Speaker 1: Dear Governor is a production of I Heart Media and
Speaker 1: three Months Media. If you are moved by Jarvis Masters
Speaker 1: and his thirty years struggle on San Quentin's Death Throw,
Speaker 1: and you'd like to support his cause, please consider signing
Speaker 1: a petition on his behalf. Visit free Jarvis dot org
Speaker 1: slash podcast to sign your name to an open letter
Speaker 1: to California Governor Gavin Newsom, Dear Governor Newsom, Dear Mr
Speaker 1: Governor Newsom. This is an open letter to Governor Gavin Newsom,
Speaker 1: Dear Governor news Public. Though physically confined by as nine
Speaker 1: by four sell for over forty years, Jarvis Masters has
Speaker 1: managed to reach far beyond the thick walls and razor
Speaker 1: wires of San Quentin. Due to his unique perspective, strong opinions,
Speaker 1: and prolific writings, he has become a sought after contributor
Speaker 1: for very a social justice and Buddhist oriented organizations. Recently,
Speaker 1: the Awake Network and Shambala Publications hosted a free online event,
Speaker 1: the Black and Buddhist Summit, that attracted over ten thousand participants.
Speaker 1: Pamela Ioya Tunde, a pastoral counselor, chaplain and co editor
Speaker 1: of Black and Buddhist What Buddhism can teach us about race, resilience,
Speaker 1: transformation and healing. Hosted the summit and invited Jarvis to participate.
Speaker 1: There are so many Buddhists authors out there. Why Jarvis?
Speaker 1: What drew to Jarvis? Yeah? You know, I think I
Speaker 1: first heard about Jarvis when I worked for short period
Speaker 1: time with the National Coalition to a policy death penalty.
Speaker 1: This was back in the late eight days or early nineties.
Speaker 1: And then encountered his writings again when I was in
Speaker 1: the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies chaplaincy program m in
Speaker 1: the early two thousand's. And then as we were thinking
Speaker 1: about what subjects we wanted to address during the summit,
Speaker 1: I said, well, you know the fact that there's so
Speaker 1: many African Americans in prison, and we know that the
Speaker 1: people learn uh to hone their skills, writing skills in prison.
Speaker 1: People often find a new way of life for religion
Speaker 1: or spirituality in prison. There must be African descended Buddhist
Speaker 1: practitioners who were writers in prison, and them boom, you know,
Speaker 1: Jarvis came to mind, and so that's how and so
Speaker 1: we reached out through you. Yeah, he he is a
Speaker 1: he's a prolific writer and thinker for sure. I remember
Speaker 1: I was in a Buddhist gathering and I was talking
Speaker 1: with someone and we're talking about, oh, you know, the
Speaker 1: Black and Buddhist Some of that was so wonderful. And
Speaker 1: this person very slowly raised up her copy of Finding
Speaker 1: Freedom and held it like this, and then slowly brought
Speaker 1: it down and just said, Wow, that was some of
Speaker 1: the most significant dharma teaching I have ever received. And
Speaker 1: this person is a dharma teacher. Yeah. I think now
Speaker 1: more than ever in my life anyway, thanks to the
Speaker 1: work of Brian Stevenson and others, that people are accepting
Speaker 1: the fact that there have been many people wrongly accused,
Speaker 1: many people spending decades behind bars for something they didn't do.
Speaker 1: And so maybe that's on the other side of society
Speaker 1: becoming more violent, we're also waking up to the injustices
Speaker 1: of our criminal justice system, and maybe there's a little
Speaker 1: more grace around that. Following is the full conversation that
Speaker 1: Jarvis and I had, which was streamed during the Black
Speaker 1: and Buddhist Summit, in which he shares his thoughts about
Speaker 1: how Buddhism plays an important role in the lives of
Speaker 1: black Americans who are or have been incarcerated. I am
Speaker 1: Jarvis Masters. I've been in San Quentin for close to
Speaker 1: forty years. A few months short of that. I became
Speaker 1: a Buddhist in nineteen one, I think her two. I've
Speaker 1: written two books, one Finding Freedom and the other is
Speaker 1: That Bird Has My Wings. I have various teachers, and
Speaker 1: all my teachers have given me the benefit of their
Speaker 1: experience in the last thirty years, and I've been using
Speaker 1: those experiences in prison as much as they fit the
Speaker 1: circumstances that we live in. How did you get introduced
Speaker 1: to Buddhism back in or ninety How did you find it?
