 My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. Today we are going to transcend the sea of law to learn about meditation and the law. My guest is Hawaii Attorney Barry Sullivan. Barry has been recognized as a Hawaii Super and one of Hawaii's best lawyers in real estate law, corporate law, and commercial litigation. There's a lot of stress in law and what we're going to discuss today may seem like something far across the sea from the profession of law. Besides practicing law, Barry practices meditation and they'll be the focus of our discussion. What is meditation? How does meditation and the law coexist? What can we learn from the intersection of meditation and the law? Barry, welcome. Good to see you. Nice to see you, Mark. Thanks for having me on the show today. I've been a lawyer for over 40 years. I know a little bit about meditation, but before we get into that, tell me about your practice of law. Tell me a little bit about what you do, what type of law you practice. Sure. What's that about? So I started practicing law. I first came out in 1991. I came here directly after law school and for the last 27 plus years I've been doing a combination of things. A lot of large real estate transactions, so everything from acquisitions, land use, so a lot of hotels, resort communities, and the corporate structures that go hand in hand with that. Putting it all together? Putting it all together and a lot of it is financing based, so getting things financed and built and then on the back end when things don't go well, we get involved in the litigation side. Substantial transactions in real estate, getting everybody together, getting the money, hopefully it'll work, hopefully it runs well, and then sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you have to get in and fight, right? Sometimes you gotta fight, but I think the big reward is you're putting together a pretty complicated meal. A lot of hands touching the food, a lot of ingredients, and for me the joy is kind of writing that process and getting to a successful outcome. And then fortunately I haven't had one of my deals go into litigation, but when others in similar types of situations, me and my partners have been involved on the litigation side and trying to undo or redo transactions that haven't worked out particularly well. In those deals, it's been my experience in law that there's some stress involved in trying to work some of those deals out to make them happen when they fall apart. There is the profession of law and the living with stress go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other. All right, so I want to go off from that stressful part of your life and I've learned that you do a lot of meditation and that you're into that. What is meditation? What type of things are you into? What does it mean? How did you get involved in it? So tell me. What is meditation? Let's start then. So meditation is something that you do. So the key thing, it's not something you read about. It's not something somebody tells you about. You either are doing it or you're not. And so to me it's very much like the practice of law, the practice of meditation. You have to be doing it and you're building upon kind of the instruction manual, whether it's in a book or whether it's with a teacher or an instructor. And you're incorporating what they're telling you about the lessons from their own practice and from whatever text or history there is. But you're really making it personal and without personal meditation there is no meditation. It is different from watching somebody repair your washer or your dryer. This is you taking apart the control center, getting out the screwdriver, doing all the work yourself. So first and foremost, meditation is your own toolkit that you're developing that you're using. And then the other part is the mental habits. And so those include some of it is concentration, which is not the focus of meditation, but it is an aspect of meditation. And the real nub to me is attention. And being able to bring your attention and recognize the arising within your own body of feelings and thoughts and sensations. So I often analogize it to when you get into a tussle with somebody. You don't immediately clench your hand into a fist. There are lots of things that happened before then. And probably the first thing that happened is you had a negative reaction to something somebody said or did. And so if you are aware of that first nub, that first arising in your mind and as you feel it, pulsate throughout your body, then when you become aware of it, you now have the ability of letting it go. And from that, you can now be whether you want to call it more level headed or more compassionate. But what happens is you're less quick to anger for sure. And you bring a bit of equanimity and everybody's different, right? So some people start very saintly and other people like me are a little bit on the other end of the spectrum. But the process, I think, is very helpful to most to try it. So, you know, it was quite interesting. You say it's kind of like the practice of law and that kind of clicked with me a bit. And you said it's personal and it's not just passive either. It's something that is ongoing. That's what I hear you saying. And you're actually doing a process and it's becoming more like a profession in a funny way. Yeah, it's so to me, you know, people, you know, my daughters, I have a 9 and 11 year old. They asked me, you know, what do you do? And I say, well, you know, lawyers help people. We help people with their problem. And so you take, you know, we've got books on our shelf of statutes. We have books of cases. The whole idea of somebody comes in, you are taking that background and you're taking your own experience. And now you're putting forward your mental effort and you're solving somebody's problem. It's a very active process and