Jenny Phillips on Oprah

Cultural anthropologist, writer and psychotherapist Jenny Phillips has been working in the field of mental health for more than 15 years. Much of her work has been with male prisoners, teaching inmates courses on emotional literacy and vipassana meditation, an ancient meditation technique based on the teachings of Buddha. Her work has helped inmates—many serving multiple life sentences—transform their lives, face their pasts and become more peaceful, purposeful people.

In 2008, Jenny released the self-produced documentary The Dhamma Brothers, which followed 36 prisoners at the Donaldson Correctional Facility in Alabama through a 10-day silent vipassana meditation course. Her book Letters from the Dhamma Brothers: Meditation Behind Bars is a collection of letters and interviews from inmates who took part in the meditation course. The book depicts prison life and the journey many of the prisoners took to better understanding the teachings of Buddha and achieving inner peace.

See more: http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Jenny-Phillips-on-Oprahs-Soul-Series-Webcast

Pecatonica meditation center helps people find balance

..... Once participants enter the site, they are asked to leave behind religious objects, intoxicants, tobacco, iPods, cell phones and reading or writing materials. Participants also are asked to observe the “Noble Silence,” or to abstain from talking.

Kate Anderson, center manager for Pecatonica, said only then can people understand what silence really is. Students are asked to suspend other forms of prayer or worship, meditation or yoga. Anderson said this is advised in order to fully experience and understand Vipassana and not impede upon the meditation. She said monks, priests and nuns from a variety of religions have taken courses at Vipassana meditation centers.

“Everyone who comes here, they have their own religion – they’re Jewish or they’re Catholic or Muslim,” Anderson said. “They come here to learn this technique.”

Students of the course learn techniques to change their reactions in daily life from anger, negativity, misery and other stressful situations to positive ones, Anderson said.

Days begin with the low resonating of a Burmese-style gong at 4:30 a.m. Each day ends at 9:30 p.m. Students are required to meditate in the meditation hall three times a day, with other time slotted for meditation either in the hall or their room throughout the day.

Read more: http://www.rrstar.com/news/yourtown/x415953142/Pecatonica-meditation-center-helps-people-find-balance

Meditation - A CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH THE NON-SELF

Oddly enough, the course's monastic severity is largely responsible for its popularity; since the results, judging by the responses, are commensurably high. Mohan Nathani, 63, a retired income tax officer who has repeated the course five times, reveals: "It was during my first course that I really experienced bliss."

Christians, including priests and nuns, come regularly for vipassana. Sister Regina Rosario of the order of the Sisters of Mary of the Cross, says: "Being used to meditation, I didn't find it too difficult. It has made me more aware of my actions and reactions." She feels that vipassana has brought her closer to a spiritual goal. "Compassionate love for crucified Christ, and thus for my neighbors."

N. Vaghul, a financial wizard who meditates for three to four hours daily, feels that vipassana has changed his relationship with people and his views. "Best of all, I no longer look for professional recognition or rewards. I work in order to contribute."

Moushomi Chatterjee, who took a course in early March, is raring to go again. "It makes you realize who you are, that you can also be a Buddha."

Read more: http://www.lifepositive.com/Spirit/meditation/vipassana/vipassana-meditation.asp#goenka

State of Grace: How Buddhist Teachings Transformed a Maximum Security Prison in Alabama

“The stories of The Dhamma Brothers ring with the truth and power of their experiences, and offer the hope for renewal and rehabilitation within a dismal and punishment-oriented correctional system. It gives you hope for the human race.” —Sister Helen Prejean, author, Dead Man Walking

In her new documentary, The Dhamma Brothers, Phillips frames the daily, shackled grind of the prisoners’ lives with these social injustices, but also investigates, with a fresh, clear perspective, what it is like to be a prisoner doing hard time in the South choosing to practice guided Buddhist meditation techniques.

Deep within this facility’s walls, an unlikely group of inmates (some on death row) are challenging all of the stereotypes and misconceptions about the South, about prisoners, about masculinity, and about the modern spirituality of the incarcerated. They, in fact, were transcending these trappings by practicing Vipassana, an intense, silent, ten-day crash course induction into a sacred world many of the inmates had likely never even heard of until Donaldson became the first prison in the United States to give it a try.

In a region where anything other than Christianity is predictably labeled “witchcraft” (as one woman interviewed called Buddhism—“I don’t believe it will help at all”), Dr. Ron Cavanaugh, Director of Treatment for the Alabama Department of Corrections, decided to throw caution to the wind and try something revolutionary and unprecedented. In short, mainly, because there wasn’t anything to lose.

