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Buddhas Behind Razor Wire: Practicing with the Women of FCI-Dublin
by Hozan Alan Senauke

Socially engaged Buddhism takes a variety of forms here in the west. What I mean by engaged Buddhism is really not different from Shakyamuni’s core teaching. He said: “I teach about suffering and the end of suffering.” But in this age of globalization and the exploitation of interdependence, socially engaged Buddhism widens the view of suffering and liberation, beyond the focus on an individual or a small sangha/practice community, to social systems and structures. These systems — cities, nations, races, men, women, ecological regions, and so on — are of course made up of individuals. But this “individual” in Buddhist terms is itself an impermanent collection of causes and conditions. In the west we tend to think an individual, “I and mine,” simply exists within one particular bag of skin. The wider and deeper view is that we actually co-construct reality and identity. Taking a leap, I might say that the individual is created by the systems and interactions of all the infinite selves that constitute a system.

The practice of engaged Buddhism entails insight and action exactly where self and social structures come together, moving freely between them as appropriate. This effort — manifesting in areas of social change and protest, social service, environmental activism, hospice work, justice and democracy, civil rights, and more — is beyond charity or well-intentioned service. It has the potential to transform self and others alike. What follows is my experience and understanding in just on realms of engagement.

***

I’ve been driving out to FCI-Dublin — a Federal women’s prison and prison camp twenty miles from Berkeley — at least monthly for the last eleven years. Finding a spot in the parking lot, I take a few minutes to collect myself, reflecting that anything can happen when I walk through the gates. I’m not talking about overt violence by inmates or personal danger. These are remote possibilities. Rather, that the facility could be locked down and I will simply have to turn around and go home, or there’ll be no one in the chaplain’s office to escort me, my paperwork has been lost, a gate officer will be rude, officious, or difficult. These things all happen from time to time. So I sit in the car and remember I am there for the women and for the dharma. I find a smile and walk to the gatehouse. The meditation group at FCI-Dublin was established by my dharma sister Maylie Scott in affiliation with Buddhist Peace Fellowship when Maylie was visiting imprisoned anti-nuclear activists in the 90s. I took a regular teaching slot in 1998, and soon after became the program’s coordinator, gathering a team of teachers with backgrounds in several different Buddhist traditions. All these years we have had the fortunate supervision of Protestant Chaplain Hans Hoch, who has been a true support and a good friend.

The program began as “meditation and stress reduction,” initially seen as part of the prison’s medical and psychological resources. But in time it evolved more properly as a religious service. By the time I joined, the weekly teachers were all Buddhists. We are not exactly teaching Zen or Vipassana or any particular brand or school of Buddhism. Basically, we are offering meditation and associated activities as tools for an awakened life. I am open about my Zen Buddhist background as the source of teachings I have to share, but since the group is diverse and self-selected — Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, as well as Buddhists — we are more accurately presenting Buddhism with a small “b,” no proselytizing. I see this as a kind of interfaith ministry.

FCI Dublin is one of just a few federal centers for immigration violations, so many of the prisoners are Hispanic. (We usually count on the women to translate for each other.) The inmates include a few women with previous meditation experience, and several have a strong yoga practice. Many practice daily in their cells. While my emphasis has always been on zazen, each teacher has his or her own approach. One of our teachers is a skilled qigong instructor, so he regularly shares this practice with the inmates. Another, a professional writer, does an in-the-moment writing practice. Each of us works from our respective tradition. By agreement we do not present one single methodology or practice, but from time to time the teachers meet to check in about how things are going, and to agree on a general direction of study and inquiry.

Bowing and chanting is optional — not all the women are comfortable with elements of Buddhist liturgy. Some see meditation as prayer. But most are curious about Buddhism, and like having some ritual. Over the years, when there has been illness or death affecting someone in the group, we have done simple well-being and memorial ceremonies. On my days at the prison we offer incense and do three full bows towards the altar, then three bows to each other, facing into the circle. I demonstrate how to bow and explain that we are bowing to the Buddha not as an external deity but as a way of honoring the reality of our own true nature. We chant my sister Maylie Scott’s metta prayer simultaneously in English and Spanish.

