First Time In A Prison
I felt nervous and excited before visiting the prison for the first time. Prisons were something I knew only from T.V or the movies. For me they were dark dank worlds filled with dark dank people.
The first prisoners I saw as I entered the prison were at work - wheeling laden wheelbarrows or laying bricks, and others were just wandering aimlessly around the grounds with cigarettes dangling from their mouths.
I looked around me with the wide eyes of a child. People are in here for years. People who robbed, raped, and killed. People driven to desperation. But people.
I am here to introduce meditation to prisoners. We sit in a circle - me and about ten uniformed prisoners who stare at me expectantly.
Giving A Class In Meditation
I begin explaining what meditation is about and get stuck. My goodness! What is meditation about?
"We try to come back to the present moment…" Suddenly the teachings I have been dedicated to for years appear meaningless. What's the point of coming back to a present moment that confronts you with this ugly concrete loveless scenery?!
But I don’t give up. "Meditation can teach us how to approach life in a way that will free us from suffering…the breath is our anchor. We just keep coming back to our breath."
I instruct the prisoners to sit quietly for three minutes coming back to the breath whenever the mind wanders off.
Though three minutes is a really short time for meditation, for these men, to whom the idea of sitting quietly and just watching the breath is radically novel, three minutes appear to last a life time.
Dealing With Troubles
When I ring the bell the group heaves a collective sigh. "It's sooo hard!!!" one of them grunts and another says: "What good is it! Even if I manage to be with my breath for a second or two, my troubles don't go away!!!"
I am at loss for words. I've been going through a difficult time and it is true - neither my troubles nor his are going to go away just because we manage to observe our breath for a few moments. So what is it we are we trying to do?
Teaching meditation in prison forces me to look deeply at myself. I can't make my troubles go away but I can change my relationship to them. I can become aware of the contracted box I place myself in when I over identify with feelings and thoughts.
I can't make my troubles go away, but by being willing to fully meet them and the unpleasant sensations they bring up, something softens and opens within me, awakening my awareness not only to the breath of my body but to that Divine spirit that breathes through me.
Week after week the prisoners and I practice together, meeting our pain, discomfort and doubts.
Years of practice have taught me that thoughts have no real substance; I am not my mind and yet even after 15 years of meditation it often still requires will power and determination to remember that existence is so much wider and grander then the niggling little thoughts I call 'mine'.
How do I explain such subtleties to these men, who till we met had never before closed their eyes for anything other then sleep?
Transformation
Although it seemed at times a hopeless task… the dharma runs deep. Week after week as we sit together practicing simple connection to body and breath, it appears that something is happening.
E, a stocky man with a bald head, the one who initially retorted that "my troubles don't go away just because I watch my breath!" becomes an enthusiastic student.
"It really calms me down!" he tells the others. “I meditate while working and it calms me down. I work in the bakery and I used to hate it. I got all hot and angry. But now I meditate. I feel the sensations of the heat and I don't mind so much!"
E. tries to explain what meditation is to a new man in the group. "You have to keep coming back to yourself!" he says. "It's difficult at the beginning. The first time I couldn't sit even a second. Now it's much easier and it's unbelievable how it calms me down!"
I look at him. A knot in my heart quivers and unravels. If this man, this prisoner, can change his relationship to the circumstances of his life…then surely we all can?
Freedom is possible for all of us. Even if we are in a literal prison, meditation can free us from the thoughts and conditionings of our mind and take us to a place of peace and calm, no matter where we are in our lives.