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| Letters from the Dhamma Brothers: Meditation Behind Bars | 
 enlarge | Author: Jenny Phillips
Creator: Robert Coles
Publisher: Pariyatti Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $15.95
Buy New: $8.33
You Save: $7.62 (48%)
New (26) Used (6) from $8.33
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 10993
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 5.9 x 0.8
ISBN: 1928706312
Dewey Decimal Number: 364
EAN: 9781928706311
ASIN: 1928706312
Publication Date: September 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New. Delivery is usually 5 - 8 working days from order, International is by Royal Mail Airmail
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Product Description
Through intimate letters, interviews, and stories, this narrative reveals the impact that a life-changing retreat had on a group of inmates at the highest level maximum-security state prison in Alabama. The 38 participants in the first-ever intensive, silent 10-day program inside the walls of a corrections facility—many serving life sentences without parole—detail the range of their experiences, the depth of their understanding of the Buddha’s teachings gained by direct experience, and their setbacks and successes. During the Vipassana meditation program, they face the past and their miseries and emerge with a sense of peace and purpose. This compelling story shows the capacity for commitment, self-examination, renewal, and hope within a dismal penal system and a wider culture that demonizes prisoners.
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| Customer Reviews:
Meditation for rehabilitation in prisons August 14, 2008
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
Congressman John Lewis: "This book makes it plain that no human being should be considered beyond the reach of redemption." That quote is from the cover of the book.
It seems we don't know how to rehabilitate offenders other than try stiffer punishment. About 1 in 100 adults in the US is in jail or prison. New approaches are needed. Intense (Vipassana) meditation retreats may be one possibility. This book reflects that potential.
The book records the dramatic changes that prisoners experience as they attempt to purify their minds of such impurities as hatred, fear, greed, anger, etc., that have landed them in prison. This book makes it clear that the impurities they carry deep within cause suffering both to themselves and to those around them; and whatever relief they get using the meditation helps both them and others.
Recently, a documentary film of the meditation courses examined in this book, The Dhamma Brothers, has been released in select theaters across the US. The film captures in action what this book reflects on paper.
The question remains: How effective is this program for the convicts over time? That's difficult to say since each individual must try to integrate his/her insights into an environment that may be dysfunctional. But there are indications of overall success.
Vipassana courses have been held in prisons outside the US since 1975, starting in India. The Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, has recognized Vipassana meditation as a technique to reform criminals and has introduced it in all Central Jails, particularly Tihar Prison, New Delhi. A documentary film of a course for 1,000 inmates at Tihar Prison, "Doing Time, Doing Vipassana," won a top award at the 1998 San Francisco International Film Festival.
The time has come to consider that meditation has promise for rehabilitation of prisoners, and this book reflects that potential.
Free Your Mind November 15, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"Let him who is without guilt cast the first stone". These were Jesus's words to the crowd that gathered to stone the woman caught committing adultery.
It is easy to condemn others and throw away the key. If you tell a good person that he is evil and remind him about it every day (by locking him up like a wild beast) he or she will become evil.
Mindfulness meditation provides every human the opportunity to still the mental noise and get in touch with the deepest state of pure inner bliss.
All of us have sinned to greater or lesser degree. Crime (like wars) begins in the heart of man and it is only in the heart of man that the path to peace can be found.
The experience of Donaldson's prisoners demonstrates that Mindfulenss meditation is the ultimate secular path to peace at the personal level; the 'sine qua non' to peace in society and the world at large.
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