it's very personal. So if you're not doing it, it's not getting done. The practice of law doesn't exist in a textbook on a shelf. That's really cool. I really like the way that you've told me about the meditation and the law. I never thought of it as being similar. Yeah. I thought they were miles apart, frankly. Yeah, no. Again, I started active meditation practice partly in response to being a lawyer and the stress of it. And I found after, you know, banging my head against the wall of it that there actually is a great deal of similarity between the two. And rather than trying to just emulate something that took place a hundred years ago or 2,000 years ago, you need to internalize it and make it your own. And bring your best effort to it. Okay. So you've kind of given us a philosophical background of meditation or an understanding of what it needs in your mind. But what do you do? What are the, you know, for someone that's viewing, someone doing meditation, what are they seeing? So meditation is a practice that many religious traditions have had, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Vedic, Hindu. So there is a commonality. There was meditation practice in Greek literature. And so sitting meditation is one form of meditation. And so sitting meditation is a lot of the practice I do, which is the form of Zen Buddhism, Zen practice. And the term Zazen, which is the most regular practice, it just means sitting meditation. So Zen is a transliteration from a Chinese term, which is a transliteration from a Sanskrit term, which essentially is to meditate in Zazen as sitting meditation. So you're sitting on a cushion. Your legs are folded. Your hands are in your lap. And your body is essentially like somebody is holding a coat hanger through your head. And so you're upright. Your lungs are not compressed. Your organs are not compressed. But it's not like you're in the military and about to salute a senior officer. There's a relaxation to it. I'm trying to do this as you're talking, by the way. And so as we do it, and so you have your hands in your lap. And some people meditate with their eyes open. Other people meditate with their eyes closed. Some people meditate facing the walls. Some people face away. I do both. And I just let my eyelids droop. And I unfocus my gaze. And I bring my attention to, first and foremost, the act of breathing. And breathing is a nice anchor because it is something you can consciously control. You can breathe quickly or slowly, up to a point. But it will happen whether you think about it or not. So when you're lying to bed and sleep, of course you're breathing. And so what you're doing is letting your attention fall onto your breath. And you're feeling the breath and the sensation rising and falling. And then a common technique is to breathe in with a number and breathe out. So breathing in with one, breathing out with two, feeling the gap in between. And then if you get to ten, and that's a big if, then you just start at one again. Because there is no prize for keeping your attention until you get to a thousand. And that just creates a whole different motivation where it becomes something where you're trying to get the fastest time or trying to get the best grade. And there's no one else. You're it. And so you're just bringing your attention and the beauty of it. And the challenge of it is when you recognize your attention has slipped away. And sometimes you can recognize it very quickly. And other times you realize you've been daydreaming for two minutes. It's just letting it go, literally turning a switch, just letting it go and bringing your attention back. So there's a physical and a mental part of it kind of combined, I hear you say? Yeah, very much so. So you're not focused on the act of breathing. What you're doing is using the natural act of breathing as an anchor for your attention. And you can then basically fall into it is how it physically feels to me. You just kind of fall into it. And I've done retreats lengthy where you're meditating 15 hours a day for more than a week. And the first time you do it you think there's no way after 30 minutes you're like there's no way I can do this. And then you find that you get better at it. You get your mind is much more receptive to it. But it's the same technique no matter where you are on the spectrum. Whether you're a beginner, whether you've been doing it for 10 years or 30 years. But it's that ability to let go of the passing emotion, the thought, the concern that comes up. Those are always going to come up. You're not trying to suppress them. It's just when they come up you recognize them. And the earlier you recognize them the easier they are to let go. How long have you been doing this? How long have you been? I started with texts and cassette tapes back in the day back in college. Back when I was 19, 20 years old. What was the motivation at that point? I would say there was a religious aspect to it. I had always had just an interest in it and a strong interest in poetry which led me to haiku and other forms of Japanese and Chinese poetry. And it just seemed to connect with me in a way that led into meditation. And then one of the reasons I came to Hawaii was for the Zen Buddhist teacher here, Robert Aitken. Who started a group here in Hawaii that's now worldwide. And so that was the connection. And then here practicing with the teacher at, you know, with the community. It just makes it easier. There's nothing, there's no secret. The culture of Hawaii, it helps. The culture of Hawaii is great. If you're a Buddhist in Hawaii or you practice yoga or you practice vipassana meditation or other types of meditation, Hawaii is just great. And I think part of it is just what I know of the history of Hawaiian culture. And not just their openness and acceptance. But the fact that if you, you know, I love Hawaiian music. And