By Joel Lazar
Immersed in the shared stillness which these men experience as refuge, not one of us feels rushed to break the precious silence. We have formed an easy circle around this tiny table, on which sits a small sculpture of the Buddha. Here in our “mindful tea practice,” some of us hold warm half-full cups in our hands, while others have set theirs down on the floor. No one yet speaks; no one feels any need to.
To an outside observer––walking the halls of this state prison where we are in fact meeting––the scene might appear incongruous. Buddha sculpture? Mindful tea practice? Here? We sit in a humble classroom just next door to the prison chapel, and these men are involuntary residents in this building; some have not left its larger grounds in decades, and a small number will spend the rest of their lives here, in state-determined confinement for actions in their past which they try now to overcome. But none of us senses incongruity at all. Dharma in prison feels completely natural, even necessary. The Buddha never asked us to shift our gaze from the hardships and challenges of our world; instead, he offered a noble and nourishing path to live into our difficulties, to grow through these troubles into wisdom and compassion.
It’s the prison residents themselves, or their predecessors some twenty-four years ago, who made this present moment possible. In 2002, Doreen Schweizer received a request from a small group of inmates at Northern New Hampshire Correctional Institute for Men, in Berlin, New Hampshire, who on their own had begun an exploration of Buddhism through books and practice. The formal outreach came from Reverend Dana Hoyt, who served (and still serves) as prison chaplain, and who remains our close contact in Berlin. And thus was born our Prison Sangha program, now well into its third decade! Members of Valley Insight have traveled monthly to Berlin ever since that time, except for an eighteen-month hiatus at the peak of the pandemic, when no external visits were allowed.
In recent years, Karen Summer and I have rotated sessions between us, month after month, and we are repeatedly humbled and inspired by the experience. We strive to bear witness to prison residents’ remarkable engagement with the Four Noble Truths. Their intimacy with dukkha is undeniable, as is their acceptance of their own contribution to its causes. They have recognized their capacity to free themselves, if not from the imposed material confines of their incarceration, then certainly from the internal forms of reactivity that this condition may impose. And in their studies, their support of fellow inmates, and their commitment to meditative practice, these men endeavor to walk the Eightfold Path. Of course, they struggle and stumble just as I do, some days a bit closer to their aspirations, some days a bit further away. But they endure, and they commit themselves repeatedly to the Dharma work of wholeness and healing.
On the first Saturday of each month, we spend three hours together in practice and dialogue. We engage in an hour or more of formal meditation, both walking and sitting, and sometimes in standing yoga as well. In shared conversation we focus on Dharma teachings that feel especially germane to prison life, even as we invite the men to help us understand what such a life entails. We settle ourselves. We challenge ourselves. In past seasons we have sequentially explored the Hindrances, the Eightfold Path, the Paramis, and so on, always seeking direct connection to men’s own experiences.
Today we are exploring personal agency, and how this may be hindered in prison life, where so many basic choices are made for the men, rather than by them. Participants report that, yes, their sense of external agency has been diminished here, but meanwhile their Dharma practice supports a remarkable growth of internal capacity. With no prompting from me, one resident shares the famous passage from Viktor Frankl: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms––to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Other men concur that their practice enables them to let go of attachments that foment anger, frustration, and reactivity. While still incarcerated, they also feel more free. One participant shares, “If I didn’t have my practice, I would never have survived until now. I can’t control most of what happens in our cell block. But I can control my response to those things. Hard feelings arise, but I don’t have to identify with those feelings.”
And somewhere between these existential contemplations and our formal sitting meditation, we transition naturally to another monthly practice, one first proposed by the men themselves: we sit together and mindfully share a cup of tea.
I appreciate how something so seemingly small can signify so much. On many occasions, the men have told Karen and me how very little opportunity there is for real “peace and quiet” in their prison surroundings. And yet here we all are, sitting “alone together” quietly, mindfully enjoying our slow cups of tea in the absence of too-familiar disturbances. There is a preciousness in this that I cannot communicate in words.
But perhaps a visual image conveys more than language ever can. One of our participants––I’ll call him “Kevin,” to honor the privacy of his true name––has lived for more than a decade in this prison. He has sat with our group for years and has slowly grown into one of its spiritual leaders. Gentle in manner but resolute in his practice, he has also found comfort in a prison carpentry class. In past sessions he mentioned his work on a small wooden tea tray that he designed there, one that we might soon use to carry teabags and cups into our meeting room each month.
Today is the day of his sharing. Kevin places the tea accessories on the tray he has crafted and presents this generous offering to all of us, as I share it now with you, in the photo that accompanies this article. There is artistry expressed, to be sure; but more than that, there is gratitude and deep kindness, and the most palpable care for this sangha we have co-created.
Immersed in the shared stillness which we all experience as refuge, not one of us feels rushed to break the precious silence. No one yet speaks; no one feels any need to.
1 Here’s the image Joel mentions.