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After several years
of providing written correspondence to
prisoners, meditation instructors at the Ratna Prison Initiative began to realize that many inmates
could benefit from a more formal study of
meditation teachings, an opportunity rarely
afforded them in prison. In order to meet this
need, we began developing study courses for
inmate participation. We currently have over
150 inmates enrolled in a study course, and we
have been deeply impressed and touched by the
level of understanding these men and women have
attained in learning to work with their minds
and cultivate sanity within a challenging
environment.
Each course
provides an in-depth exploration of a main text
written by a meditation master, which is divided
into several installments. Upon his or her
request to be enrolled in a study course, we
send the inmate the main text, a
sourcebook of supplemental material, and the
first set of study questions. The inmate reads
the text, contemplates the material, answers the
study questions, blending the teachings in the
text with his or her own experience and insight,
and returns the answers to the Ratna Prison Initiative.
We review the student’s answers and provide
encouragement, clarification, and/or comments
for further contemplation, developing a
person-to-person relationship with the inmate
and giving him or her direct feedback on what
has been written. A sheet of supplemental
commentary is provided on each question. In
this way, the course is a three-way dialogue
between the student, the teachings in the book,
and an instructor from the Ratna Prison Initiative.
This format provides a means of processing the
information in order to guide the student in
refining his or her personal understanding.
Students receive a certificate when they
complete the course, as well as an invitation to
participate in subsequent courses.
The Ratna Prison
Initiative currently offers three study courses.
The first course studies the book,
Turning the Mind Into an
Ally by Sakyong Mipham. It is a
detailed instruction in how to understand and
practice sitting meditation. It presents ways to
unravel psychological confusion and cultivate a
clear and peaceful mind in sitting meditation
and in daily life.
The second course,
The Myth of Freedom,
based on the text by the same name, written by
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, broadly surveys the
meditation path, from the beginning to the
highest teachings, focusing particularly on
sitting meditation, meditation in daily life,
and working with difficult emotions.
The Power of Patience,
Healing Anger, based on the text
by the same name, written by His Holiness the
Dalai Lama, addresses the ways one might learn
to overcome the aggression and anger permeating
his or her mind and environment and, at the same
time, learn to cultivate patience. (For more
information on these courses, please follow the
links above.)
For the future we
are planning two additional courses. The first,
based on the comments of many meditation masters
who've advised us about prisoners, is a course
studying Atisha's mind training slogans. This
will guide students in developing a life of
compassionate activity.
We are also planning
a course on Chogyam Trungpa's book
Shambhala: The Sacred
Path of the Warrior. This will be
a secular course in meditation practice
concerned with how to bring meditation into
daily modern life and how to develop a sacred
vision of society and of reality itself.
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