there is a patience to Hawaiian music that I think is fairly unique. And I want to ask you a little bit more about that after our break about Hawaiian culture and letting go. I really want to learn about letting go and how that applies to being a lawyer. We're going to take a short break right now. We'll be back and let go after that. Sounds good. Thank you very much. Aloha and Mabuhay. My name is Amy Ortega Anderson, inviting you to join us every Tuesday here on Pinoy Power Hawaii. With Think Tech Hawaii, we come to your home at 12 noon every Tuesday. We invite you to listen, watch for our mission of empowerment. We aim to enrich and lighten, educate, entertain, and we hope to empower. Again, maraming, salamat po, Mabuhay, and Aloha. Hi, I'm Rusty Komori, host of Beyond the Lines on Think Tech Hawaii. My show is based on my book also titled Beyond the Lines. And it's about creating a superior culture of excellence, leadership, and finding greatness. I interview guests who are successful in business, sports, and life, which is sure to inspire you in finding your greatness. Join me every Monday as we go Beyond the Lines at 11 a.m. Aloha. Welcome back. I'm Mark Shklav, host of Law Across the Sea on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm here with Barry Sullivan, who is a lawyer who practices stressful law in Hawaii, but also practices meditation. And I've learned quite a bit from our talk so far, Barry. You know, the fact that you equate the practice of law and the practice of meditation is very interesting to me. I never thought of it in those terms. You also talked about letting go. And you talked about how you got maybe deeper into meditation because of the practice of law. Could you tell me a little bit about how the law affected your meditation and what it means to let it go? Two different questions, but please. With the practice of law, we were talking about how it's something that you're doing at a particular time. And so that is very much meditation. So some people come to meditation and they say, oh, I'm going to have this fatific or religious vision, or I'm going to have this great realization experience, and everything is going to be better from there on out. And after you do it for a while, you realize that it is like the practice of law because when you're done with one case, you put that on the shelf and you have the tools that you develop, and then you move on to the next one. And what you did for that one may or may not work for the next one. And the person you were for that may or may not be the person you need to be for the next problem. And so that's what I really think is the parallel and the commonality between the practice and one joke about being a lawyer is that we have to keep practicing because we never get it right. Right, yeah. The idea is it's not the aspiration for this great one-time, super cool, holy experience or feeling of complete calm and dispassion. But it's something that you bring to all of your life. I think hopefully I'm a little better around the house, a little better with my partners, a little better with my associates and clients. And so it is just something that is constantly evolving, constantly refining and just goes to me hand in hand with what we do as lawyers. And it's a practice. I hear you saying that. So it's something that even though the circumstances may change, the method or how you live personally or practice remains the same. You try to continue to practice the same type of meditation or law depending on what situation you're in as you go through life. And you find that as a lawyer you can just, you can become fully absorbed in what you're doing. The whole afternoon will pass and yet you have not put any conscious effort into keeping your attention there because it's just arrested there the whole time. And that's a great feeling because usually you're very productive and you get a good result, you can provide good advice. And so I think that's part of the inner play is you're bringing what meditation does and you're bringing it into your life. And then you also recognize that meditation does not replace your life. It doesn't replace the ethical mores that I was raised with and that is infused through our culture. It doesn't replace the guidance we get from the law, both as it's practiced here in Hawaii and in the United States and in the world. And so you're constantly mashing the two together and they're rocks and slowly grinding each other down and hopefully we get a little better at dealing with it and do a little better for our clients in our society. And is that what the letting it go is? Is that part of that? And the stress you get in law, can you let it go through the meditation? Is that what I'm hearing? So the letting the go is another benefit of it. I was talking more about what you're able to bring to the practice of the law but one thing you are able to do is when something doesn't go your way which as we know, you go to trial and there's a winner and a loser generally. And so if you're on the downside, you got to be able to let go of those emotions. You got to let go of the, you know, I really don't like the word attachment but there's really not a better word that I found. You got to let go of that mental hook that's tied up in what happened. You want to embody the lessons you learned from it but you need to be able to bring yourself when you get home. You don't want to bring the bad outcome to your children. You don't want to bring it to your spouse, your partner. You definitely don't want to bring it to your next class. It's hard when you're a practicing lawyer to let go sometimes. It is. You know, I've been fortunate enough to do some large transactions and you'll finish a deal that's very complicated and the money is gigantic. I mean, it's, you know, it's billions of dollars. And then I'll finish on a Friday and the client