Buddhist Teachings from Prison

 

 

I recently received another remarkable letter from a man I call “Jonathan” who has been corresponding with me from prison for about a year and a half now. He is 49 years old, and has thus far served ten years in prison.  He has thirteen more years to serve before release.  His circumstances are extreme compared to what most of us have to deal with, but I think there is much we can learn from how he has chosen to use Buddhist teachings to deal with adversity.  A few days ago, he led a discussion of his Buddhist sangha in prison that began with a reading of one of my previous blogs.  Here are some excerpts from what he wrote in his letter about the session.

"I shared your last blog with my Buddhist group yesterday; it was well received. I thought you might be interested in the discussion we had. Here are my notes from the talk.

It's said that the teachings of the Buddhist Eightfold path are a tool like a raft to get across a river. Once on the other side it is no longer needed because it has changed us profoundly and it can be left behind.

When I read this blog post to my sangha, I thought about the tools I developed to survive prison when I first started. Tools I no longer consciously use. I "left them behind." But not because I didn't need them anymore.  I internalized them to the point they became automatic. They had simply become my natural way of engaging life.  They had become a part of me. [Emphasis added] 

I talked about some other tools I have used.

In reading from the blog post, I really liked the line, "we are all in this together, we're all we've got.”  I still say this all the time. Our families do what they can, when they can, but they are not here every day. And they don't really know what it's like to be here. They may have some ideas, but they can't "know". The Corrections Officers are too scared to be helpful--scared that we will take advantage of them, scared we will hurt them, scared if we become fully human in their eyes they wouldn't be able to continue do this kind of work. So the prisoners who live here are really all we really have, and we need to work together."

In reading Jonathan’s words, I am reminded of something a teacher and friend named Jim said to me years ago.  It is not unusual for teachers to complain to each other about their students’ lack of intelligence or effort—something that I used to do regularly.  But Jim said to me that, instead of complaining about our students being unintelligent or lazy, we can recognize that “The students that we have are the students who are there.”  If we are teachers, we need to find a way to teach the students who are there something of real value that will make their lives better and help them contribute something positive to the world at large.  I knew right away that he was right, and it totally changed my attitude—and made me a better teacher. 

We complain greatly about our elected political leaders.  I wonder if the same attitude might be helpful here as well.

I am also reminded of a story about Gloria Steinem.  Steinem was giving a talk to students at a university and an 18 year-old student who was dazzled by the talk approached Steinem afterward and said she was absolutely star struck by Gloria’s presence.  Steinem turned and said to her with great kindness, “There are no stars, honey.  It’s just us.”  The truth expressed in this story has stuck with me for many years.  On another occasion she also said in the same vein “The future depends entirely on what each of us does every day.”

From Jonathan’s letter again…

"I didn't want to hate everyone I was around and their hateful, hurtful, behavior towards me.  But then I had the insight that their behavior actually had nothing to do with me. If they knew me, they wouldn't treat me that way. So I made some tools to help me, all of them borrowed, stolen, or appropriated heavily from the dharma books I was reading.

Tool #1:  I silently wished for the person who hurt me "to be safe and happy."  People who feel truly safe and happy don't tend to hurt others.

Tool #2: I imagined the person who has hurt me as once having been a baby. It's hard to hate a baby, and whatever went awry it was in their lives that makes them "this way," they are still worthy of unconditional love.

Tool #3: I watched them, the ones who hurt me. I saw them act with kindness towards their friends; checking in with someone having a bad day, helping an old man after a major heart operation. Those who hurt me possessed the skills to be good friends. They just struggled to apply that to everyone, and to see prisoners as people just like themselves.  But the capacity to do this was "in there."  My hate for them was not going to help it come out.

Tool #4: "Little black book."  I took a small address book and wrote in it the Buddhist teachings that have been the most useful to me.  I would read this when my mind was screaming or when I wanted to lash out. I carried it everywhere I went for years.

This blog, for me, was a good reminder that difficult people will always be present (sometimes I'm the difficult person to myself). It is important to me to find a tool to use so that hate doesn't grow, and use it until it becomes second nature for me.  And I continually look for new tools to use to help me. 

Toward the end of our discussion, we talked about what it means to have compassion.  We came to the conclusion that compassion does not mean that you have to hug everyone, and that walking away or not screaming at someone is a compassionate act.  Walking away is not apathy, it is choosing nonaction.  Some people thought that offering compassion to those who are abusive would make one look weak, after looking at this deeply we decided this was not correct. The balance is not letting yourself be taken advantage of but at the same time offering well-being to help soften those who have become hardened by life. This is strength, not weakness.

We also talked about the fact that prison, while not fun, is a good place to put Buddhist ideals into practice because of the lack of distractions and escapes. Some felt like they would never have been able to practice Buddhism if not for prison (that one made me sad)."

                This last paragraph really grabbed my attention.  None of us wants to go to prison to enhance the effectiveness of Buddhist practices, but we definitely can, through mindfulness, notice when the impulse to distract ourselves from our lives arises and then choose not to act on it.  And each time we do this makes it easier to choose not to go there in the future.  Eventually, as Jonathan said, “saying no” to distracting ourselves from our lives becomes “internalized to the point that it becomes automatic and part of our natural way of engaging life.”  There is a real feeling of freedom and ease.

 

 

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