Speaker 1: I was waiting to see if I was going to
Speaker 1: receive the death sentence for the death of a sergeant,
Speaker 1: Sergeant Burstfield, and said Quentin. That occurred in and my
Speaker 1: friend and teacher, one of my teachers, Melo D. Armor
Speaker 1: Child thought, because I was down there and the holding
Speaker 1: think that I might want to read a magazine that
Speaker 1: was familiar to her. And it was called Inquiring Mind,
Speaker 1: An Insight, Inquiring Mind. They had this little clip and
Speaker 1: it said free book. In the name of the book
Speaker 1: was Life and Relationship to Death. And I sat there
Speaker 1: and read it for almost a week. Why my why
Speaker 1: the jurys and deliberation, and I just thought, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: let me try this, you know, life and relationship to death.
Speaker 1: You know, it was where I was. You know, I
Speaker 1: wasn't there because because of my trial. I was there.
Speaker 1: I realized that name because of my whole life history,
Speaker 1: and I took heart to that, and eventually I got
Speaker 1: a free copy of the book and I wrote to
Speaker 1: thank them, and a woman named Lisa Leghorn responded and
Speaker 1: we created a correspondence and at some point I realized
Speaker 1: she was a senior student of who is now my
Speaker 1: teacher took to representate and eventually he, you know, he
Speaker 1: came down to visit me a few times, and at
Speaker 1: some point I was giving the empowerment. It's a ceremony
Speaker 1: that was just basically to introduce me to Rogeriana Buddhism.
Speaker 1: And I became a student of that practice US and
Speaker 1: I was giving a practice called the Red Tar practice.
Speaker 1: And I thought that practice, as I began to sit
Speaker 1: with it, was a very clear, honest way of opening
Speaker 1: me up to see where freedom really is. What is
Speaker 1: the practice? Retire practice is a guide, a way of
Speaker 1: opening the door of confronting our suffering and suffering of
Speaker 1: all beings. And it's a prayer that allows us to
Speaker 1: you know, work on that, work on opening many many
Speaker 1: doors that has been locked. There were a locked for me,
Speaker 1: particularly because there was a lot of things I was denial.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of things that I'd impaired attention
Speaker 1: to that my life gave some purpose floor and I
Speaker 1: really really got into it. I I thought it as
Speaker 1: a perfect guy for where I was in my life.
Speaker 1: Why what what was it about Buddhism in particular that
Speaker 1: drew you in? Oh, it was the opening gate. It
Speaker 1: opened a lot of doors. It opened a lot of
Speaker 1: gates for me to sit with. It was a practice
Speaker 1: what you know, that had meditation, a lot of meditation.
Speaker 1: It was a practice that that dealt with me and
Speaker 1: the suffering that I was dealing with, you know, the
Speaker 1: human suffering that I was dealing with. Let's call and
Speaker 1: your telephone numbers will be monitored and recorded. And it
Speaker 1: taught me how to begin the process of dissolving those
Speaker 1: those things, those obstacles that has been in my life.
Speaker 1: There was that life Jarvis, like when you first meditated,
Speaker 1: So you're you're sitting there and you're waiting to hear
Speaker 1: the verdict back on the death sentence. Walk us through
Speaker 1: your oriens with meditation. Wasn't frustrating at first? Did you
Speaker 1: take to it like a fish to water? Now? I
Speaker 1: just I just learned how to sit down and and
Speaker 1: to probably the opposite. I just sit down and started
Speaker 1: thinking that was a good thing for me, because I
Speaker 1: had to learn how to sit down first. Before I
Speaker 1: learned how to meditate. I was a very angry person
Speaker 1: and I didn't particularly things. Sitting down was you know,
Speaker 1: fulfilling for me at that time. So I just had
Speaker 1: to learn how to sit down and sit down with me,
Speaker 1: you know. And that took a while. You know, there
Speaker 1: was a lot of times where I was bored with it,
Speaker 1: but I made a commitment to myself. I just sit there,
Speaker 1: and things start opening up. Gates started opening up, windows
Speaker 1: start becoming with more fresh air than I had ever
Speaker 1: felt before. And that was a beautiful time for me,
Speaker 1: It really was. And I was dealing with san Quentin,
Speaker 1: and I was dealing with death role, and I was
Speaker 1: dealing with how did I get to this point in
Speaker 1: my life? And I started realizing that we all suffered
Speaker 1: to some degree or another and that I was not alone.
