I was a witness in the court case referred to in a recent Boston Globe story. I’d been asked by the Corrections Department to be an “expert witness” in a case where a Buddhist inmate had not been allowed to have a vegan diet and had not been allowed to have a meditation mat and cushion.

I was pleased that the judge upheld the inmate’s right (which he’s been pushing for over a ten year period) to have a vegan diet. Whether, as a Buddhist, one is a vegetarian, vegan, or meat-eater is a question for the individual’s own conscience, but there’s a perfectly valid case for sticking to a vegan diet as an expression of “ahimsa” or non-harm.

I was more surprised with the decision over the cushion.

Prison officials … testified that the cushion and pillow could be used to hide contraband. They also said that they give Buddhist inmates access to such items in group meditation sessions in a classroom once a week. If Yeboah-Sefah wants to meditate more often, they said, he can use his prison-issued pillow and mattress.

I’d testified that an ordinary pillow would be unsuitable for meditation, and although I understand the security concerns I thought that some compromise would have been reached, along the lines of foam blocks or a meditation bench being made available.

I wasn’t surprised to hear the following comment, which is fairly typical of the attitude of many people in the corrections department:

Steve Kenneway, president of the 4,500-member state correction officers’ union, condemned the lawsuit as an example of when inmates “manipulate the system.”

In fact a corrections department staff member started to say exactly the same thing to me while we were waiting to give evidence. I simply pointed out to her that we were forbidden to discuss the case and she thankfully dropped the issue.

From the New York Times:

For the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults are behind bars, according to a new report.

Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million, after three decades of growth that has seen the prison population nearly triple. Another 723,000 people are in local jails.

The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars.

Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 adult Hispanic men is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 adult black men is, too, as is one in nine black men ages 20 to 34.

It’s pretty disturbing reading:

The United States imprisons more people than any other nation in the world. China is second, with 1.5 million people behind bars. The gap is even wider in percentage terms.

Some of this is very pointless and involves nonviolent drug crimes and drink driving:

“We have 5,500 D.W.I offenders in prison,” [Texas State Senator John Whitmire] said, including people caught driving under the influence who had not been in an accident. “They’re in the general population. As serious as drinking and driving is, we should segregate them and give them treatment.”

Of course the article does point out that violent crime rates have been dropping — that’s the bonus of locking up the 1% of the population who have real problems with impulse control — but there have to be better and cheaper alternatives to dealing with people who commit offenses such as possessing drugs.

Glenn Greenwald makes a scathing comparison between how Barack Obama has been publicly forced by the media to disavow Louis Farrakhan’s unsolicited support, and John McCain being given a free pass for welcoming the support of John Hagee, who likes to call the Catholic Church “The Great Whore,” who thinks that the US should invade Iran in order to help bring about Armageddon, who believes that God flooded New Orleans because he was pissed off about a gay parade, and who believes that Muslims have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews. (And that’s not to mention his view on the Harry Potter books, the “whole purpose” of which “is to desensitize readers and introduce them to the occult.” The Harry Potter books are always a good touchstone of religious sanity.)

In a follow-up post Greenwald reports on a conversation he had with Catholic League President, Bill Donohue (of whom I am no fan — the man is himself bigoted in the extreme) in which Donohue claims that McCain is “not going to get away with this with the Catholic community.”

It’ll be interesting to see how much the media pick up on McCain’s support from and of a noted bigot, and how much traction Donohue gets. Bill Donohue is fully capable of making big waves when he wants to.

As part of the ongoing response to 9/11, inmates in Federal Prisons are now finding their access to religious books severely curtailed. The Department of Justice doesn’t want literature advocating violence to get into the hands of prisoners, but the sledgehammer being used to crack that particular nut has been a wholesale clear-out of prison libraries.

Only 150 Buddhist titles have been approved for use in prisons, despite the fact that Buddhism is one of the least likely faiths to advocate terrorism. If prisons happen not to have those 150 titles then inmates’ access to Buddhist titles will be next to impossible. It’s quite possible, for example, that some prisons have ended up with no Buddhist books at all, and that entire libraries, in many cases built up by donations from volunteers, have been entirely discarded.

I’ve been told by the chaplain of a Federal prison that he has no budget for religious titles and that he is constitutionally forbidden from purchasing them. For prisons to obtain the 150 approved titles will thus be a challenge.

It’s doubly a challenge when the list of approved titles is a secret!

There is no information on the Bureau of Prisons’ website (www.bop.gov) on who chose the list of books, what the criteria for inclusion were, or what titles have been approved. When I inquired by telephone I was told that I would have to submit a request under the Freedom of Information Act in order to find out which books are permitted. I was told that making the list publicly available on the website is “being considered.”

