posted November 25, 2007 11:17 PM              

"This practical manual will inspire everyone who is as concerned with helping others as with their own personal improvement."
-- from the Foreword by His Holiness, The Dalai Lama

Bo Lozoff's first book, WE'RE ALL DOING TIME has met with phenomenal acclaim around the world since its first printing in 1984. Few books have crossed religious, ethnic, cultural and economic lines with such a clear and simple, immediately useful expression of ageless spiritual truths. The English-language edition is now in its thirteenth printing.

336 pp; paperback.

This is a beautiful book filled with hope, inspiration, artwork, photography, poetry and quotes. I gave my copy to a man I met, an artist, who devotes his talents, time, energy and money to helping troubled youth.

Bo and his wife, Sita are saints (in my eyes) who have devoted their lives to helping inmates turn their lives around.
God bless.

posted November 25, 2007 11:17 PM              

quote:

---

We're All Doing Time
Book Review
By Eloise Hart
Bo Lozoff's book, We're All Doing Time [A Guide for Getting Free, Hanuman Foundation, Durham, 430 pages, 1985. We're All Doing Time is provided free to anyone in prison and to other shut-ins who can't afford to pay for it. All proceeds from the sale of the book go to support this free distribution. Write to: Prison-Ashram Project, Rt.1, BOX 201-N, Durham, NC27705. The Prison-Ashram Project is part of Hanuman Foundation, a non-profit organization designed to relieve human suffering.], is addressed to those whose lives are darkened by the loneliness and frustration of confinement, whether within prison walls or caused by the isolation of illness, ignorance, or fear. To them, and to all, it offers the warmth of understanding born from experience.

Lozoff during the '60s had traveled the road of drop-out, activist, revolutionary, outlaw, and hippy, protesting against the establishment and at times experimenting with psychedelic drugs. However, he soon discovered this was a dead-end street. Another road, which offered spiritual attainment, beckoned. He entered an ashram, spent hours daily in meditation and farm work, tried various methods of yoga discipline. After a time he realized that, while these methods may help others, satisfaction for him could come only through karma yoga -- service to others.

This awakening came after he had visited friends recently imprisoned without possibility of parole for smuggling marijuana into Miami. Shocked by their anguish and the conditions inside, he felt an overpowering urge to do something to help prison inmates. Perhaps a little kindness? Perhaps meditation? He applied for a job at the prison and was turned down as unqualified, but an assistant warden, intrigued by his idea of offering yoga/meditation instruction to the prisoners, suggested he submit a plan to federal authorities. This Lozoff did. The idea caught on. He was flown to Washington, interviewed at the Bureau of Prisons, hired as a consultant, and given permission to offer classes in federal institutions.

In the early '70s the need was great. Bo Lozoff was invited to conduct Prison-Ashram classes and workshops not only across the U.S.A. but also abroad. In addition, he and his wife, Sita, sent thousands of letters, books, and tapes to inquiring inmates, their families, prison workers, veterans, the handicapped, and "ordinary" people. Many heartwarming exchanges are included in We're All Doing Time.

The book is divided into three sections. Book One, "The Big View," addresses the challenges of living a fulfilling life whatever one's circumstances; Lozoff reminds us, it's not the external props of our lives that set us free, it's the timeless qualities like kindness, courage, self-honor, and humor. He tells us that we are where we are, and what we are, not because we are "bad," but because we're spiritually clumsy. This, however, can be changed: by understanding the powers of our spiritual Self, by turning both good and bad experiences into lessons by which we can grow, we gain the strength and wisdom to face whatever comes, and thus become wiser, freer, and more helpful to others.