Speaker 1: And one of the things my teacher, one of my
Speaker 1: teachers taught me was that you know, you're not the
Speaker 1: worst case. You know, uh, there's many people who have
Speaker 1: far more worse problems than you. And that was a
Speaker 1: that was a guiding light for me to not think
Speaker 1: of me for me, but just think of all beings
Speaker 1: and all people who suffered way more than I do.
Speaker 1: And I really felt a companionship with that. You know,
Speaker 1: was it difficult at first? I mean, did you have
Speaker 1: any resentment? Because to tell you that there are people
Speaker 1: worse off than you here you are potentially on death row?
Speaker 1: How did that sit with you? I learned Buddhism pretty
Speaker 1: much at the feet of my teacher, so I was
Speaker 1: really really guided, very I was very trained. I had
Speaker 1: the benefit of really really having a songa a community,
Speaker 1: and I had members of that community visit me often,
Speaker 1: so I never went outside what I was trained to
Speaker 1: sit with. Well, the difficult I think it was not
Speaker 1: in retrospect. Wasn't boring, of course that was yes, it
Speaker 1: was born at very boring for me. I just had
Speaker 1: the benefit of having teachers all around me my age
Speaker 1: older than me, folks who have been into Buddhism twenty
Speaker 1: years before I had. And these people really really trained
Speaker 1: trained me, taught me a lot. But more than that,
Speaker 1: they taught me how to teach myself, and that was
Speaker 1: something I never really really had the ability to learn
Speaker 1: how to teach myself. You can find all kinds of teachers,
Speaker 1: you know, and all kinds of teachers want you to
Speaker 1: think like they do, aren't practice like they do. In
Speaker 1: my community taught me how to think for myself, taught
Speaker 1: me how to become my own practitioners because they recognized
Speaker 1: that I was on sad Qui death row and for
Speaker 1: many them, they couldn't even fathom the thought of being
Speaker 1: physically on death row. For them, they thought, wow, he's
Speaker 1: really he really is suffering. He is in that sea
Speaker 1: of suffering. He is face and death, real death. And
Speaker 1: they made me realize that. But they also made me
Speaker 1: realize that that is nothing close to me in the
Speaker 1: end of who I was, you know, it was the
Speaker 1: beginning of who I became. Um, I just had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to have some serious people around me, so you
Speaker 1: learned the first step was to learn to sit with yourself.
Speaker 1: Can you describe what that looked like, I assumed you
Speaker 1: sat in your mind by four sell and just sat
Speaker 1: on the ground. Just said on the ground. I mean,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to sit on no cushions. I wanted
Speaker 1: to sit on the ground because I really wanted to
Speaker 1: feel what my body was going through, you know, I
Speaker 1: really wanted to feel that sense of suffering. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to make this place comfortable, and I was determined
Speaker 1: not to do that. I was determined not to hide behind,
Speaker 1: you know, being a Buddhist and having a Buddhist community,
Speaker 1: asked my way of getting through all the doors that
Speaker 1: I needed to. At point, did sitting with yourself evolved
Speaker 1: into a meditation practice? And what did that look like? Well,
Speaker 1: I thought, I thought. One of the reason, and this
Speaker 1: is in retrospect, because this happened, you know, thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: So um, I think I was trying to ground out
Speaker 1: the noise that became my my sense of refuge. I
Speaker 1: was really trying to ground out the noise because San
Speaker 1: Quentin is a very, very very loud place. So I
Speaker 1: was trying to ground out the noise. And a lot
Speaker 1: of things came to mind that one practitioner, another friend
Speaker 1: had said to me and I said with that, you know,
Speaker 1: just out of curiosity, you know. And then I started
Speaker 1: getting some guidance about meditation, you know, and those particular
Speaker 1: instructions that's called andrew our telephone numbers be monitored and recorded.
