Judge errs in sentencing woman to T.M.

Circuit Judge David Mason erred badly in sentencing a St. Louis woman to a course of Transcendental Meditation for voting fraud, posession of crack cocaine, and possession of a crack pipe. Judge Mason, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “has advocated the relaxation and stress-management program for years”.

I teach meditation to inmates and I’m convinced it’s a beneficial tool in rehabilitation. So what’s the problem? It’s simply that Transcendental Meditation, unlike, say, mindfulness meditation techniques, is a religious activity. While mindfulness meditation involves no more than becoming aware of the sensations of the breath, T.M. involves reciting the names of Hindu deities. There’s no problem of course with an inmate freely choosing to adopt T.M. or any other religious activity, but it’s completely unacceptable—no matter how effective T.M. may be at bringing about beneficial changes in character—to force any inmate to practice a religion. T.M. of course presents itself as a secular religious meditation practice, but in reality it’s no more secular than reciting the Hail Mary or the Lord’s Prayer. And just as no judge should be sentencing criminals to Christian prayer or the celebration of Mass, Judge Mason should not have sentenced Michelle Robinson to practicing T.M.

I would have reservations about any inmate being forced to perform any kind of meditation, but my reservations in the case of mindfulness meditation would be about the coersion and not about the practice itself. Mindfulness meditation and many other, but not all, Buddhist meditation techniques have no “religious” component at all. There is nothing inherently religious about training the mind to focus on the breath or in encouraging the development of feelings of lovingkindness towards others. (In fact it’s debatable whether Buddhism is a religion at all.) But while I wholeheartedly support making various kinds of meditation—even including T.M.—available to inmates, let’s make such practices voluntary and not compulsory.

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