Meditation and Practice in Prison

My very dear one,
Thank you very much for your kind letter.

In your letter you asked if your son gets merit because after he passed away this brought you to the Dharma, through the great suffering you have experienced. This would be the case if your son was a holy being and had planned it this way, for you to meet the Buddhadharma, and that this was the only method for you to meet the Buddhadharma, to wake up from being in samsara –which is to wake up from beginningless rebirths of suffering, being totally under the control of karma and delusion. It is a great thing that you have woken up and realized that this perfect human rebirth is a one-time opportunity to wake up, because having a perfect human rebirth (even if it is in prison) is an incredible opportunity to practice Dharma and achieve the three great meanings. You can achieve happiness in this life, the happiness of future lives, and the ultimate happiness – liberation from the oceans of samsaric suffering, including liberation from the causes of suffering, karma and delusion – then full enlightenment, the peerless happiness. Even in one second, by having received this perfect human body, one can achieve this happiness of full enlightenment.

Definitely it is a great thing that you have now met the Buddhadharma. I am sorry about your son passing way. He didn’t have a long time in this life, but his passing away became the cause and very good condition for you to meet the Buddhadharma. This is the kindness of your son, that now you were able to meet the Dharma and that this has helped you so much. This is unbelievable, unbelievable!

Now you can help your son by practicing hard and well. For this you need to learn the Buddhadharma well, by reading the correct Dharma books, such as books by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. If they are correct Buddhadharma texts, then it won’t confuse you. Please practice the Buddhadharma hard and dedicate your merits to your son; this is what you can do now.

In your daily life, transform your actions into virtue as much as possible, with the motivation to benefit all sentient beings, for the happiness of all sentient beings. Of course, that means not only this life’s happiness, but the happiness of future lives, liberation from samsara, and full enlightenment, especially enlightenment.

Abandon as much as possible all negative karmas, which are the cause of suffering, samsara, and the lower realms. Do this for others, for all sentient beings, including your son. Then, every day, after your evening practice, dedicate the merits to all sentient beings, particularly to your son. That is extremely important.

This is how to dedicate:

Due to all the past, present, and future merits accumulated by me, due to all the merits of the three times collected by others, which means all sentient beings, including the bodhisattvas and buddhas, may my son, who passed away, immediately be liberated from the lower realms (if he is in the lower realms), and may he be reborn in the pure land of the Buddha, where he can attain enlightenment or receive a perfect human body and meet the perfectly qualified Mahayana teachings. Without wasting his life, may he renounce the householder’s life, take ordination, meet a perfectly qualified Mahayana guru, and do only what is most pleasing to the holy mind of the virtuous friend with his body, speech, and mind, seeing the virtuous friend only as an enlightened being, with no mistakes. Then, may he train his mind in the common path, renunciation, bodhicitta, and right view, then the uncommon path – the two stages – and achieve the unified state of Vajradhara.

This is what you can do for your son every day. At the end of the day, especially, dedicate the merit collected that day, but you can do it at other times as well.

This is a little joke to make you smile: maybe, if you make very strong dedications like this, then your son might become a monk, and when you come out of prison, maybe you will meet him and he will become your guru. What about that?

You are asking if I can be your guru. It is not that I have the qualifications, but we try to do what we can. You try your best and I will try. So, I accept. It is extremely important, as I mentioned above, to practice well. This is our only chance to get out of samsara and reach enlightenment. So, we must.

I am sending you a prayer called Calling the Guru from Afar (the short and long versions). You should read these two slowly every day, one in the morning and one in the evening.

Definitely, if you can, take refuge and the bodhisattva vows. You can arrange this with the Liberation Prison Project; they can help you. First, take refuge and maybe later you can take the bodhisattva vows. I went to a prison recently in Mexico and gave a talk to about 100 prisoners.

The essence of what I am saying is that you should regard the prison as a very special place for you. This is a place for you to realize your past mistakes. It is a place to wake up; it makes you wake up. It is a great place for your discovery, for your inner life, to see the mistakes from the past that you have made (this does not just mean in this life, it means also in past lives); it is a place to develop wisdom and compassion. You can tell this to others, to your friends, if appropriate.

This is a great place for developing courage, to abandon suffering by abandoning the cause of suffering, and to develop happiness, by developing the cause for happiness. This is a great place for great change. It is a great place compared to being behind the bars of the prison of being reborn as a hell being, hungry ghost, or animal. It is a great place to discover the cause of negative thoughts and actions, which are the cause of rebirth in the lower realms. By realizing this, it enables you to achieve a higher rebirth in the future, by creating virtuous thoughts and actions.

As Nagarjuna said (Nagarjuna is like the second Buddha) in his teaching Letter to a Friend:

Actions born from ignorance, anger, and attachment are non-virtue
From that all the suffering of all the evil transmigratory beings arises.
Actions born from non-ignorance, non-anger, and non-attachment are virtue
From that all the happy transmigratory beings arise.