Speaker 1: A lot you had sixty seconds remaining. Excuse me, A
Speaker 1: lot of them did not fit saying quickly. So I
Speaker 1: have to figure out a way to make my practice
Speaker 1: fit the conditions that I was living in. And that
Speaker 1: gave me a lot of room to explore too, come
Speaker 1: with a genuine heart, but to explore how do you
Speaker 1: get along with people being a Buddhist, I mean you
Speaker 1: being a Buddhist no one else, you know, because hand
Speaker 1: there was very few Buddhists. So I had to figure
Speaker 1: out how to do that, you know, and that became
Speaker 1: sort of like a practice. You know. You can have
Speaker 1: your meditation practice, and you can have your sitting, and
Speaker 1: you can have your instruction. But c Quentin gave me
Speaker 1: a new way of thinking about Buddhism. Yeah, it gave
Speaker 1: me a new way of thinking about Buddhism. Because I
Speaker 1: was feeling pressure on one end, the inmates, them, the guards,
Speaker 1: because I had, as I said, was on the crime scene.
Speaker 1: You know, I the murder death, the sergeant burst feel
Speaker 1: happened on San Quentin and now I'm on San Quentin's
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of hatred from the guards,
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of a lot of people
Speaker 1: thinking that I was running away from being who I
Speaker 1: was by accepting the idea of using my time to meditate.
Speaker 1: So I had sort of like wall to wall enemy,
Speaker 1: so to speak. So I had to figure out what
Speaker 1: was I going to do if I was going to
Speaker 1: stay with this practice, that mean I'm not going to sugarcoat.
Speaker 1: It was very, very hard and a difficult process, but
Speaker 1: one then I thought, really really open doors for me,
Speaker 1: open many doors for me. As an example, for the
Speaker 1: first to maybe three years maybe five years that I
Speaker 1: became a practitioner, all I was learning from san Quentin
Speaker 1: is what not to do. I never felt like I
Speaker 1: was being inspired to learn what to do. What do
Speaker 1: you mean learning what not to do? Well? I get
Speaker 1: I see guys yelling disagreement at guards, and I said, wow,
Speaker 1: this is what I look when I do that. You know,
Speaker 1: I see guards, you know, in a lot of pain
Speaker 1: and suffering, and I said, wow, this guard may be
Speaker 1: going home to his son. I would see violence and
Speaker 1: I say, wow, you know, how can I participate in compassion?
Speaker 1: You know. So it was those kind of experiences that
Speaker 1: I was constantly learning, you know. And as I figured
Speaker 1: my way through these things, people start calling me a
Speaker 1: real serious practitioner, and I never took serious to that.
Speaker 1: What my whole trip was is to find the gates.
Speaker 1: That was just gonna open me up to understanding what
Speaker 1: compassion and how compassionate works inside a prison system. M
Speaker 1: And it was hard. It was hard. It was very hard,
Speaker 1: you know. I was confronted with a lot of violence.
Speaker 1: I was in the shoe unit, security housing unit, and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they put long words to it to deny what it is.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people were in there for serious things,
Speaker 1: you know, murder, The saw serious stuff, you know. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that broke me through because I
Speaker 1: keep talking about opening gates and opening doors. What's the
Speaker 1: first story I wrote called scars And this is a
Speaker 1: if you're refinding freedom story about inmates. And I noticed
Speaker 1: the scars and whips on their back and I've never
Speaker 1: seen those before, but I had my own, you know,
Speaker 1: because they were popping iron lifting weights in the middle
Speaker 1: of this hot sun they just stuck out, you know.
Speaker 1: They were whips. They were not just scars. They were
Speaker 1: serious whips. And I just had to figure out, why
Speaker 1: did the hell did you get these things? You know?
Speaker 1: And they all told me. But what got me more
Speaker 1: than anything, more than the story, was the expression they
Speaker 1: gave to the story. It was like a proud thing
Speaker 1: to have these scars and whips. It was to say
Speaker 1: that I did that been there before. And I realized
Speaker 1: I had my own. I had my own. And I
Speaker 1: looked at my my hand where I remember the councilors
Speaker 1: made us compete while I was a jew a now
Speaker 1: and they will put the s agree between our two thumbs,
Speaker 1: and they waited to see who could stay there the longest.
Speaker 1: I forgot about that, you know, But then when I
Speaker 1: looked around, I started seeing that. I went to my
Speaker 1: cell and I realized that I have the same thing.
