Meditation with the FT: Tim Parks

Through meditation, Tim Parks was able to cure himself of chronic pelvic pain
What do you learn in this school?

That the discomfort you feel sitting cross-legged is directly related to your mental activity which, deprived of all fresh input, reveals itself as an endless churn of self-regard, pointlessly rewriting the past, vainly scripting the future, stubbornly avoiding the present.

That the moment you truly focus on your breathing, thought subsides and everything relaxes, everything is easy.

That exploring the body with this intensity over so many days will change forever your perception of what it is and who you are.

At long last, when you do learn not to react to pain, pain itself is much diminished, even irrelevant, while pleasure is the more pleasurable when you learn not to hang on to it. The Buddhist context can be taken or left as you please. The meditation works fine without any belief.

Read more: https://www.ft.com/content/e544348c-33eb-11e0-b1ed-00144feabdc0

At End-Of-The Line Prison, An Unlikely Escape

Deep in the Bible Belt, an ancient Eastern practice is taking root in the unlikeliest of places: Alabama's highest-security prison.

Behind a double electric fence and layers of locked doorways, Alabama's most violent and mentally unstable prisoners are incarcerated in the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility outside Birmingham. Many of them are here to stay. The prison has 24 death-row cells, and about a third of the approximately 1,500 prisoners are lifers with no chance of parole.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/08/133505880/at-end-of-the-line-prison-an-unlikely-escape

At End-Of-The Line Prison, An Unlikely Escape

Deep in the Bible Belt, an ancient Eastern practice is taking root in the unlikeliest of places: Alabama's highest-security prison.

Convicted murderer Johnny Mack Young in the meditation stance he keeps for nearly 10 hours a day during the 10-day silent meditation course. Officials say the meditation program is reducing violence at Alabama's highest security lockup. "It changed my life," Young says.


Dr. Ron Cavanaugh, treatment director for the Alabama Department of Corrections, says many inmates put their defenses up, denying responsibility for their crimes and blaming others. But the meditation practice, he says, chips away at those defense mechanisms.

More information: https://www.npr.org/2011/02/08/133505880/at-end-of-the-line-prison-an-unlikely-escape