May I be well, loving, and peaceful.
May all beings be well, loving, and peaceful.
May I be at ease in my body, feeling the ground beneath my seat and feet, letting my back be long and straight, enjoying breath as it rises and falls and rises.
May I know and be intimate with body mind, whatever its feeling or mood, calm or agitated, tired or energetic, irritated or friendly.
Breathing in and out, in and out, aware, moment by moment, of the risings and passings.
May I be attentive and gentle towards my own discomfort and suffering.
May I be attentive and grateful for my own joy and well-being.
May I move towards others freely and with openness.
May I receive others with sympathy and understanding.
May I move towards the suffering of others with peaceful and attentive confidence.
May I recall the Bodhisattva of compassion; her 1,000 hands, her instant readiness for action each hand with an eye in it, the instinctive knowing what to do.
May I continually cultivate the ground of peace for myself and others and persist, mindful and dedicated to this work, independent of results.
May I know that my peace and the world's peace are not separate; that our peace in the world is a result of our work for justice.
May all beings be well, happy, and peaceful.

Meditation goes for about a half hour, starting with five or ten minutes of basic instruction on sitting and mindfulness. In the prison atmosphere of social control, I tend to be loose about the form of meditation, not emphasizing formal posture as I might at home in Berkeley Zen Center. There is enough formality and external control in these women’s lives. The important thing here is for prisoners to feel safe, to have a chance to sit quietly and meet themselves. This in itself is a rare and precious thing in prison. (As natural as it is, this kind of gathering, sangha, is rare in the wider world as well.) After meditation I take time for questions and check-in, or a brief teaching.

Over time, we have studied the Four Noble Truths, precepts, the five hindrances, and other points of basic Buddhism. But our discussions always proceed from the women’s experience and from the wisdom of their root cultures and religions. We don’t need a special place to practice. It is wonderful to be able to come to a dedicated meditation hall, but I find that one can meditate anywhere — in a temple, in a railway station, in a prison. Silence is deep in the chapel. Meanwhile people walk by, talking in the hall. A work crew sets up near our windows. Birds sing freely in the trees, and then you hear the chatter of gunfire from the nearby pistol range. All of this is part of one’s moment-by-moment awareness. Again prison is all about social control; there’s a surveillance camera in the chapel. Authorities can and do invoke rules at will. The federal system seems to be constantly cutting down prisoners’ opportunities and rights. Women live together in large dormitories or “pods” with four people to a room. There is ethnic and racial tension. There is unexpected harmony, too. You can feel it, like a cool breeze.

***

I encounter a particular challenge working in prisons, and this is something that often confronts engaged Buddhists. According to one’s view, meditation itself may or may not be sufficient. The Buddha taught three great principles — sila, samadhi, and prajna or ethics/morality, meditation, and wisdom. As dharma these three are inseparable and interdependent. But in our modern world meditation can become a kind of technique, de-linked from ethics and wisdom. My view is probably controversial, but when I hear about mindfulness being used in corporations and even taught to soldiers going into combat, I worry about the larger ethical context. Mindfulness, relaxation, even communication skills can create a process that may appear or even arguably may be ethical within an environment whose purpose is essentially unethical. Historically, Japanese samurai warriors cultivated Zen, and one can see how where that led in the complicity of Buddhist sects with Japan’s aggressive and imperialist war-making in the mid-20th century. So, when we go to the prisons, are we teaching in a way that encourages a prisoner to examine his or her life and mind in the context of the prison system and society itself? Or are we imparting a technique that offers a kind of spiritual pacification, making it easier for guards and prison authorities to maintain social control? I worry about that.

When I visit FCI Dublin we come together for meditation. We also study and talk about our lives. There is a lot of trust in the room. A sense of sangha comes from meeting weekly year after year. Along with that trust (and because of it), I feel an obligation to share with the women how I see the U.S. prison system — based on principles of retribution and punishment — as an expression of structural violence and structural suffering unlikely to lead to spiritual and psychological rehabilitation of individual prisoners, or restoration to their victims and society as a whole. My vision of engaged Buddhism is that social service and advocacy necessarily go hand in hand. Offering meditation is the service component; studying the societal basis of our prison system and possible alternative responses to poverty, racism, and crime is what I think of as advocacy.