Speaker 1: Let's call and to our telephone number. They'll be monitored
Speaker 1: and recorded. And you know, when I felt like I
Speaker 1: had the same thing, I felt an opportunity to write
Speaker 1: about the same thing. And I wrote the story the scars,
Speaker 1: and somehow the inmates, the prisoners and convicts got a
Speaker 1: hold of that story. I can't remember if I shared
Speaker 1: it with them. Are they just found it somewhere? And
Speaker 1: at first I said, oh my god, what the fund
Speaker 1: did I do here? And I was surprised to realize
Speaker 1: they all accepted that story as the true story of
Speaker 1: their life history. It would told from someone who have
Speaker 1: that own history, and there's just a spirit an acceptance
Speaker 1: to it, you know, by just using certain words, and
Speaker 1: you know, instead of using abuse and neglect and all
Speaker 1: these things, there's other words for it, you know. So
Speaker 1: I understood that the language would be able to give
Speaker 1: me a whole lot of access to people. And like
Speaker 1: you know the trade or you know, you know well
Speaker 1: that will learn all the words that tells you how
Speaker 1: the well. And I had to figure out what was
Speaker 1: the voice of saying Quentin deathro And that's been a
Speaker 1: practice for me ever since. It's not just you learn
Speaker 1: it and you forget about it. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: day to day practice. You were out on the yard
Speaker 1: and you saw these guys and they all had similar
Speaker 1: scars and similar life stories. You had the language of
Speaker 1: Buddhism to deal with that history. Did you share that
Speaker 1: with the guys that were out there? Were there other
Speaker 1: guys out there that were Buddhist practitioners, and they look
Speaker 1: at you like you were strange that you have this.
Speaker 1: I had never known a Buddhist practitioner on those yards
Speaker 1: back then. I've known people who would meditate, you know,
Speaker 1: but I never knew them take the practitioner acceptance in
Speaker 1: parliament ceremonies and you know the others as a way
Speaker 1: of changing their whole life cycle. It was just me
Speaker 1: jive talking talking, you know, directly to their stars and
Speaker 1: directly to all of our egos. And there was something
Speaker 1: that I looked at and realized I found the permission
Speaker 1: to write about prison in Buddhism. It was something that
Speaker 1: I really really began to realize my purpose, My purpose
Speaker 1: for being here is to be more of an engage Buddhists,
Speaker 1: not so much on the academic side, but more so
Speaker 1: as a practitioner, as someone who's engaged in kind of
Speaker 1: find the joy and happiness within. You know, each of us,
Speaker 1: you know, and you know family does. Writing to family,
Speaker 1: writing to our nephews and our sons and kids was
Speaker 1: a real experience, and I thought a lot of us
Speaker 1: didn't realize how fortunate we were. And I need to
Speaker 1: say this also, I was one of the first people
Speaker 1: who dealt with me. I dealt with me, and the
Speaker 1: only way I could have this is in retrospect. The
Speaker 1: only way I could have done what I was doing
Speaker 1: was I had to learn how to accept it for
Speaker 1: myself too, And that was the heart of my practice.
Speaker 1: That's when I was taught trained to practice from and
Speaker 1: I had here's to sit with, you know, and I
Speaker 1: sit with those years now. You talked about your ego
Speaker 1: and when you came into prison, this is five ten
Speaker 1: years prior to Sergeant Birksfield being murdered. You admitted to
Speaker 1: being angry and bitter and frustrated based on the life
Speaker 1: that you had been handed. How did Buddhism fundamentally change
Speaker 1: you and how you dealt with your own ego? Um,
Speaker 1: I remember going to trial and let's call and to
Speaker 1: our telephone numbers will be monitored and recorded. This is
Speaker 1: just one way it could be in other ways. What
Speaker 1: stands out for me? You know, I learned how to cry,
Speaker 1: you know, I've never did. I learned how to here
Speaker 1: the tears and other people's speech in their language. So
Speaker 1: on come up to me and says, my mother just died,
Speaker 1: But it ain't no thing, you know. I had a
Speaker 1: lot of years with her, you know, No you didn't,
Speaker 1: you know, because you're living with her now. And I
Speaker 1: was able to learn how to express that and have
Speaker 1: the respect us telling that, saying that, and then I
Speaker 1: felt with you know what, I felt responsible for all
Speaker 1: this stuff. Now, what I was learning was teaching me
Speaker 1: how to become a serious practitioner without understanding that. That's
Speaker 1: where I was heading. When you started investigating Buddhism and
Speaker 1: the practice of it, were their resources outside of what
Speaker 1: melody irma child gave you. Because it's just thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: So was there a Buddhist chaplin there that could help
Speaker 1: you learn? There was no such thing as a Buddhist teacher.
