THE SNOW LION NEWSLETTER

Ex-prisoners Meet with Dalai Lama

This past September, Ananda Baltrunas was one of 18 former prisoners who attended a conference in New York City called "Healing Through Great Difficulty," organized by Richard Gere's Initiatives Foundation. Most of the former inmates had had contact with Buddhism in prison. Also attending were six Buddhist teachers: Losang Monlam, Jack Kornfield, George Mumford, Ven. Robina Courtin, Michele Benzamin-Miki and Jon Kabat-Zinn, as well as two Tibetan nuns and a layman who had been imprisoned in Tibet.

The focus of the conference was helping people in prison overcome difficulties they face and to help foster healing and reconciliation. During the conference, the participants had an opportunity to meet and dialogue with His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

The following is an interview conducted by an IOCC member and Ananda.

When did you first hear about the conference and how did you happen to become a participant?

Ananda: I first heard about it about a week after I was released from prison. It was very strange. I'd just done 20 years in prison and I was being nominated to participate in conference with His Holiness. I felt like I was in a dream.

So tell me about the conference.

Ananda: What I felt the main thrust of the conference was to talk with each other about how we were able not just to survive in prison but how to transform our lives. Hopefully this process of transformation could be transmitted to others in prison, prisoners and staff alike, to facilitate a healing process for the individuals, the prison community and the community-at-large as well....The event also served to make the Dalai Lama aware of the conditions of American prisons and educate him on how the industry of human suffering operates in the United States. He was shocked to find out we build prisons and then fill them up as a matter of economic policy. He was also unaware that there are political prisoners in America.

What was it like to meet the Dalai Lama and what was the conversation with him?

Ananda: His Holiness sees into your heart and seems to understand who is there. He ignores the negatives and focuses on the positive within. Very strong energies flow around him. There is a sense of a greater presence.
Many people were looking for patented answers as to "how" to let go or relieve their suffering or change the system. His Holiness in his wisdom did not get sucked into that kind of "fix it for me" exchange. He listened and reacted with a simplicity. "You do what you can and you persist at doing it until you see changes. Then you still do what you can."

You also met with Tibetan leaders who have also served time in prison. What was that meeting like?

Ananda: It is easy to feel sympathy for the Tibetan nuns and film maker who did prison sentences in Tibet. We feel that they were harshly punished for their beliefs. Yet in the eyes of the Chinese Government these people broke the law and were given the standard sentences for it. It's a matter of law. What struck me is that we in the room for the most part also acted in accordance with our beliefs and broke the law. Like the Tibetans, except possibly the film maker, we did so with the intention of breaking the law and we knew there would be consequences. So the Tibetans like the other ex-prisoners in the room shared that common experience. We did what we thought was necessary at the time and accepted the consequences of those actions. Of course, we in the United States have a history of civil protest and deal with it differently than the Chinese do. That makes us feel sympathy for the Tibetan sufferers. It may be unwise to ignore the similarities in the karma, the intentions behind the actions that we all seemed to have in common. That was a powerful lesson for me.

Any other comments, experiences, thoughts you want to share about the event?

Ananda: I'm not sure that one can transform a society or social problem. What we change is human hearts, our own. We can't change another's heart. They have to do that themselves. "No one can make another impure. One makes oneself impure. No one can purify another. One purifies himself.

At the conference I got the impression many were looking for His Holiness or someone to purify their resentments and pains as well as purifying our prison system. The things that arose in me are things that I have to deal with and one of those things is enganging the world with a deeper kindness and greater dynamic of compassion. I don't know that anything was accomplished at the conference other than opening a few hearts for a little while. Somehow I think that was enough.