The first step, he feels, is to understand ourselves for, as a medicine chief once said:

If you seek to understand the whole universe,
you will understand nothing at all.
If you seek only to understand your Self,
you will understand the whole universe. -- p. 11
The second step is living "in tune with the house rules of the Universe." This comes from understanding the law of cause and effect -- karma -- that "what comes around goes around," that every thought, word, and deed is not only a seed we sow in the world, but is also the fruit we harvest from previous thoughts, deeds, and works. Some of our "seeds," he explains, ripen quickly, others take longer to mature -- lifetimes perhaps. In that case, by the time they "come around" again we will have forgotten that we ourselves planted and cultivated those seedlings; we blame someone else for taking advantage of us, or accuse the Almighty, when in fact what happens is caused by energy we had set in motion long, long ago. This delayed type of karma gives us time to prepare ourselves to handle the effects of those causes in such a way as to improve our present and future life-condition, and that of those we love.

The next step up the ladder is to let go of excess baggage. To illustrate this Lozoff tells how hunters in India capture wild monkeys. They cut a small hole in a coconut, hollow out the inside, and drop in a few pieces of candy. The monkey, eager for sweets, slips its hand into the opening, grabs a fistful of candy and is trapped -- refusing to let go, its clenched fist is too large to come out. We too are caught by our attachments, especially by our prejudices, fears, loves, feelings of guilt, pride, lusts. These attachments weigh us down and blind us from seeing the big view of life.

Book Two, "Getting Free," gives various methods of achieving spiritual awareness which, Lozoff stresses, cannot be attained overnight. Although he discusses at some length specific yoga methods and disciplines, meditation techniques, and the like, he passes rather too lightly over the potential dangers of indiscriminate practice of breath control and arousal of the chakras. In this section he also offers advice regarding mind control, diet, and the search for a guru. Interestingly, he disagrees with psychologists who recommend either expressing or repressing emotions, believing rather that we should be in control of our lives at all times and handle our thoughts and strong emotions constructively.

Regarding diet: while he admits that prison fare isn't ideal, he feels that by following sensible rules of hygiene and nutrition as far as one is able, and avoiding fad diets that so often are merely ego-trips, we can transform whatever we eat into benefit. "If you can't change your diet, change your attitude. 'Bad' food can be transformed into Spirit-food" (p. 80). Throughout, he cautions moderation, lest one's spiritual journey become a body- or head-trip. After all, it doesn't really matter whether one follows Eastern methods or those recommended by other religions, "the message has always been the same: calm down; be still, turn inward to the one God, who dwells deep inside you, don't get carried away by things that glitter, just love everybody and take courage, for I am always with you" (p. 145).

Lozoffs thoughts on prayer are particularly potent. He includes several pages of handlettered prayers and invocations, drawn from a variety of sources -- Christian, American Indian, Hindu, Persian, Judaic, and others. Prayer, he says, is perhaps the most direct way of getting in touch with the Great Spirit that dwells in every human heart. Yet he warns against deceptions, against the tinsel that some religious people equate with spirituality:

Many of us are religious, but far too few are spiritual. Spirituality is the core of all reality; it's a mysterious but certain essence at the center of everything we see or do. . . . But religion, on the other hand, isn't such a natural part of Creation; it's man-made, and a quick look around suggests that maybe it's not made so well. . . .
There's nothing wrong with religion being a method; a path to the One. Each genuine religion through the ages has begun from the Divine inspiration & authority of a being who knows God, and who tells us various ways to live right & turn inward so that we can become as free as they are. But within a few generations, time and time again we've come to worship the religion itself instead of the One; the body of the messenger instead of the Soul. -- pp. 146-7
Getting in touch with God means living harmoniously with natural law. In so doing we benefit ourselves and, more importantly, we lighten the load of the whole planet -- especially if we offer ourselves in service. This Path of Service -- ever close to Bo Lozoff's heart -- leads directly to the kingdom of heaven, to Christ awareness, to the state of awareness that enabled Mother Teresa to say, when asked about her work with the destitute and dying in Calcutta: "When I look into their eyes, I see the Christ."