Speaker 1: And saying Quentin, you know, religion and San Quentin and
Speaker 1: I think it's probably another prison too, is very territorial. Catholicism, Islam,
Speaker 1: these faiths, you know, our well established will inside the
Speaker 1: prison system. Buddhism was like, where is this going? You know,
Speaker 1: is this a real religion? We're not going to allow
Speaker 1: you to practice this in a formal setting because it's not.
Speaker 1: If they don't fit the bill of being a real religion,
Speaker 1: they didn't recognize that. They didn't acknowledge it. They didn't
Speaker 1: do any of those things. A good example it would
Speaker 1: be when I had my empowerment ceremony, when my teacher
Speaker 1: representate came to give me my power and ceremony, they
Speaker 1: kept me behind a glass window. All the rituals and
Speaker 1: all the little things that you would need to go
Speaker 1: through it in power ceremony, we're not given to us.
Speaker 1: They didn't acknowledge that. But now if I wanted to
Speaker 1: get baptized, they escort you right outside the prison and
Speaker 1: right out the adjustment center and you'll go be bathtime somewhere.
Speaker 1: But you know what, I did not mind those things.
Speaker 1: I wasn't smart enough or I didn't take my practice
Speaker 1: serious enough to see the discrimination in that. And one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why I didn't do that because refreshe
Speaker 1: didn't give me no excuse. He wouldn't allow no excuse,
Speaker 1: so I didn't. I just gave up on you know,
Speaker 1: whatever frustrations I had with that, you wasting time? You
Speaker 1: know his attitude was you wasting time? How did the
Speaker 1: guys with you on the East block take to the
Speaker 1: fact that you were you like a Buddhist elder to
Speaker 1: them or did they find did they accept you for
Speaker 1: who you were? They have this saying, and I may
Speaker 1: have interpreted the wrong way, so forgive me if I have.
Speaker 1: But I always heard that term kill the Buddha, you know,
Speaker 1: at some point you have to kill the Buddha, and
Speaker 1: kind of understand it. But maybe I did not understand.
Speaker 1: But I definitely used it, you know, I definitely put
Speaker 1: my own twist to it. And what I mean by
Speaker 1: putting my twist to it was that I stopped trying
Speaker 1: to act like a Buddhist, the Buddhas that I would
Speaker 1: try to imitate, sitting down, the one that would, you know,
Speaker 1: hold his fingers together and try to meditate, the one
Speaker 1: who has some kind of deep realization, the kind of
Speaker 1: people who thought they found enlightenment. Stopped being those people.
Speaker 1: I stopped reading the books. I was left on my own.
Speaker 1: And I think what my teacher taught me is how
Speaker 1: to be on my own in a way of bringing
Speaker 1: out a more number of people in the community together,
Speaker 1: you know. So it was me learning how to not
Speaker 1: talk like a Buddhist and be a Buddhist not having
Speaker 1: all the academic skills. Readings to your Buddhists I mean
Speaker 1: those are pitfalls. All those are which gets you in trouble.
Speaker 1: You know, I was keeping my friendships, that's all. I
Speaker 1: was trying to keep people from going to the whole,
Speaker 1: are being um um extracted from their selves, are made
Speaker 1: or shot all those things. Is the Buddhist community grown
Speaker 1: in the last thirty years? Oh yeah, Can you tell
Speaker 1: me a little bit about it? You know, I think
Speaker 1: the ministration has most ministrations in our nation's history. You
Speaker 1: have sixty seconds remaining accepted the idea that it helps,
Speaker 1: it helps the overall institution to have or to have
Speaker 1: someone coming diet to prison and teach people how to
Speaker 1: sit and meditate. It's been a benefit to the prison administrations,
Speaker 1: at least the ones I know to be able to
Speaker 1: do that. So it's it's a it's an important aspect
Speaker 1: of understanding what helps prisoners and prisoners find peace, find
Speaker 1: an inner peace and are not assault guards or anything
Speaker 1: like that. Of course, big, it's a huge, It is
Speaker 1: very huge. Now do you find Buddhist communities in almost
Speaker 1: every prison? Okay, So the group that you are talking
Speaker 1: to right now, Black Buddhist Conference. It's sponsored by Trumbala,
Speaker 1: who is the publisher of your book Finding Freedom, which
Speaker 1: has got re released, and they'd like me to talk
Speaker 1: specifically to how Buddhism plays an important role in the
Speaker 1: lives of a lot of Black Americans who have been
Speaker 1: incarcerated or who are there now, you know, and what
Speaker 1: I know my own experience is, and it's all been
Speaker 1: a set equipment and it's mostly all been on death rolls.