is super excited. They don't have to go through this for another five years. I then pick up the next problem on Monday. And so the nature of what lawyers do is we are problem solvers. So we are always getting people in crisis and conflict and we just have to figure out a way. And we take it on. We take it on. We do. Don't we? And it's hard not to sleep with it. It's hard not to take it with you wherever you go. So the meditation has helped you? Definitely. It is. You know, I just finished a three week arbitration, you know, 8.30 in the morning until 5.30 at night, sometimes on Saturdays. And if that had happened 25 years ago, which it had, I remember never being able to let go of it. And now there's just a feeling of liberation that it makes you a better lawyer because you're bringing fresh ideas and fresh energy the very next morning rather than carrying with you kind of, you know, the issues that preceded the day before. Okay. So the letting go is a mental state that you bring by doing this exercise, if you will. I may not be using the right words, but and is there anything else that you do? I mean, is there anything affirmative that you do? I mean, to me it seems like, yes, you're practicing an affirmative exercise. Yes. But do you just keep that within yourself or do you go out and do something else along with it? There are meta meditations and other meditations that you are basically doing affirmations and doing, you know, loving kindness and things of that nature, which I have done from time to time in the past. Helping people, is that what you mean? Yeah, you're actually inculcating in yourself these feelings of genuine empathy and concern for the well-being of others and to improve their lives. And so the idea is by, you know, doing that affirmation and incorporating it, you will then embody it outside of sitting down and you're meditating all the time. So whether you're driving a car, whether you're talking to somebody on the phone, when you can give your full attention to somebody, that's a key aspect of meditation is just to be there and not to think about what you're going to say next and not to think about the problem that or not to be looking at your phone when you're talking to your spouse. That's, I think, one of the great benefits. Well, let me ask you this. Do you meditate when you're sitting in court and waiting for a hearing or even during a hearing? What happens? It's a very different meditation. I'm meditating by paying attention. So what I'm doing is I'm paying attention to what's going on. And one thing that people misunderstand about meditation is that when you're on the cushion, you're creating an environment to help develop a skill set. But the skill set needs to be used in your daily life, in your real activities. And so when you're meditating in the courthouse, you're listening to the judge, you're watching the jurors, you're listening to the attorney on the other side. So that is the meditation because the gap between that action and your perception narrows and you have a clearer take on things. Are you consciously doing the breathing at the time when you're in court? Only in the breaks. Only in the breaks. And I only do that just as a reminder. Just to, you know, like you take one or two breaths and that just allows you to kind of let things go. Okay, now we're going to move on to act number two. They have an intermission in a play and part of it is just to let you digest what took place and look forward. And that, I think, in our increasingly rushed world and your question comes up in conversation somebody's immediately on Google, unfortunately that's sometimes me. But the idea is just to give a moment and just, okay, now that that issue is decided, give a moment and then you can bring your attention a little bit better to the next. Okay, and you were talking about, what I kind of sense is like pro bono work in a way. I mean, you were talking about putting other people's minds in your own or thinking of what other people are doing and maybe showing some goodness. I noticed that you did some meditation with some prisoners. Is that what you were talking about? I did, so there's a group of volunteers that started maybe 30 years ago and we've been volunteering and people take turns at both Halava, the medium security correctional facility and also the federal detention center. And you just go in and you are teaching meditation and practicing with inmates. And these are people who generally things went pretty wrong. They are only there because something went wrong and a lot of it and we've had some inmates that have come out and maintained a practice and I think really have shown the benefit of it. And there are very active programs all over the country in different traditions and I think the results are that if you could just take a moment and gather yourself without having to be reminded of the chances of you making that really bad decision and that split second, it's going to go way down. And that's what we try to focus on. And the same thing with the practice of law then. It's the practice of life really, isn't that what we're talking about? Yeah, completely and there's two sides. That's the one thing the law always reminds you is that even though you think your client is right or you think your idea is right you always have to recognize that's probably not 100% true. Even on your best day. And just to listen to the other side a little more. Barry, that's good advice for all of us. I appreciate you coming and telling us about it and if lawyers that watch this show are interested can they contact you and learn where to go for mediation? I mean meditation? Absolutely, meditation. Meditation. They can contact me anytime. Alright Barry, thank you very much for being my guest today. Aloha. Thank you. We will be back in two weeks with another Law Across the Sea program. Aloha everybody.