Meditation and Buddhism in prison

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.

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