The Prison Mindfulness Institute (previously the Prison Dharma Network) is a non-profit organization founded in 1989 with the mission of supporting prisoners and prison volunteers in transformation through meditation and contemplative spirituality in prisons. The organization provides books and resources through its "Books Behind Bars" program, publishes books on prison dharma through their Prison Dharma Press, and offers a facilitator training for prison volunteers and staff called "Path of Freedom." The organization supports prisoners in the study and practice of contemplative traditions and mindfulness awareness practices. [1] [2] It is an affiliate of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and the Zen Peacemakers.
Philosophically, the organization claims to encourage restorative justice and transformative justice models over retributive justice. [1]
The organization lists as its spiritual advisors (past and present): Robert Baker Aitken Roshi, Pema Chödrön, Roshi Bernie Glassman, Roshi Joan Halifax, Father Thomas Keating, Jack Kornfield, Stephen Levine, John Daido Loori, Thrangu Rinpoche, Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, Venerable Thubten Chodron, and Jon Kabat-Zinn
The organization was founded by Fleet Maull in 1989 when he was serving a 14-year sentence for drug trafficking. [3] [4] He had spent significant time studying and practicing meditation in the tradition of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. [5] He also completed a master's degree in psychology at Naropa University before his conviction [1] and then incarceration in 1985. [2] While in prison he completed his ngöndro by cleaning out a small prison closet to do prostrations and received Vajrayogini initiation from Thrangu Rinpoche who visited the prison.
He also pursued a Ph.D. in Psychology and began a prison hospice program for prisoners with AIDS. [6] The program formally incorporated in 1991 as the National Prison Hospice Association [7] and became an authorized training program for hospice. While conducting the hospice program, he served time at the U.S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners (MCFP) in Springfield, Missouri, the hospital for federal prisoners. [2] He was released in May 1999. [7] He was also ordained as a priest and Zen teacher in the Zen Peacemakers Sangha of Bernie Glassman. [4]
Prison Dharma Network has been run since 1999 by Executive Director Vita Pires (fka Kate Crisp), Ph.D.
Other projects of the nonprofit are the Center for Mindfulness in Public Safety and the Engaged Mindfulness Institute.
The bhavachakra or wheel of life is a visual teaching aid and meditation tool symbolically representing saṃsāra. It is found on the walls of Tibetan Buddhist temples and monasteries in the Indo-Tibetan region, to help both Buddhists and non Buddhists understand the core Buddhist teachings. The image consists of four concentric circles, held by Yama, the lord of Death, with an image of the Buddha pointing to the moon metaphorically representing the possibility for liberation from the suffering of reincarnation.
Chögyam Trungpa, formally named the 11th Zurmang Trungpa, Chokyi Gyatso, was a Tibetan Buddhist master and holder of both Kagyu and Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. He was recognized by both Tibetan Buddhists and other spiritual practitioners and scholars as a preeminent teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. He was a major figure in the dissemination of Buddhism in the West, founding Vajradhatu and Naropa University and establishing the Shambhala Training method. The 11th of the Trungpa tülkus, he was a tertön, supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries, scholar, teacher, poet, artist, and originator of Shambhala Buddhist tradition.
Pema Chödrön is an American-born Tibetan Buddhist. She is an ordained nun, former acharya of Shambhala Buddhism and disciple of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Chödrön has written several dozen books and audiobooks, and was principal teacher at Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia until recently. She retired in 2020.
Reginald Ray is an American Buddhist academic and teacher.
Naropa University is a private university in Boulder, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa, it is named after the 11th-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa, an abbot of Nalanda. The university describes itself as Buddhist-inspired, ecumenical, and nonsectarian rather than Buddhist. Naropa promotes non-traditional activities like meditation to supplement traditional learning approaches.
Thrangu Rinpoche was born in Kham, Tibet. He was deemed to be a prominent tulku in the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism, the ninth reincarnation in his particular line. His full name and title was the Very Venerable Ninth Khenchen Thrangu Tulku, Karma Lodrö Lungrik Maway Senge. The academic title Khenchen denotes great scholarly accomplishment, and the term Rinpoche is a Tibetan devotional title which may be accorded to respected teachers and exemplars.
The term American Buddhism can be used to describe all Buddhist groups within the United States, including Asian-American Buddhists born into the faith, who comprise the largest percentage of Buddhists in the country.