Although Bo realizes that only a few of us can assume the burdens Mother Teresa carries, he feels that every one of us can in his own way help others, not because it is a noble and ennobling thing to do, but because it is the only thing we can do when our hearts are moved by their need, and we must do something to help. It is, after all, the doing, not just the knowing that brings benefit to the world. Truth isn't information, it's that "glory within" expressed in action and works, and in caring.

Book Three, "Dear Bo . . .", consists of letters exchanged between Bo and inmates -- "spiritual warriors," he calls them. We hear the desperate cries of souls for light, for hope, for escape from almost unbearable karmic loads. And readers, who at one time or another have cried out in the darkness, may find comfort in Bo's kind and practical wisdom. Following this correspondence which extends over periods of months and years, we rejoice that there are strong and selfless people like the Lozoffs and their associates laboring to aid their brothers "up the mountain."

(From Sunrise magazine, August/September 1986; copyright © 1986 Theosophical University Press)

---

posted November 25, 2007 11:20 PM              

Prison-Ashram Project

Ashram is a Sanskrit word meaning "House of God." In the East, an ashram is a place where people live for some period of time in order to strengthen their spiritual practice and self-discipline. Many ashrams are very strict. Residents, or ashramites, abide by an exhaustive schedule and live very simply, without many comforts or luxuries.

In 1973, Bo Lozoff and Ram Dass came up with the idea to help prisoners to use their prisons as ashrams if they were tired enough of seeing themselves as convicts just biding their time until they were released. Ram Dass funded the work, and Bo began corresponding with prisoners and, with their feedback, developing spiritual materials especially suited to that environment.

Neither Bo nor Ram Dass ever imagined that hundreds of thousands of hard-core convicts would be interested in such an idea. But within the first couple of years, the letters began pouring in and have not stopped to this day. By 1975, the Prison-Ashram Project had become Bo's full time job, and that same year Sita committed herself to the work as well. Bo & Sita have visited over 500 prisons, leading thousands of workshops. Bo's books, in particular the well-known We're All Doing Time, have become "the convicts' Bible" in institutions around the world. All of these books, as well as many of our tapes, are sent free of charge to any prison inmate who requests them.

The primary purpose of the Prison-Ashram Project is to inspire and encourage prisoners and prison staff to recognize their depth as human beings, and to behave accordingly. Our inmost nature is divine. The nature of our lives is an incomprehensibly wonderful mystery which each human being can experience only in solitude and silence. Prisoners have the opportunity to dedicate themselves to this inward journey without the distractions and luxuries which occupy many people in the "free world."

Bo teaches a balance between "Communion," which is an entirely inward, transcendent experience, and "Community," which includes everything else -- our behavior toward others, our worldly goals, our treatment of the planet and its resources, etc. His writings and talks, therefore, center both on personal spiritual practice, and committed social activism. The Prison-Ashram Project encourages prisoners to take responsibility for changing their prisons, their communities, and the world.

The Project has a sister organization in the UK. The Prison Phoenix Trust sends out free copies of We're All Doing Time and another book called Becoming Free Through Meditation and Yoga, by Sister Elaine MacInnes. It also sponsors yoga and meditation classes in British prisons, distributes newsletters and carries on correspondence. Click here for their website, or reach them at: PO Box 328, Oxford OX1 1PJ, UK

The French translation of We're All Doing Time, called Nous Sommes Tous Dans une Prison, is available free to prisoners and at one-half list price for prison workers. Write in French or English to: Association Lumiere en Prison, case postale 505, CH-Morges, SWITZERLAND; or to ALP Quebec, 910 rue LaBelle, Saint-Jerome, Quebec, CANADA J7Z 5M5.
(In France, books cannot be sent directly to prisons, but may be brought in during visits. So if you write to ALP from France, please give the name and address of a person authorized to take the book to an inmate during visiting hours.)

