intuition, you know, and then the crown of the head, which is that sense of of oneness and connection. It's it's not dissimilar from Maslow's hierarchy of needs when you look at it. Wow. We have a profound need to first of all, we have a need to survive, and we have a need to like to propagate, you know, we have a need to to to to like make our way in the world. And then when those first fundamental survival uh issues are handled, then we can move up into the subtlety of heart and relationship and expressing ourselves and and opening to uh higher wisdom, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 52:20

So um how how do you order your uh your daily practice uh right now, your spiritual practice in terms of how much meditation and everything else?

SPEAKER_02 52:31

You know, with this um recent election um and the ensuing um events, I realize um I need to be more plugged in than I ever have. So I've increased my sitting time. So I sit for 40 minutes every morning. Um and y I find if I don't do it right away, it doesn't it it doesn't happen. So I just need I just get up and I go into another room and I sit, just get it, get it down. And then I do some reflective writing every day, just kind of reflecting on my writing. I I recently it's a cliche, but most cliches are true. Um when I just list things I'm grateful for, it really does change my state. You know, it it helps me look for the good, like, oh yeah, that was good, or that was challenging, but this is what I learned from it. So I I I kind of capture that. Um, I'm lucky that I get to swim every day. So swimming is a very kind of meditative uh practice for me. And I try to get outside every day, which is um really important for me. But inside those 40 minutes, I will sometimes do some mindful movements, sometimes I do some breathing techniques, some yogic breathing techniques, if I feel like I need to really concentrate and calm. So I have a lot of variation in terms of what I do inside that 40 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 53:55

Well, I agree with you about starting the practice in the morning because at least for me, if I don't start the Tai Chi, it's one of the first things I do in the morning. I find all sorts of excuses of other things to do, which is one of the reasons why I like to awake long before a court is about to start.

SPEAKER_02 54:11

Yeah. Yeah. I'm lucky too. I wake up really early. So I can, I can, I get going really early.

SPEAKER_01 54:19

Now I know that Tara is friends with Robert Thurman. I was wondering if you are, you know, I I could just l listen to him forever and ever because he's like this this person who it at once is is so cerebral, but is able to just shape it down to uh speak to regular folks about spirituality.

SPEAKER_02 54:37

Yeah, I I unfortunately have not been able to make friends with him, but he is an extraordinary man, just an extraordinary man. And what's so amazing is I'm sure you find this that for for for those who are interested in meditation and different traditions, we are in an unprecedented time of accessibility. You know, there are so many different traditions and teachings and teachers that are out there can be a little bit overwhelming sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 55:08

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 55:08

But there are a lot of wisdom holders, and he's certainly one of them.

SPEAKER_01 55:12

Well, I I like where this humor is added to the spirituality. I remember that when Alan Locos was talking, I guess you know about him, and he he wrote that book about I forget what it's called, In the Flames, Through the Flames or whatever. And the idea that he survived that uh that terrible fire on a on a plane that uh crash landed in Burma or whatever. And he said, uh, and one of the results of my getting burnt was I don't have fingerprints. He said, Imagine the possibilities there. Can't get fingerprinted.

SPEAKER_02 55:43

That's great.

SPEAKER_01 55:45

Uh Jonathan, we have about uh two minutes left to the hour that I said. I would like this to be your opportunity to tell everyone anything you haven't said that you want to say, including to let people know where they can give Donna uh donations to uh your organization, any other organization that's important to you.

SPEAKER_02 56:06

No, I think I'm really struck by something Wayne Dyer asked uh Ramdas. Um, and he said, How should we make our way in the world? And Ramdas said something to the effect of all I can tell you is that when I go in with the question, how can I be of service? Everything and more than I can imagine results. Yes, and that's been such a part of my life. And I think even for those of us in your profession, you know, when we really explore what does it mean to be of service? Um, it's just it it's so interesting how like the equation changes a little bit. So that's something that I've been kind of hanging out with is how can I be of help? Um and trusting what comes out of that.

SPEAKER_01 56:59

Wonderful. And how can people give Donna to you?

SPEAKER_02 57:03

Oh, well, the whole idea of Donna is uh, and I'm very, very touched uh by this personally. This I have been a recipient of lots of teachings that have been offered freely. And um I decided a while back this is the neurotic way to make a living, but uh this feels really right for me. So it's all offered freely, and people are encouraged to to give if they like, as I like to say, to support me in my lavish lifestyle. Uh so on my webpage, I I do have uh some ways of uh making donations and so forth. But the greatest donation is the practice, you know, is to really uh give oneself to the practices that are going to change you from the inside out.

SPEAKER_01 57:46

Excellent. Well, I certainly believe in giving back. And your website once again is jonathanfaust.com or.org.

SPEAKER_02 57:52

Uh JonathanFaust.com. Yeah. And I'm also I've got a I have a presence on YouTube. You know, my talks are all on YouTube and uh podcasts and all that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 58:03

Wonderful. Well, I am so delighted that you join us, Jonathan. And uh, whether or not other people were listening and other people are listening, I've benefited so much from this. Uh, you've heard from Jonathan Faust. I'm still uh trying to control my excitement over this. I don't know how successful I've been. You can find up at JonathanFaust.com, F-O-U-S T.com. This has been John Katz. I'm a criminal defense and DUI defense lawyer, Virginia. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 58:34

Thank you for listening to this week's episode from Beat the Prosecution. This is a regular podcast giving people a leg up against police investigations and prosecutions. Nothing discussed on our media sources, such as our podcast or website, is legal advice. John Katz only provides legal advice to current clients or to individuals who have paid for a consultation. We welcome you contacting us via email at info at beatheprosecution.com by calling our office at 703 383 1100 or texting us at 571 406 7268.