I regularly send Buddhist books to prisons and have no idea whether any of the books available to be are considered acceptable.

The heavy-handedness of the government coming up with lists of approved books is disturbingly Orwellian. The fact that the lists are not publicly available creates the double-bind that only charities can supply these books and yet charities are not told what books are allowed.

To send a message to the Director of the Bureau of Prisons, visit this site.

Prisons Purging Books on Faith From Libraries - New York Times

The Bush administration’s kowtowing to the religious right has resulted in Christian groups being paid to proselytize prison inmates, according to this New York Times article.

There’s not much in the way of content there yet, but I just created a new site for people in the FWBO who work in prisons, so that they can share that aspect of their practice with the world.

I tried to go for a design that was rather different from any of the other sites I’ve made. I was striving for minimalism, but that’s, I discovered, is a hard path; minimalism can look very cold and stark, yet a touch of color can propel it into the realms of the garish or kitsch. I’ll probably look for another background image: a line drawing of the 1000-armed Avalokitesvara would be idea if I can find one.

Incidentally, the site looks best on anything but Internet Explorer 6. IE6 is now five or six years old, horribly insecure, and lacking in the most basic features like tabbed browsing and popup blockers that you expect from a modern browser like Firefox, Opera, or Safari (any of which I would use in preference to IE). Do yourself a favor if you haven’t already made the switch.

I was at a retreat in prison yesterday, at which there were some relatively new guys who haven’t been to the regular weekly meditation and Buddhism group, and a handful of guys I’d never seen before.

One of the questions that came up was how vegetarianism fits into Buddhist practice. There was a lot of passion around the subject one way or another, although the discussion was always harmonious and respectful, and even humorous.

One of the volunteers in attendance said that in his view Buddhist ethics involved trying to live compassionately and avoiding causing harm, something I happen to agree with. That’s why I’m a vegetarian and have been since the fall of 1982.

One of the inmates pointed out that the Buddha and the early monastic Sangha ate pretty much whatever was put in their bowls, and so they probably weren’t vegetarians. That’s a bit of a simplification of course, since the vinaya–or monastic code of conduct–allows monks to refuse certain kinds of food and also since monks can educate householders to live more compassionately by not eating meat. After all, the Buddha encouraged lay Buddhists not to kill, cause to kill, or approve of others killing. If Buddhist monks took that teaching seriously there would be a lot more vegetarian Buddhists around. By buying meat you’re encouraging others to kill and financially giving your approval to that activity. But he’s right that the Buddha was not himself vegetarian.

In addition there were a couple of not-very-logical arguments in favor of eating meat. The most absurd (and absurdly common) is the idea that a vegetable and an animal are both living, and since vegetarians are eating vegetables they too are killing. Someone pointed out that vegetables don’t feel pain, and a couple of people were on the verge of disagreeing with that when I broke in. I said that the technical term for someone who couldn’t tell the difference between a carrot’s suffering and a rabbit’s suffering was a psychopath. That got a few laughs, but I really believe it.

The other absurd argument was that if everyone became vegetarian overnight then thousands of people would be put out of business. Well, if you can find a way to make everyone turn vegetarian overnight then let me know! Generally these social changes take decades and industry and farming adjusts accordingly. Everyone becoming vegetarian overnight? Ain’t gonna happen!

It’s very hard for the guys in prison to practice vegetarianism. Some stick at it while others have tried and can’t keep it up. Yet others haven’t even tried. And I don’t blame them. From what I hear the vegetarian food in there is awful. The guys talked about textured soy meatballs they ate that were literally rotten. One guy, who recently stopped being a vegetarian, said that it was like biting into mildew, and there were some murmurs of agreement. And the variety is poor, with just the same four meals over and over again.

One young guy, a sex offender who’s only about 20, said that he had no intention of being vegetarian when he gets out, despite the fact that he considered himself to be a sincere Buddhist. I confess I had the last word in the discussion when I said that the central issue with regard to vegetarianism and Buddhist practice is the extent to which we’re prepared to see own desires for non-essential pleasures (and eating meat is definitely non-essential) as being more important than the sufferings of otehr beings. And the amount of suffering involved in the farming and slaughtering industries is, as I know from experience having worked on farms and in a slaughterhouse, immense. With all due modesty, I wrote about this in a book on vegetarianism and Buddhism that you can find on Amazon if you just search for my name (Bodhipaksa).