Gampo Abbey is a Western Buddhist monastery in the Shambhala tradition in Nova Scotia, Canada on the edge of the Pleasant Bay community. Founded by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in 1983, it is a lineage institution of Shambhala and a corporate division of the Vajradhatu Buddhist Church of Canada.
A Jewish Buddhist is a person with an ethnic Jewish background who believes in the tenets of a form of Buddhism.
Sakyong Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche, Jampal Trinley Dradül, born Ösel Rangdröl Mukpo, is a Tibetan Buddhist master and holder of the Sakyong Lineage of Mukpodong, his family lineage. The Sakyong was recognized by Penor Rinpoche in 1995 as the tülku (reincarnation) of Ju Mipham Gyatso, the renown Rimé teacher of the late 19th century who stated he would only be reborn in the legendary Kingdom of Shambhala.
Tonglen is a Buddhist practice that involves breathing in the suffering of others and breathing out peace and healing. Its purpose is to cultivate compassion.
Bernie Glassman was an American Zen Buddhist roshi and founder of the Zen Peacemakers, an organization established in 1980. In 1996, he co-founded the Zen Peacemaker Order with his late wife Sandra Jishu Holmes. Glassman was a Dharma successor of the late Taizan Maezumi-roshi, and gave inka and Dharma transmission to several people.
Lojong is a contemplative practice in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition which makes use of various lists of aphorisms or slogans which are used for contemplative practice. The practice involves refining and purifying one's motivations and attitudes. There are various sets of lojong aphorisms; the most widespread text in the Sarma traditions is that of Chekawa Yeshe Dorje. There is also another set of eight lojong slogans by Langri Tangpa. In the Nyingma tradition, there is a list of seven lojong slogans which are part of the Dzogchen Nyingthig lineage.
White Plum Asanga, sometimes termed White Plum Sangha, is a loose "organization of peers whose members are leaders of Zen Communities in the lineage of Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi," created by Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi and Tetsugen Bernard Glassman. It consists of Maezumi's Dharma heirs and subsequent successors.
Shambhala Training is a secular approach to meditation and a new religious movement developed by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and his students. It is based on what Trungpa calls Shambhala Vision, which sees enlightened society as not purely mythical, but as realizable by people of all faiths through practices of mindfulness/awareness, non-aggression, and sacred outlook.
Below is a timeline of important events regarding Zen Buddhism in the United States. Dates with "?" are approximate.
Merle Kodo Boyd (1944–2022) was an American Zen Buddhist nun. She was the first African-American woman to receive Dharma transmission in Zen Buddhism, as a Dharma heir of Wendy Egyoku Nakao in the White Plum Asanga. Receiving transmission in March 2006, she founded and led the Lincroft Zen Sangha in New Jersey that is currently part of the Zen Peacemaker Circle established by Tetsugen Bernard Glassman and his wife Sandra Jishu Holmes.
The Zen Peacemakers is a diverse network of socially engaged Buddhists, currently including the formal structures of the Zen Peacemakers International, the Zen Peacemaker Order and the Zen Peacemaker Circles, many affiliated individuals and groups, and communities formed by Dharma Successors of Roshi Bernie Glassman. It was founded by Bernie Glassman and his second wife Sandra Jishu Holmes in 1996, as a means of continuing the work begun with the Greyston Foundation in 1980 of expanding Zen practice into larger spheres of influence such as social services, business and ecology but with a greater emphasis on peace work. Eve Marko, Bernie Glassman's third wife, is a founding teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order. Zen Peacemakers have developed from the White Plum Asanga lineage of Taizan Maezumi.
Khenpo Gangshar Wangpo was a highly respected lama in Eastern Tibet and one of the primary teachers of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the 9th Thrangu Rinpoche. Khenpo Gangshar was trained in Shechen Monastery, a monastic center established in the end of the seventeenth century and part of the Mindröling lineage within the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism.
Lama Chime Tulku Rinpoche is a Tibetan Buddhist, Tulku and Dharma teacher. Chime Rinpoche was born in 1941 in Kham, Tibet. In 1959, due to the annexation of Tibet, he was forced to flee to India via Bhutan into exile. Gaining British citizenship in 1965, he taught extensively throughout Europe and established Marpa House, the first Tibetan Buddhist Centre in England. His students include American author and Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön and musicians Mary Hopkin, David Bowie and Tony Visconti.