Speaker 1: So I don't have a lot of what this panel
Speaker 1: might have as their own experiences. But for me, I
Speaker 1: think Buddhism and let's call and you our telephone numbers
Speaker 1: they're been monitoring any did the relationship to being black
Speaker 1: and the Buddhists are being black and a teacher is territorial.
Speaker 1: I've never ever saw a teacher of African descent teaching
Speaker 1: Buddhism in prison. It is unheard of in my own experience.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm isolated, you know, I'm in I'm
Speaker 1: on death row, and I'm isolated. The dim units in
Speaker 1: Santa Quentin's death role are very isolated. The panel that
Speaker 1: this is being presented to, they are both black Buddhist
Speaker 1: practitioners but also non practitioners. So people who may be
Speaker 1: identified with Islam or may be identified with Christianity, can
Speaker 1: Buddhism or practices they are in add to their home
Speaker 1: religious practices. I think, so I don't see why not.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know all the tenants of these
Speaker 1: various faith but I can't imagine someone saying that I
Speaker 1: need to cultivate compassion. I need to be of some
Speaker 1: service too to quell violence wherever I am. I shouldn't
Speaker 1: have a problem understanding the nature of suffering and where
Speaker 1: that leads, you know. I can't imagine those various tenants
Speaker 1: not playing a part in all face, you know. But
Speaker 1: if you get hooked on the name, you leave a
Speaker 1: lot of people behind, no matter what faith you're in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the name is a hook to me, you know. And
Speaker 1: I started using that phrase when I was talking to
Speaker 1: you earlier about killing the Buddha, that the name Buddha
Speaker 1: is a hook. It creates confusion, you know, and it
Speaker 1: creates chaos and it analysis. You know. It's truth to me.
Speaker 1: It feels like when you it was these terms, you're
Speaker 1: using something against people attraction. Let's call and to our
Speaker 1: telephone number. They'll be monitored and recorded. Marca Luis King
Speaker 1: walked with all face, And I actually no problem with that,
Speaker 1: you know, and no one seen a problem with that.
Speaker 1: Probably there all I did, but no one else, you know.
Speaker 1: But we can walk together, you know, we can sit together.
Speaker 1: You know, we can use our own particular practices to
Speaker 1: make the world better, you know, to suffering. Well, Ben,
Speaker 1: you know that's that's perfect to me. And you know
Speaker 1: I was raised in a Baptist church when I was small,
Speaker 1: so um, I tried my best to get out of
Speaker 1: that place. Um because I was young, and I just
Speaker 1: you know, I like any kid back in back then,
Speaker 1: way back then, you know, you rather ride your bike,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, you know, you were to play marbles
Speaker 1: for something. You getting all the press stuff and they're
Speaker 1: putting all that grease on your face and you're sitting
Speaker 1: sitting with all these old people and something. You see
Speaker 1: it every time you walk in his church. You see
Speaker 1: a cat. It's sitting right down the aisle. I didn't
Speaker 1: want that. That was not my bike, you know, on
Speaker 1: my my skateboard. Yeah. Yeah, So so we talked about
Speaker 1: your book Finding Freedom then rereleased this past year, and
Speaker 1: then David Chef's book, the biography The Buddhist on Death
Speaker 1: Row was released several months ago. Such a beautiful book,
Speaker 1: and then the new anthology Black and Buddhist. So how
Speaker 1: did it feel for you to see growing interest in
Speaker 1: the experience of black Buddhists around the country. I think
Speaker 1: it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing.
