Buddha Behind Bars

The Dhamma Brothers is a documentary about a Vipassana meditation program inside an Alabama prison. I started to call it a "gritty" documentary, but in truth it wasn't quite gritty enough. As a film I found it somewhat less interesting than did Andrew O'Hehir, who reviewed The Dhamma Brothers for Salon. I'm giving it a "B minus."

In brief, in this film two Vipassana teachers arrive at Alabama's W.E. Donaldson Correctional Facility and guide a group of inmates through a 10-day Vipassana retreat, held inside the prison gymnasium. As one who has sat a few sesshins, I appreciate how hard that must have been, particularly for people who had never done a formal meditation practice before. The dedication of the prisoners to not only finish the retreat but also to continue regular meditation after is inspiring.

The film also brought up serious church-state separation issues. The teachers had to assure prison administration that the program would be strictly secular, and that the prisoners would not be taught Buddhism. Even so, when Alabama state officials learned that retreat participants continued to meditate, and even worse to talk about Vipassana to other prisoners, the program was shut down pronto. (It has since been reinstated.)

There are, of course, a number of "faith-based" prison programs in the U.S. that teach prisoners Christianity. This is fine with me, as long as (a) prisoner participation is entirely voluntary, and (b) the prison system shows no favoritism to Christianity and allows other religious traditions to run "faith-based" prison programs also. Whether current programs meet these criteria I cannot say. This is a huge issue that needs deeper investigation.

Dhamma Brothers emphasizes that the Alabama program was a "first" in the United States. Possibly it is, for Vipassana, but there have been Buddhist meditation programs in American prisons going back several years. Zen Mountain Monastery began a prison program in 1984, for example. The Buddhist Peace Fellowship initiated a nonsectarian Buddhist prison program (now called the "Transformative Justice Program") in 1998.