We're All Doing Time is available from HKF in English and Spanish, through our catalog. It is sent free of charge to prison inmates, and anyone else who genuinely can't afford it

posted November 25, 2007 11:20 PM              

by Bo Lozoff, Director

The primary work of Human Kindness Foundation is to offer spiritual support to people regardless of their circumstances. However, because we have been in so many prisons - I personally have visited over 600 institutions - we feel a responsibility to offer this brief statement into the widespread debate over crime and punishment, especially in the U.S.A. (most of the following can be applied to other countries as well).

The Mess We’re In Now

America locks up more of its population than any other nation on Earth, a rate five times greater than most industrialized nations. In 1970 there were fewer than 200,000 prisoners in the U.S.A. Now, less than thirty years later, California alone has nearly that many. There are nearly two million across the country. The states are spending an average of $100 million per year on new prisons. Prisoners currently sleep on floors, in tents, in converted broom closets and gymnasiums, or in double or triple bunks in cells that were designed for one inmate. For the most part, prisons are barbaric, terrifying places. Crime victims derive no benefit from this misery. We offer convicts no opportunities to learn compassion or take responsibility for what they have done, nor make restitution or offer atonement to their victims in any practical ways.

Approximately 240,000 brutal rapes occur in our prison system each year. Most of the victims are young, nonviolent male inmates, many of them teenaged first offenders. They are traumatized beyond imagination. Michael Fay’s caning in Singapore was child’s play compared to the reception he would have had in nearly any state prison in America. Contrary to political sloganeering, we are not soft on criminals. We are irresponsibly vicious.

Nearly 70% of all US prisoners are serving time for nonviolent offenses. Please let that sink in, because it’s probably not the image you’ve received from the media. We’ve been led to imagine a legion of heartless monsters plotting to get out and hurt us again. The truth is, most prison inmates are confused, disorganized, and often pathetic individuals who would love to turn their lives around if given a realistic chance. Unfortunately, many of those nonviolent offenders will no longer be nonviolent by the time they leave prison. Prisons are not scaring offenders away from crime; they are incapacitating them so they are hardly fit for anything else.

In other words, the criminal justice system that we’re paying for so dearly simply isn’t working. And yet we keep on throwing more money into it. So how do we start fixing what’s broken? Here are a few places to begin:

Compassion Versus Rage

There are simple universal laws of human life which cannot be violated without paying a painful price. Every great spiritual, philosophic and religious tradition has emphasized compassion, reconciliation, forgiveness and responsibility. These are not suggestions, they are instructions. If we follow them we will thrive, if not we will suffer. The socially-sanctioned hatred and rage which we express toward criminals in modern times violates these timeless instructions. We are breaking a fundamental spiritual law, and the price we are paying for it is increased crime, violence, depravity, hopelessness, and of course, more hatred and rage.

Our children inherit these destructive attitudes. Teen suicide has doubled and teen homicide has tripled in recent years. Many children carry weapons to school. Our children are absorbing the message that it’s okay to despise and harm people whom they perceive as enemies. That is not a mature or civilized philosophy. We are crossing a dangerous threshold of violence and ill-will. We have already crossed it in many movies and TV shows. Even at home around the dinner-table, children may hear words like "scumbag" and "animal" to describe criminals. They may hear jokes or celebratory remarks about the execution of a human being. Children cannot unlearn such views and behavioral patterns overnight.

We must change our attitudes toward those who wrong us. That doesn’t mean we allow people to hurt us or rob us or harm our communities. After all, we don’t allow our children to do cruel or immoral things as they are growing up, but when they do, we don’t hate them for it. We don’t punish them so viciously that they can hardly function for the rest of their lives. We don’t throw them out of our home and tell them to fend for themselves forever. Yet that is what we do in our criminal justice system. By venting our rage and hatred, we make things worse. We make people worse. We take many confused, mostly selfish young men and women, and we create bitter, violent career criminals out of them.