That means all the hell beings, hungry ghosts, and animal rebirths come from non-virtue. All the births in Buddha’s pure land, where there is no suffering, or receiving a perfect human body come from virtue. As far as receiving a human body, there are seven qualities and eight ripening aspects, which Lama Tsongkhapa emphasizes, and with those you can achieve a high development on the path to enlightenment. Then, also, you can achieve a human body that has the four Mahayana Dharma wheels, so that you can achieve full enlightenment.

Prison is a great place to discover about samsara and liberation, by discovering the cause of samsara and the cause of liberation, abandoning ignorance, anger, and attachment, and then actualizing path to liberation, which is best done through the higher trainings of morality, concentration, and wisdom. From this one can achieve liberation, the total cessation of all the oceans of samsaric suffering and the causes – karma and delusion. This means the total cessation of the cycle of death and rebirth, which includes all the sufferings of each realm, which we have experienced numberless times from beginningless rebirths, and which we will be experiencing in the future, without end, if we do not achieve liberation.

This is also a great place, an incredible place, compared to be being born in the hell realms. In prison, you can still achieve enlightenment, by practicing bodhicitta, great compassion, for all sentient beings. This is the Mahayana path. Then, of course, by practicing the tantric path, one can achieve enlightenment in one lifetime, or within a number of years in this brief lifetime of these degenerate times. Then you are able to bring all sentient beings quickly to enlightenment.

Here are your practices for your whole life. Also, when you are out of prison, you will know what to focus on. It is very important every day to meditate on the lamrim, also to recite one lamrim prayer every day, reading it slowly, going over the meaning (such as the Foundation of All Good Qualities, theThree Principles of the Path, Calling the Guru from Afar, etc). The lamrim is what you need to actualize, no matter how long it takes. Please put your effort into that. Continue practicing whatever lamrim topic you are on, doing the meditation every day, going through the subjects slowly. Whatever meditation you did in the morning, then continue with that mind during the day, so that way your mind is in the lamrim all day. Follow how it is explained in the attached sheets.

Regarding the lamrim meditations, this doesn’t mean you don’t do other meditations during this time (according to the period of time I have mentioned), it just means this is what you mainly focus on for this period. Please follow the lamrim outline from Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand or Lama Tsongkhapa’s Lamrim Chenmo. First read Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand so that you have a good idea and are familiar with the subjects. The lamrim cycle is for your whole life, and you follow the cycle like this.

Every day, practice meditation on guru devotion by following the outlines. The length of time is up to you. The main thing is to do it every day, whether it is short or long – it could be 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or one hour. Do all your practice on the basis of guru yoga, Lama Tsongkhapa Guru Yoga. Also, you could do the Guru Shakyamuni daily practice (the small booklet I put together, A Daily Meditation on Sakyamuni Buddha), if you prefer.

Do guru devotion meditation until you have stable realizations, not only for a few days or hours or even just until you have the experience, not even just a few months or years, but until the realization is stable: that all the buddhas are the guru, and all the gurus are the buddhas, and you realize this all the time from the bottom of your heart, that they are all one being, with different names. Continue the meditations of the graduated path of the lower capable being until one has stable realizations. This is from perfect human rebirth up to karma.

Mostly in one’s life the aim is seeking the happiness of this life, and one does not think about the happiness of future lives; that is secondary or not even considered. Here, the realization is to totally change that, so that your attitude is mainly seeking the happiness of future lives, and the happiness of this life is unimportant. It is not important whether you are happy or not.

By training the mind in the gradual path of the middle capable being, one sees samsara as in the nature of suffering, one has no interest in samsara for even one second, because you see it as like a septic tank, like poison. One does not have interest in samsara for even one second, it is only in the nature of suffering. You see this spontaneously from the bottom of your heart and you want to achieve liberation. It is like a person who fell in a fire and wants to get out. This is how you feel in samsara, and have such a strong wish to get out, to enter the path of liberation.

Then you realize how all other sentient beings are suffering in samsara and constantly creating the cause for more suffering. It is unbearable. And you feel unbearable compassion for all sentient beings, wanting them to be free from all sufferings, wishing all sentient beings to be free forever from sufferings and their causes. That is great compassion. As a result of that, one generates bodhicitta – the wish to achieve enlightenment for all sentient beings. This combines the two thoughts of wishing to liberate all sentient beings and wishing to achieve enlightenment. Then you have entered the path to enlightenment. This realization comes naturally from your heart all the time, except when one is in equipoise meditation on emptiness. Apart from that, one experiences the wish to achieve enlightenment for all sentient beings (with no exceptions) spontaneously from one’s heart.

This mind is based on generating incredible compassion for all sentient beings that are suffering and wanting them to be free from all sufferings, then wanting to free them, by oneself alone, from all suffering and bring them to enlightenment, by oneself alone. When that thought arises spontaneously that is bodhicitta. Please keep your attitude in bodhicitta; this is the main object to actualize in your life, this is your main project in this life. When you come out of prison you can receive the initiation and start practicing tantra, to achieve liberation and full enlightenment.