My objective is not to relieve women of responsibility and the unfolding karma of their particular crimes. (Note that we rarely know anything about a prisoner’s conviction or even the length of her sentence, unless such details come out in our discussions.) That is work each prisoner has to do herself, looking closely at her life, and considering how she will choose to live in the future. We have all spent many intimate hours at FCI Dublin talking about this in moving and sometimes disturbing ways. But we also need to investigate broader causes and conditions that lead the U.S. having the largest single prison population and the highest rate of incarceration in the world, according to the government’s own National Institute of Corrections. With 5% of the world’s population, we have 23% of the world’s prisoners, more than 2,400,000 behind bars, and many millions more in the parole and probation systems. It would take volumes to explain why this is so. But in dharma terms people and systems are driven by greed, hated, and delusion.

Greed motivates America’s vast hidden prison industries, which employ hundreds of thousands of imprisoned men and women, and the privatization of state prisons, which as corporations are even more distant from accountability than their state counterparts. Anger, hatred, and fear generate draconian measure like “three-strikes” and the barbaric death penalty; it is the basis for a racist criminal justice system that locks up poor black and brown men and women far out of proportion to their numbers in the population. Delusion is the only word I can find that accounts for social logic that argues the way one reduces violence in society is by doing violence to those one fears. When has this ever worked?

Inside the prison I am measured in my words and views. What I have expressed in these sentiments above is certainly not the perspective of the Bureau of Prisons, or what they teach us in the annual re-training sessions. But if the dharma of freedom is about relationship — to oneself, to others, to the world — then I feel obligated to help these women cultivate a wide view. Without such a view, bitterness and despair are likely to arise.

***

Inside the prison there are rules, and there are rules. These are carefully explained to all prison staff and volunteers. No touching, no favors, no exchange of personal information, no use of first names, and so on. Prison authorities worry about security. This is the shadow dimension of social control. The more one side is controlled, the more resistance and pushback will arise. The prison is also concerned about the natural sympathy one might have for prisoners, and how prisoners can take advantage of that. As the saying goes: They don’t call them “cons” for nothing. If one ignores these rules, sooner or later one’s ability to work inside will become compromised.

But the dharma itself offers rules for life, and some of these seem to me to conflict with the rigidity of institutional thinking. Treating all life as part of oneself implies a manner that is close and respectful. So within the confines of our meditation group we are on a first name basis. I agree it’s inappropriate for me to touch the women, so I can’t adjust posture as I might in the zendo. According to regulations hugs are out of bounds, but from time to time one-armed hugs happen spontaneously. A natural and respectful intimacy is essential.

Despite rules, we have a steady and growing group of 20 to 25 women sitting together. Several have been with us from the beginning. One political prisoner has an 80-year sentence. Over time I have seen many women change, settle into their lives, put aside reactivity, and acknowledge their difficulties, shortcomings and past harmful actions. This is a wonderful thing to witness, testimony to the ever-present possibility of change that is obvious to me, Chaplain Hoch, and the women themselves. It encourages us to keep our practice going.

I love to see how people live out their beliefs. At FCI-Dublin, I witness how deep people’s faith goes. I see women who have committed crimes and made serious mistakes, who are far from home and family, yet have a clear sense that there’s something larger than themselves, beyond the prison walls. They may be justly or unjustly convicted, but they come to see that they can make use of their months and years in prison. Old Zen master Joshu told his disciple, “You are used by the twenty-four hours; I use the twenty-four hours.” Even behind bars on can learn to use the twenty-four hours.

No one wants to be in prison. (And my sense is that many of these women should not be in prison. They got tangled up in someone’s bad drug deal, or implicated in a boyfriend’s illegal activity.) But once inside, one can either make it an opportunity or nurture bitterness. I’m lucky to spend time with the women who want to work, whose way-seeking mind leads them to meditate and study. So each time we sit down together, behind the fences and walls, with guards and countless rules, bad food and long days — even with all that to contend with, liberation is rising.