We must also bear in mind that many of the greatest saints and sages of all religions were once criminals, drunkards, prostitutes and even killers. St. Paul was once Saul of Tarsus, a vicious persecutor and killer of Christians. Religious history is filled with such redeemed, transformed sages. As we give up our belief in redemption and transformation, we are crossing another line, one of narrow-mindedness, which will render us poorer indeed. Some of the potential sages and activists of our times may be languishing in prison cells right now. We must seek to maximize rather than destroy such potential.

Drugs Are a Public Health Problem, Not A Criminal Justice Problem

Nonviolent drug addicts are clogging our nation’s prisons. Sixty-one percent of federal prison inmates are doing time for drug offenses, up from 18% in 1980. All this incarceration is doing nothing to solve the drug problem. Many wardens, judges, and other officials know this, but it has become political suicide to admit it publicly. We must insist upon a mature dialogue about the drug problem. Keep in mind that the high-level drug dealers aren’t cluttering up our prisons; they’re too rich and smart to get caught. They hire addicts or kids, sometimes as young as eleven or twelve, to take most of the risks.

We need to address these issues in ourselves, our families, our communities. And we must press for changes in drug laws -- not to legalize all drugs, because it’s not that simple. But we do have to decriminalize their use, treating the problem as the public-health issue it is. Without drug offenders, our prisons would have more than enough room to hold dangerous criminals. As a result, we wouldn’t need to build a single new prison, saving us $5 billion a year. If we spent a fraction of that on rehabilitation centers and community revitalization programs, we’d begin to put drug dealers out of business in the only way that will last: by drying up their market.

Separate Violent And Nonviolent Offenders Right From The Start

It’s inconceivable that we routinely dump nonviolent offenders into prison cells with violent ones, even in local jails and holding tanks. What are we thinking? I know one fellow who was arrested for participating in a Quaker peace vigil and was jailed in lieu of paying a ten-dollar fine. In a forty-eight-hour period, he was savagely raped and traded back and forth among more than fifty violent prisoners. That was twenty years ago, and since then he has had years of therapy, and yet he has never recovered emotionally. His entire life still centers around the decision of one prison superintendent to place him in a violent cellblock in order to teach him a lesson.

Most nonviolent offenders do in fact learn a lesson: how to be violent. Ironically, we spend an average of $20,000 per year, per inmate, teaching them this. For less than that we could be sending every nonviolent offender to college. We need to offer conflict-resolution training such as the "Alternatives to Violence" programs currently being conducted by and for convicts around the country. Such training should be required for all prisoners and staff.

None of us, including prison staff, should accept violence as a fact of prison life, and it would be easy not to. We could designate certain facilities as zero-violence areas and allow inmates to live there as long as they don’t commit — or even threaten to commit — a single violent act. The great majority of prisoners would sign up for such a place, I can assure you. Only about 10% of the prison population sets the terrorist tone for most institutions, and they are able to do that because the administration gives no support to the vast majority of inmates who just want to do their time, improve themselves in some way, and get out alive.

Join And Support The Restorative Justice Movement

For decades our justice system has been run according to the tenets of "retributive justice," a model based on exile and hatred. "Restorative justice" holds that when a crime occurs, there’s an injury to the community, and that injury needs to be healed. Restorative justice tries to bring the offender back into the community, if at all possible, rather than closing him out. Instead of "Get the hell out of here!" restorative justice says "Hey, get back in here! What are you doing that for? Don’t you know we need you as one of the good people in this community? What would your mama think?" It’s an entirely opposite approach.

I’m not saying that every offender is ready to be transformed into a good neighbor. Advocates of restorative justice are not naïve. Sadly, prisons may be a necessary part - a very small part - of a restorative justice system. And even then, prisons can be humane environments which maximize opportunities for the inmates to become decent and caring human beings.

What can you do?

