crossing boundaries

I sat down recently with Charlie Halpern at a sunny Bay Area cafe. Having just read his memoir in preparation for the meeting, I realized how intimate this meeting suddenly felt and how different he seemed to me now that the layers of his life had been uncovered in the book. I also felt a new bond with him since I now knew that we shared a passion and a commitment to bringing the internal practice of wisdom to the work of solving our society's most pressing problems.

In the foreword to Halpern's new book, Making Waves and Riding the Currents (Berrett-Koehler: 2008), Robert Reich points out that Halpern's personal journey "illuminates and integrates two overarching social movements that have occupied what is commonly referred to as "the Left" over the last forty years. One has focused on the potential for a more just society and the world...The other, by contrast, has looked inward. It has focused on the potential within every person for a full and meaningful life. These two overarching movements --one exterior and the other interior, if you will -- have evolved separately...By findging the means of weaving the movements together in his own life, Halpern invites you to do the same in yours..."

Integrating these two pieces is countercultural for each of these movements. Getting unstuck in addressing our most pressing problems requires this integration.

Halpern tells his own story through memoir, which is probably the best way someone trying to illustrate the importance of what he calls "cultivating the practice of wisdom" could. It is a story of changing from the inside out -- from beating the doors down as a public interest lawyer convinced of the rightness of his position in the face of abuses of power and injustice, to someone who thinks that solution is only partial -- that change is more likely to come from within, which entails having compassion even for your opponent, listening rather than debating, and opening your mind to unlikely potentials for new forms of understanding with your opponent.

There are several wonderful scenes in the book that illustrate Halpern's struggle to integrate the world of law and social justice with that of meditation, yoga and other techniques for gaining inner wisdom.

Halpern has been a pioneer in trying to bring contemplative practices into the world of advocacy, law, medicine and even academia. First, when he was president of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, he created a funding program for integrating contemplative practice with social change efforts. Now he is the chairman of the board of the Center for Contemplative Mind and Society which has developed a number of programs and fellowships to do the same www.contemplativemind.org

Getting unstuck from the inside out --using ancient and new wisdom practices -- and bringing the cultivation of wisdom to the work of social problem solving is one of the most important trends of our time. How many others like Charlie Halpern are there who embody this trend?