Letters from the Dhamma Brothers: Meditation Behind Bars

by Jenny Phillips

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1928706312
• ISBN13: 9781928706311
• Release Date: November 2021
• Publisher: Pariyatti Press
• Length: 220 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Another Heartwarming Vipassana story

This book is absolutely wonderful. Read it in a day. Couldn't put it down. I had seen the documentary "Dhamma Brothers" on TV a couple of months back, I have recorded it and I watch it often. It's so wonderful to read the letters of these tough guys, who at long last found themselves by doing Vipassana. I know what they talk about, because I've started with Vipassana 2 years again, and did it twice. I will go on doing it 1x/year. I reccommend Vipassana to everyone. It truly is the greatest gift you can give to yourself. It's a "home-coming". Stepping out of the thinking mind and our ego-thoughts and dropping into peace, love and oneness. Certainly NOT only life-changing for prisoners. Even we, outside of prison, are somehow prisoners. And yeah, I still fall into the trap of ignorance and misperceptions and not seeing things as they are. But as Goenkaji says: START AGAIN, START AGAIN. It's longlife journey, to free ourselves totally, step by step by step... Vipassana is a great way to free the mind and to make peace with ourselves. Not only reccommending this book but also the documentaries: "Dhamma Brothers" and 2 other documentaries about Vipassana "Doing Time, Doing Vipassana" and "Changing from inside".

Change through meditation, compassion, and insight.

How do the most hardened among us change? By sitting meditation. In this fast paced, digital world where continuous partial attention, or the epidemic of ADHD, rules, Vipassana (Insight) meditation offers another way. Meditation is a great way, to calm, to center, to learn authenticity. This form of meditation is non-sectarian. Those who teach it do not require or desire any kind of conversion to a faith. All are welcome to come and learn. This is a technique of positive, personal, change, if these people in prison can do it, we can too.

Moving and Inspiring

I was so moved by the Dhamma Brothers that I did a three week series at my spiritual center. The first week was judgement and reading stories about their crimes, the second on compassion and reading about the backgrounds, and the third on Ho'oponopono healing the part of us that sees the bad in them.

Free Your Mind

"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.

Meditation for rehabilitation in prisons

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.