First of all., if you become the victim of a crime, insist upon meeting your assailant. Insist upon being involved with the process of his or her restoration. Join or create a VORP (Victim-Offender Reconciliation Program) in your community. Tour your local jail or prison to see firsthand what your taxes pay for. Go in with a church or civic group to meet inmates. Become a pen pal to a prisoner who is seeking to change his/her life. Talk to your friends and colleagues about employing ex-cons (in nationwide surveys, most employers admit they won’t hire a person with a criminal record, so where are they supposed to work?). Reclaim your power and your responsibility, because the retributive system you have deferred to is not serving your best interests. Please take the issue of crime and punishment personally, because it is an issue which definitely affects you and your family and your descendants for generations to come.

We have to realize that we are all a part of this problem. If you vote, if you pay taxes, if you are afraid to walk alone at night, you are already involved. And so we have a choice to be involved solely in negative, destructive ways, such as home security systems, car alarms, personal weapons, etc., or in constructive ways which might actually change the problems. We all must make real changes — not just political ones, but also in our personal attitudes and lifestyles. America will not thrive, nor will we and our children be happy, by becoming a nation behind bars.

posted November 25, 2007 11:26 PM              

Links

The following is a list of links to other websites of possible interest. Clicking on any of them will take you out of the HKF website.

Prison-related

• Prison Phoenix Trust Our sister organization in the United Kingdom. They do beautiful work spreading meditation and yoga throughout the British prison system.

• Prison Dharma Network A nonsectarian, contemplative support organization for prisoners and prison dharma volunteers.

• Families Against Mandatory Minimums A wonderful organization working to reform unfair sentencing laws.

• Project Return A group that works with inmates and ex-inmates, using education, skills training, counseling and other programs to try and reduce the recidivism rate.

• Our Prison Neighbors An organization dedicated to bringing more volunteer programs to Massachusetts prisons.

• The Engaged Zen Foundation A great Buddhist prison ministry.

• Art Behind Bars A great project encouraging and supporting artistic development in Florida inmates.

• The Lamp of Hope Project A website by and about Texas death row inmates.

• Northern California Service League A group that provides in-jail and post-release support, skills training, job assistance, and much more to California inmates and families.

• Prison Activist Resource Center Provides support and assistance to groups and individuals working to reform the prison system.

  Other links of interest

• The Simple Living Network Ideas, encouragement and resources for those trying to live more simply.

• Safe Passage A wonderful project working with kids who live in the Guatmala City garbage dump. HKF board member Josh Lozoff spends time volunteering down there. Click here for an account of his experience.

• Global Volunteer Network A great organization that offers volunteer opportunities in community projects throughout the world.

• Peacemaker Community A global civil society of organizations and individuals around the world working for social transformation.

• Neem Karoli Baba Ashram Bo's & Sita's guru

• HeroicStories A little good news for a change.

• Friends of Peace Pilgrim A little-known, and very inspirational American saint.
  

posted November 25, 2007 11:32 PM              

EZF Introduction
The Engaged Zen Foundation is an independent organization originally founded to foster zazen (seated contemplative meditation) practice in prison. Meditative training alters the functioning of the mind of the practitioner and these changes manifest with the development of positive perspectives on life. Our initial goal was to urge prisoners to use the time available during imprisonment to foster the practice of zazen, sitting in dynamic, lucid awareness, thus serving prisoners on release by enabling them, through their own efforts, to reenter society with a disciplined, patient, nonviolent and compassionate frame of mind.
Over the years EZF has broadened its perspective to address universal human rights and social justice issues well beyond the prison environment.

posted November 25, 2007 11:35 PM              

Communion And Community

posted February 02, 2012 06:49 PM            

Found out my brother went back to prison in the summer of last year. Very sad.

He was never interested in all of this. It's too bad. At least I tried. Tried everything...

posted February 02, 2012 07:34 PM            

They have helped many hardcore convicts turn their lives around.

The Human Kindness Foundation - Prison Ashram Project http://www.humankindness.org/prisonashramproject.html

also:

The Prison Phoenix Trust

posted February 02, 2012 07:40 PM            

Human life is very deep, and our modern dominant lifestyle is not."

-Bo Lozoff