On Senator Cory Booker, Mindful Endurance Warrior

Holding Our Seats (And Podiums) Against The Oligarchy

Once, when I was younger and full of energy, I sat and meditated for 24 straight hours for a fundraiser. We were sitting in the storefront windows of abc carpet and home in New York City, as a fundraiser for the Interdependence Project. We were raising money for the organization, and raising awareness about mindfulness practice in the city. Some participants sat for 4-hour shifts. A few of us decided to sit for the entire 24-hour stretch, starting on a Friday evening, abiding as best we could through the wee hours of night (and a few delightful 4am knocks on the store glass from surprised drunken pedestrians), through sunrise and morning and afternoon, ending on a very lively Saturday evening in NYC. It was 24 hours of public mindfulness. No words. Sitting down. Not having to stand up unless I needed a brief stretch or a bathroom break. I certainly had no speeches to make about American Democracy. It was…hard. A fun test of mental endurance and presence for a good cause. It was definitely the least boring meditation session of my life. I know, from the memory of that experience, that what Senator Cory Booker did over the last few days as he stood and spoke for a record-breaking 25-hour filibuster on the Senate floor—just to help us all regain our confidence in our collective strength—is nothing short of incredible.

There are a few relevant details here about the Senior Senator from New Jersey. He is a meditator. He has advocated his mindfulness practice on many occasions. According to one friend who has met him, “he is the kindest person I have ever met, almost maddeningly so.” One time when he was the mayor of Newark, he helped save a freezing dog because he saw a random tweet complaining about a dog left out in the cold. I would like to think that his meditation practice was somehow related to a truly incredible feat of endurance that he performed over the past few days. Perhaps more important than any of this, he broke the record for the longest filibuster speech in Senate history that had been previously held by Strom Thurmond (a historically long-lived Senator known for his defense and advocacy of racist institutions) in opposition to The Civil Rights Act of 1957, a speech designed to stop people like Cory Booker from ever becoming an elected official.

The endurance required to do what Senator Booker did is described in Mahayana Buddhism through the practice of Virya, which is alternately translated as “Exertion,” “Energy,” Or “Joyous Effort.” The idea is that when the Bodhisattva stands firm for the liberation of all beings, it produces an energy source that egoic actions cannot match, and this energy source makes our work to benefit beings fun, rather than burning us out. The joy that comes from seeing our interdependence—and acting with agency on behalf of that truth—becomes your fuel, like solar power. If you watch clips from Senator Booker speech about 20 hours in, you can see just such energy and joy in the righteous effort he is undertaking. Truly, to be spitting this much fire 20 hours into your effort can only happen if you are plugged into something beyond the unsustainable energy of self-centeredness.

Predictably, Senator Booker’s act of brave warriorship went totally viral on a day where special election results continued to move away from the Trump regime by 15-20 points from what happened just four months ago in November 2024. Please forgive my lack of imagination for describing what happened yesterday in lazy Star Wars metaphors, but it felt like a shift in “The Force.” A few pundits said they didn’t see how Booker’s 25-hour speech would shift policy. But like Senator Schumer’s misunderstanding of the psychological energetics that make a frail and insecure man named Donald Trump seem powerful, these pundits seem to misunderstand what our politics have become: not a set of backroom compromises and strategies over minor policy changes, but instead a sort of battle of spiritual energetics, a battle of Virya versus Egocentricity.

What makes the oligarchic forces of Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Thiel and Trump (he comes last in this pecking order because what is happening has little to do with him as an individual) so powerful is not that they are geniuses. These last few months have shown us that ours is definitely not the timeline of evil geniuses. The words I would use to describe their intellectual capabilities are not right speech, so I shall refrain. What the oligarchs have at their advantage is that they are bold and unyielding. Singleminded aims do tend to bare great fruit. Whatever psychological ground is yielded to them—every inch of spiritual terrain that we let them have—they have consumed. They look like toddler Pac-Men saying “gimme gimme” as they gobble up our communal institutions, high on ketamine and whatever else they’re taking. Out of their unyielding belief in their own egos, they will try to make us live unaffordable lives in their techbro dystopia, a dark world straight out of Ready Player One. The reason that Trump was able to break every American institution over the last 10 years is his narcissistic personality disorder makes it conveniently impossible for him to compromise his quest for power, and every last institution—Media, law, the DNC, and corporate America—has therefore yielded to him like they were all made of stale styrofoam peanuts.

In an era where corporate media and oligarchic social media have rendered facts as interesting tidbits which you are allowed to either accept or not, politics is not about information so much as it is about the demonstration of one’s spiritual energetics. Our politics are about showing that you stand for something, that you are willing to “hold your seat,” to use the language of mindfulness meditation. People want to know that you have conviction, first and foremost. Only after they discover that you truly believe in something will they contemplate whether or not they also believe in what you’re selling. The force of conviction is the spiritual energetic of our time, and maybe of all time. This is why Chuck Schumer’s approach is so deeply, utterly uncompelling, and why AOC and her Tio Bernie break attendance records at their rallies in states they don’t even represent. This is why Senator Booker won our hearts over a two-day stretch. He demonstrated what it looks like when you do not yield an inch to the oligarchy, to men who act like toddlers banging their feet loudly on metal slides, refusing to share the common playgrounds of this world. Whatever his flaws, Cory Booker is definitely not made out of styrofoam. For 25 straight hours, he was a deeply rooted tree, planted at the people’s podium, holding his seat. Count me as inspired. And as a seasoned meditator, count me as deeply, deeply impressed.

Deep bows to the Good Senator from Dirty Jerz. May all beings be free.

Don’t forget, the weekly meditation group (8-9AM ET on Thursday mornings) starts tomorrow, April 3, 2025. All you have to do is become a paid subscriber of this Substack and you’ll get the weekly zoom invite via email every Wednesday afternoon. See you tomorrow morning, Bodhisattva warriors. :)

(photos of the 24-hour meditation marathon are from Mark Rifkin at twi-ny.com)