Vipassana meditation
Malcolm Lawrence (malcolm@wolfenet.com)
Mon, 16 Mar 1998 20:38:52 -0800
I just found this today too, didn't realize it was happening in my own
backyard.
Malcs
----------------------------
Seattle Jail Tries 'Mental Boot
Camp' to Transform Lost Lives
AP
16-MAR-98
By DAVID FOSTER
Associated Press Writer
SEATTLE (AP) For 10 days and nights, the inmates are
forbidden all worldly
diversions: no talking, no touching, no reading, no
writing, no smoking, no TV.
Cruel and unusual punishment? Try Vipassana meditation,
used for years in
Indian prisons and now being taught for the first time in
a U.S. jail. At Seattle's
North Rehabilitation Facility, petty criminals,
alcoholics and drug addicts sit
silently in a dark room for 10 hours a day, hoping to
bring inner peace to their
messed-up lives.
For these dropouts of 12-step programs and halfway
houses, it's worth a try.
"What else do I have to lose?" asked Rose Clinton, 31,
one of seven women
who volunteered this month for the jail's second
Vipassana course.
She has had two crack-addicted babies, one of whom died,
and has lost count
of the times she has been to jail for drug dealing,
prostitution, robbery and
assault. Her forehead bears a jagged scar from a bottle
hurled by an angry drug
dealer. Welts on her wrists remain from the day in 1992
when they took her
third baby away and she tried to slash her wrists with a
broken crack pipe.
For most of Clinton's adult life, introspection has been
limited to the desperate,
daily calculus of an addict: "You think about where your
next hit's gonna come
from, or who you're gonna beat for some money."
For 10 days ending March 7, Clinton pursued purer
thoughts. Waking at 4 a.m.
to the sound of a gong, she spent hours in "noble
silence," sitting on a cushion,
her eyes closed, a blanket wrapped around her.
With help from a Vipassana instructor, she and her fellow
students learned to
observe their breathing and other bodily sensations. They
learned to feel an itch
and not scratch it, and they saw at least the possibility
of doing the same with the
anger and craving that have ruled their lives.
"We call it mental boot camp," said jail administrator
Lucia Meijer, who
authorized the program last fall after being persuaded to
attend a 10-day
Vipassana course herself. Her first impression, as she
struggled to hold a
meditation position for an hour, was that "these people
must be sadists."
Later, she saw Vipassana meditation's potential for
building inmates'
self-discipline and insight.
"It's not a magic trick or a pill," Meijer said. "It's
hard, conscious effort. It
teaches them how to control themselves, how to go inside
and deal with what's
there."
Meditation comes in many forms, from the contemplations
of Christian and
Buddhist monks to the secular Transcendental Meditation.
Vipassana is considered the Marine Corps of meditation.
As taught today by
Indian teacher S.N. Goenka, it claims a direct lineage to
techniques practiced
2,500 years ago by Buddha.
Its nonsectarian approach welcomes students of any
religious belief. But its
rigors put off most people: Of the 4,000 students who
take a course each year
at one of four Vipassana centers in the United States,
only an estimated 10
percent embrace it permanently.
Adherents believe they have found a captive, eager
audience in jails and prisons
if only they can convince skeptical jailers.
Even at Seattle's North Rehabilitation Facility, a
minimum-security jail with a
reputation for innovation and a focus on treating
chemical dependency, the
Vipassana program is a major disruption.
The students must be housed in a separate wing.
Instructors and assistants insist
on living at the jail during the course. The kitchen must
prepare special
vegetarian meals. Loudspeakers must be disconnected.
Everyone who works
with the students, including guards, must be graduates of
a 10-day Vipassana
course.
In the program's favor: It's free. All Vipassana courses
are run by volunteers.
It's too soon to tell how well the Seattle program keeps
inmates on the virtuous
path after their release. But jail officials say behavior
changes were striking after
the first course last November, which graduated 11 men.
Everyone mentions Ernest, a huge, menacing ghetto warrior
who spoke in grunts
before the Vipassana course. Afterward, he was hugging
everybody and
declaring that love is the answer.
Richard Jimerson, whose alcohol-related crimes have
bounced him in and out of
jail for years, has attended two more Vipassana courses
and volunteered to help
at three since his release from jail in December.
A year ago, Jimerson was "sad, lost, a waste," said
Stephanie Maxwell, a
vocational specialist at the jail. Now, she said, he is
"focused, honest,
thoughtful."
Jimerson, 31, put it this way: "The rattling in my brain
got put to sleep."
Vivian Snyder, instructor for the women's Vipassana
course, said her
inmate-students were more chatty than those on the
outside. But they were
typical in other ways: They fell asleep in the first
days. They threatened to quit.
They thought they were being brainwashed. They were
wracked by headaches
and nausea.
Lila Bowechop, 33, said one side of her face went numb
the same feeling she
used to get after alcoholic binges and she thought that
she might die.
In the end, though, they rallied. Seven women started and
seven finished, an
improvement over the men's course, which lost six
students.
"They worked harder than any group I've seen," Snyder
said. "They didn't spend
a lot of time on philosophical debates. They know they're
suffering."
On the seventh day, rage boiled up within Rose Clinton.
It was a stew of old
pains and regrets, made all the more maddening because
she thought she had
dealt with them long ago. She cursed. She cried. She knew
she'd have to quit.
And then the anger passed. Like an itch. Clinton hopes to
keep meditating on
the outside. She hopes to get her GED. She'll settle for
avoiding behavior of the
sort that put her away most recently: stabbing a woman
with a screwdriver and a
knife.
"Now I know I don't have to get that mad," Clinton said.
"I know there's a way I
can come out of that anger."