The Dhamma Brothers

Meditating prisoners

My interest in the documentary “The Dhamma Brothers” was heightened by the conflict in Tibet, where Buddhist monks have been charged by some leftists as functioning as CIA agents. In some ways, I feel torn between sympathy for the Tibetans and suspicion that they are being manipulated by Washington. Long before I became a socialist, I was sympathetic to Buddhist ideas even though I never practiced meditation or any other exercises associated with the religion. In the early 1960s, Buddhist ideas pervaded the “new poetry” movement in all its aspects, from Jack Kerouac’s novels to the poetry of Gary Snyder. Indeed, Kerouac’s “The Dharma Bums” (dhamma is the Pali language equivalent of the Sanskrit dharma) is all about Gary Snyder, who is called Japhy Ryder in the novel. The dramatic tension in this novel—Kerouac’s finest after “On the Road”—is maintained by Kerouac’s (named Ray Smith) failure to get past his ego, no matter how hard he tries through meditation, reading scripture, etc.

If Kerouac had problems, can you imagine the hurdles that would have to be overcome by “The Dhamma Brothers”? These were hardened criminals, including some death row inmates, who were incarcerated in the Donaldson Correctional Facility in Alabama. They live behind high security towers and a double row of barbed and electrical wire fences, the last place in the world where Buddhism might take root. But take root it did through the efforts of Bruce Stewart and Jonathan Crowley, two trainers from the Vipassana Meditation Center in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. They were invited to lead a 10 day meditation seminar by Jenny Phillips, a cultural anthropologist and psychotherapist who believed that prison life could be more bearable after mastering Buddhist meditation techniques.

The movie spends little time showing the men meditating, a wise choice given the fact that it is done in silence and involves sitting for long stretches with one’s eyes closed. This turned out to be highly positive for the men even if it didn’t lend itself to thrilling cinema.

What makes the film interesting is the conversion of the men as recounted in interviews. They come across as genuinely enlightened by their experience. No matter how degraded they were before they entered prison, they now seem at peace with themselves and unburdened from the psychic woes of prison life.

Considering the lengths to which Christian fundamentalism will go to impose its views on the American electorate, it should come as no surprise that pressure was applied on the prison to suspend all Buddhist meditation seminars since they were drawing men away from Christian services in prison. Ironically, one of the first questions posed to the Vipassana trainers by a prisoner was whether they would have to give up their Christian beliefs. They were assured that they would not have to, but were urged to forgo prayers until the training had come to an end.

I confess to having some doubts about the motives of the prison officials who gave their blessing to the Vipassana-led training. One supposes that they would approve anything that led to a calmer environment behind bars. However, given the fact that Donaldson prison is an oppressive institution, one wonders whether prisoner-inspired reforms are possible if the prisoners are reconciled to their status there.

This ultimately is the question that I had to grapple with when I became a socialist in 1967. As partial as I was to Buddhist ideas, I wondered whether their wide acceptance in the counter-culture might have had the effect of tempering the mood on campus or in rural retreats in places like Vermont and Northern California.

After seeing “The Dhamma Brothers,” I go back and forth on these questions. It is impossible not to give credit to a philosophy or religion that will allow suffering to be reduced under circumstances that are beyond our control. Life behind bars is a fact on the ground that these men had to contend with, while for the rest of humanity old age, illness and death are just as intransigent.

As I continued to wrestle with these contradictions, I thought it useful to return to a classic that led many undergraduates to consider Buddhism back in the early 1970s. This paragraph from the final chapter of Herman Hesse’s “Siddhartha” remains compelling to me after all these years, while the reference to “this criminal in bondage” resonates strongly with “The Dhamma Brothers”:

He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha, instead he saw other faces, many, a long sequence, a flowing river of faces, of hundreds, of thousands, which all came and disappeared, and yet all seemed to be there simultaneously, which all constantly changed and renewed themselves, and which were still all Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, a carp, with an infinitely painfully opened mouth, the face of a dying fish, with fading eyes–he saw the face of a new-born child, red and full of wrinkles, distorted from crying–he saw the face of a murderer, he saw him plunging a knife into the body of another person–he saw, in the same second, this criminal in bondage, kneeling and his head being chopped off by the executioner with one blow of his sword–he saw the bodies of men and women, naked in positions and cramps of frenzied love–he saw corpses stretched out, motionless, cold, void– he saw the heads of animals, of boars, of crocodiles, of elephants, of bulls, of birds–he saw gods, saw Krishna, saw Agni–he saw all of these figures and faces in a thousand relationships with one another, each one helping the other, loving it, hating it, destroying it, giving re-birth to it, each one was a will to die, a passionately painful confession of transitoriness, and yet none of then died, each one only transformed, was always re-born, received evermore a new face, without any time having passed between the one and the other face–and all of these figures and faces rested, flowed, generated themselves, floated along and merged with each other, and they were all constantly covered by something thin, without individuality of its own, but yet existing, like a thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, a shell or mold or mask of water, and this mask was smiling, and this mask was Siddhartha’s smiling face, which he, Govinda, in this very same moment touched with his lips.

“The Dhamma Brothers” opens at the Cinema Village in New York City on April 11. For screening information elsewhere, go to the movie’s website at http://www.dhammabrothers.com