Please practice as much as you can – life is not long, the nature of this life is impermanent, and death can happen at any time. This is the foundation of Buddha’s teachings, and this was the last advice Buddha gave before showing the aspect of passing away.

What makes your life most meaningful is meditation on the lamrim, then to live your life with a bodhicitta motivation. That is the best.

With much love and prayers ...

My dear one,
I am very happy to hear you are so devoted to Buddhism. This is the most important thing that could have happened in your life. It makes your life very rich, and learning and practicing Buddhism gives it great meaning.

Please study the entire Buddhist path, as it is described in the book Liberation in the Palm of your Hand. It sounds like you are very intelligent, so that is excellent. But understanding is not enough. One needs to practice and transform the mind into the path.

I know you are in prison, but actually it’s just a concept, what you label it and how you use the space. For another mind, your prison cell is the same as a hermitage. In Tibet, people lived in very small mud hermitages with only a small hole to pass in food. They didn’t come out for many years. So, it’s a question of labeling and how you use the place.

So, in your case, you can use Mahayana Buddhism to see that your bad circumstances can be supportive circumstances for purifying your negative karma, and to achieve enlightenment for sentient beings.

One should realize, actually, that the situation you are in is the best situation given to you by the police, the court, and the other people involved in putting you there. These people are helping you by putting you in this situation, supporting you in developing your mind on the path to enlightenment and ending all sufferings and their causes.

We think people who are not in prison are not prisoners, but they are. Actually, people outside, even those who are travelling the whole world and are regarded as successful, billionaires who have all the objects of desire, may actually be living in prison in their inner life. Externally, mundane people outside prison think they are most successful, but their inner life is sad, miserable, and unhappy, because they have already tried many things and haven’t found satisfaction and are even more unhappy than people who have very little. You might say, generally speaking, that ordinary people (not practicing Dharma, not having realizations) including people from the court, police, kings, and presidents are actually living in prison: the prison of family obligations, of not having the freedom to be alone to practice, the prison of ego, self-centeredness, and a jealous mind. They are living in the prisons of desire and anger.

One big, fundamental prison is that everything that exists is merely labeled by the mind, relating to the base on which it is labeled. Therefore, nothing exists from its own side. Everything is empty; everything exists, but is empty. While it is empty, it exists in mere name. This is the truth, but this truth is not seen. This truth is always there but you are not able to see it. It is the same for the “I.”

For most people, this truth, which is there and always functioning, doesn’t exist, including the I, actions, and objects that appear as existing, not as merely labeled by the mind. These are actually false objects, a false I, and false actions. But what is false, the world one hundred percent truly believes exists and is true. What is false is believed to be the truth. So, being trapped in the prison of hallucinated ignorance, of the unknowing mind, is another prison. This is the root of all sufferings. The suffering world came from this and was created by this wrong concept: ignorance.

Trapped in the prison of wrong concepts, believing impermanent phenomena to be permanent, believing temporal samsaric pleasures are happiness, this is another big prison we are trapped in. Like believing the body, which is only a container of dirty things, to be clean—this is another hallucinated prison. There are so many wrong concepts and views, prisons we are caught in. These prisons are from time without beginning – beginningless prisons.

Now you have met the Dharma, and, if you practice meditation, especially the lamrim, you will be liberating yourself from all these prisons.

People in the outside world think that prisoners only know prison, but they don’t realize all the other beginningless prisons that they are in. This is the fundamental suffering which keeps them in the prison realm. This external prison, your jail, is nothing compared to those inner prisons. So, you are so fortunate that, for you, this is not a prison but a liberating place. By developing your mind on the path, liberating yourself from all the sufferings and their causes—delusion and karma—you are now ending this.

Thank you very much.

My suggestion for you is to do some practice in prison. You can perform 200,000 prostrations to the Thirty-five Buddhas. This is an extremely powerful purification practice that will bring you quick realizations and open your heart. Even when you finish 200,000 prostrations, it is still good to continue to do 100 prostrations in the morning and 100 in the evening.

At the moment, you can practice daily meditation using my book Daily Meditation Practice. Before the dedication in the book, expand your lamrim meditation. If you are familiar with the whole lamrim, then start to train your mind in guru devotion, perfect human rebirth, karma and impermanence, and death. This will help you to renounce this life.

Later, you can do 400,000 mandala offerings, but first perform the prostrations. Then, slowly start offerings as you study. Then you can recite 30,000 Vajrasattva mantras. I won’t explain much here, but you can get transcripts about this, which you can read.

Please know that many lamas and people were put in prison by the communist Chinese in Tibet, but many achieved realizations in prison and it became so beneficial for their minds. They were able to put into practice the Dharma they had learned in the prison. Some didn’t even eat food, but their bodies were shining and glowing because of meditation: mind food. Even when they had food, it was hardly anything. It was very little, just flour and water, just the name “food” was given. I also heard the food was put in the same bucket that was used for the toilet.

So, you can use this opportunity to practice, and then prison can become a place of happiness, and there is so much to rejoice in. For Christians, it becomes like heaven, and for Buddhists, it becomes like a pure land.

With much love and prayer...