Speaker 1: I remember a while back, short of when I was
Speaker 1: only in an angry state, and I said, you know what,
Speaker 1: if you know, I went to my teacher, I went
Speaker 1: to Lisa, one of the senior students of Reproche, and
Speaker 1: I said, you know what, why isn't there a black Buddhuses?
Speaker 1: You know, how can all these people be reincarnated as Asian?
Speaker 1: You know that? How is that true? That will make
Speaker 1: sense to me? You know, do you mean to tell
Speaker 1: me everybody who has something that created a recycle of
Speaker 1: life as we would call it a rebirth, they all
Speaker 1: ended up being Tibettan or Chinese, or Japanese or Asian?
Speaker 1: How does that happen? What do you guys get that from?
Speaker 1: That'll make that'll drive with me and for me, I
Speaker 1: used to just come straight out with it, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And she said to me, she said, now I'll never
Speaker 1: forget it. She said. Market was the key was a
Speaker 1: Buddhist Malcolm Max was a Buddhist. This is where you
Speaker 1: find your teachers. Your teachers are not you know, always
Speaker 1: to betting. They are the community leaders in your community.
Speaker 1: There are the black teachers who teaches kids. They are there.
Speaker 1: They just don't get hooked up on the name Buddhists.
Speaker 1: You hear Buddhists because that's their name and that's their faith.
Speaker 1: You know in Asia are somewhere else. But trust me,
Speaker 1: they're there and they're practicing and their teaching and that
Speaker 1: just that was a life change in the moment for me.
Speaker 1: You have sixty seconds remaining because I needed to hear
Speaker 1: that answer. If I had not known that answer, I
Speaker 1: would always have hiccups about what's going on with this?
Speaker 1: You know, So to go back to what you're saying,
Speaker 1: I think it's a good thing, really do. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: know the folks at Shambala and the Summits host Ioya
Speaker 1: Sunday wanted to express their gratitude because this is awesome.
Speaker 1: It's going to be an amazing event. And uh, I
Speaker 1: wish you could be there physically, but maybe next year
Speaker 1: maybe will have you you know, the event and physically
Speaker 1: be there. What do you say that would be great?
Speaker 1: That would be great but if I can ask them
Speaker 1: for a favor, you know, I would say to them,
Speaker 1: if it's all possible, I would love for that talent
Speaker 1: to bring as much of what they're speaking to inside
Speaker 1: San Quentin. I think that would be a very powerful statement.
Speaker 1: I mean, Sarah Coultin has two cable stations that are
Speaker 1: specifically used to address or to speak out of other
Speaker 1: places that it makes may not be allowed to go,
Speaker 1: ye not have priv to have access. You know, if
Speaker 1: you are in isolation confinement, they have church services on
Speaker 1: that station. Uh, if you're an education and you can't
Speaker 1: get to you know, a school or school, you know
Speaker 1: the prison school house, they run school via television the
Speaker 1: cable station. And to have this African community of Buddhists
Speaker 1: and non Buddhistists appear on those stations would say a
Speaker 1: whole lot to the benefit. That is a huge step.
Speaker 1: Let's call and your telephone number will be monitored and recorded. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll work with them. I'll do what I can do
Speaker 1: to help help facilitate that. Absolutely, absolutely, that would be great. Okay,
Speaker 1: you got it, you done, did good, and I ain't
Speaker 1: blown smoke, I ain't feel alright. Alright, Let's call and
Speaker 1: to our telephone number will be monitored and recorded. Bolly oh,
Speaker 1: he's telling me you have to go now, Okay, so
Speaker 1: all right here, alright, alright, okay. Next week we'll hear
Speaker 1: from Jarvis's lead attorney at Kirkland and Ellis, as well
Speaker 1: as from some of you who have reached out to
Speaker 1: Jarvis directly through our hotline with questions and curiosities. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Pamela Ayo Yatunde. Check out her latest book
Speaker 1: Black and Buddhist. What Buddhism can teach Us about race, resilience,
Speaker 1: transformation and Healing. This episode was written and produced by
Speaker 1: Donna Fazzari and myself Cornicle. Our theme song sentenced is
Speaker 1: compliments of the band Stick Figure from their album Set
Speaker 1: in Stone. Stu Sternbach composed the original music. Nate Defort
Speaker 1: did the sound design. For more information on Jarvis and
Speaker 1: to find out how you can follow his case and
Speaker 1: support his cause, please visit free Jarvis dot org. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.