An interesting article from the Cibola County Beacon in New Mexico:

Here are some extracts:

Inmates can practice various forms of meditation and courses are taught in acupressure, writer’s meditation, prayer meditation and Qigong (similar to Tai Chi). Heart Mountain volunteers visit once a month to provide guidance in meditation and yoga.

Frank Marquis, who is an inmate from Santa Fe, has been in the meditation program since its inception. “At first I thought of the program as something that would look good to the parole board, but now I don’t care about that,” he said.

Reportedly the pod resulted from a recommendation from the wife of then-Governor Gary Johnson.

The inmates’ day starts with yoga and a verbal check-in, followed sometime during the day with Tai Chi or Yoga in the pod and two hours of quiet time, when loud televisions and radios are prohibited. Occasionally there is a daylong retreat in the prison library where talking is prohibited.

“This meditation program provides us with patience and piece of mind,” [an inmate] said. “You are surrounded by negativity in the general prison population and meditation helps us deal with people we’re forced to live with,” he concluded.

Reportedly the prison authorities were dead against the idea of a meditation pod and the proposal was forced through by the state governor. In the minds of many prison officials, letting inmates gather on the basis of common interests is a recipe for trouble, and it can be hard for inmates who want to meditate together to gather.

Additionally, the idea of prison as punishment rather than rehabilitation is common amongst prison staff and administrators, and allowing inmates to improve their living circumstances can be seen as going against the punishment ethos.

However, meditation has been shown to reduce inmate aggression and promote cooperation, and hopefully prison administrators will make it easier in future for inmates to take up this valuable and transformative practice.

The nonprofit that I set up and that I run, Wildmind, has produced an audiocassette of guided meditations that are available free of charge to inmates.

Most prisons don’t allow CD’s to be used by inmates for fear that they will be used as weapons, and often place restrictions on the kinds of cassettes that they can use. Generally, suitable cassettes have to be prerecorded (in case they contain escape instructions or the like), and the cases must be transparent (so that inmates can’t hide things in them), and free from screws (I’m not entirely sure what the problem with 1/10 inch screws is, but I’m sure that some creative inmates have managed to use them for nefarious purposes in the past). Wildmind’s cassettes meet those criteria.

As mentioned, the cassettes are available free of charge to any inmate who requests one, or to prison volunteers or chaplains. Any interested inmate, chaplain, or prison volunteer should write to:

Wildmind
177 Main Street
Newmarket NH 03857

The cassettes contain two guided meditations (led by me): the mindfulness of breathing and development of lovingkindness practices. Both of these are suitable for people of any religious persuasion.

If you want to send a cassette to an inmate, we make them available at a small charge. This is in effect a form of fundraising to help pay for some of the costs of production and shipping. The cassettes are available on Wildmind’s Meditation Supplies Store.

Tomorrow I head up to Concord, NH, to meet the group of Buddhist inmates I’ve been working with for about two years now. They really are a great bunch of guys, with a very sincere approach to their practice.

Here’s a story:

Kenny is a funny guy. Funny ha ha. He looks like Robin Williams and if you put him on a stage he’d be just as entertaining. One day he’s walking across the prison yard. It’s been raining and there are worms all over the paths.

Kenny’s taking this odd route, weaving along the path, taking long steps and short steps, and another inmate who happens to be passing says, “What the hell are you doing, man?” Kenny tells him that he’s trying to avoid stepping on worms. Now there are a lot of the inmates in this prison who like to eat worms, and that’s taken as normal behavior by many of the people in there, but trying not to step on worms really throws this inmate.

“So why the **** are you doing that?” he asks Kenny. Kenny just looks at him and says, “Well, can you make a worm?”

Over the last two years I’ve seen these guys take their practice very seriously, really trying to practice nonharm in very difficult circumstances, really coming to grips with their mental states and taking responsibility for themselves, really supporting each other. When I first went into this prison — my first time behind the walls — I expected an atmosphere of barely-restrained violence. But what I found was a bunch of intelligent, friendly, respectful, and very sincere Buddhist practitioners. This is in no small part thanks to my friend, Dave Carr, who started the group many years ago.

Of course I can’t and don’t overlook the fact that these guys have killed people, raped, and even sexually abused children. There was a time when I would have simply labeled people who had committed those kinds of crimes as “animals” and suggested throwing away the key. Now I realize that you can’t judge someone by the worst thing that he has done. Inmates are capable of change. People who have done evil things are just like you and me in many ways. Which one of us hasn’t thought of harming — really harming — another person, or of stealing, or doing some other criminal act? The difference between those inside and those outside the walls is less than you might think.