Read more: http://www.popmatters.com/pm/feature/state-of-grace-how-buddhist-teachings-transformed-a-maximum-security-prison/

Movie Review—The Dhamma Brothers

While admittedly far different than your typical film about prison, The Dhamma Brothers is also far more deserving of your time.  If you’re looking for the elements you’d usually expect from a documentary about life “behind bars,” yes, you’ll find some of them of here, but they’ve mostly been drained of their lurid aspects.  At one point the setting, Donaldson Correctional Facility, is compared to the fictional Shawshank, and certainly the crimes of which its inmates have been convicted are horrendous, but the first clue that the tone and emphases will be atypical here is provided by the title itself.  “Dhamma” (in Sanskrit: “dharma”) refers to the Buddha’s teachings, and this thought-provoking film concerns the struggles, both internal and external, that occurred when they were introduced to a group of lifers serving time in the heart of the Bible Belt.

Read more: http://firefox.org/news/articles/1388/1/Movie-ReviewThe-Dhamma-Brothers/Page1.html

The Dhamma Brothers Film Review

A maximum security prison isn't the sort of place you'd expect to find a bunch of men mutely contemplating their navels and the meaning of life. But that's what we find Alabama's Donaldson State Penitentiary, where Warden Stephen Bullard opted to allow Jonathan Crowley to introduce an East Indian brand of meditation known as Vipassana to volunteers plucked from among the institution's most hardened criminals.

The participants adopting the ascetic regimen understood that the initiation meant that for ten days straight they would not be allowed to talk, watch TV, use a phone, have sex or imbibe intoxicants. Those able to meet the challenge discovered that they emerged from the program calmer and with a new sense of purpose when they rejoined the general population.

The Dhamma Brothers, directed by Andrew Kukura, Jenny Phillips and Anne Marie Stein examines the before and after mindsets of the cons converted to the Eastern spiritual path. This fascinating film focuses on a quartet of contrite individuals, starting with Edward Curry Johnson, a once-promising student-athlete who was being scouted by pro baseball when, against his better judgment, he foolishly took part in a gang-related homicide.

Read more: http://newsblaze.com/story/20080408060021tsop.nb/topstory.html

The Dhamma Brothers Trailer

The Dhamma Brothers tells a dramatic tale of human potential and transformation as it closely follows and documents the stories of the prison inmates at Donaldson Correction Facility who enter into this arduous and intensive program. This film, with the power to dismantle stereotypes about men behind prison bars also, in the words of Sister Helen Prejean (Dead Man Walking), "gives you hope for the human race." http://www.dhammabrothers.com

Watch online: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA8XFEyeMi8&e

My Experience with Vipassana Meditation

Many friends are curious about my 10-day meditation experience. Some of them even worried that I would become a nun after these 10 days.

10 days of meditation? What do you do besides meditation? Just sit and meditate the whole day? And you can’t talk at all in these 10 days? Not even during lunch or dinner?What? You don’t even have dinner? Oh my god… You sure you want to do this to yourself? Girl, you will go crazy… (and on and on my family and friends worried…)

Read more: http://traveloncloud9.wordpress.com/2008/01/29/my-personal-experience-with-vipassana-meditation/

Vipassana Brings Peace And Self-knowledge

To say that economic progress does not necessarily bring about a corresponding increase in happiness is to state the obvious. But the reasons for this are not so obvious. Whenever we experience agitation, frustration and disharmony, we tend to look for their causes outside of ourselves or in some instances we tend to even blame ourselves. In either case there is lack of objectivity.

Further, whenever we become un-happy, we spread our unhappiness to the environment and to others. The Buddha observed this phenomenon objectively. In the process he discovered a technique that brought peace and harmony to its practitioners. The technique, Vipassana, was based on truth as revealed to oneself and thus free from any dependence on others' imposition or biases. Because of its scientific nature, it appeals to many across countries for centuries after Buddha taught it.

Read more: http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2008-01-09/holistic-living/27780481_1_vipassana-buddha-happiness

Hope amid hard time

Arriving at the Alabama maximum security prison, Jenny Phillips brought inmates three things rarely found behind bars: a movie crew, Buddha's teachings and the prospect of inner peace.

The Concord psychotherapist and first-time filmmaker offered murderers and violent criminals a reprieve from the despair of hard time and life sentences by organizing a 10-day meditation retreat in the Donaldson Correctional Facility.

Working with two meditation teachers, Phillips filmed prisoners' efforts to strip away layers of anger and self-deception to discover a calmer, better person deep within themselves.

Instructors Bruce Stewart and Jonathan Crowley taught Vipassana meditation, which required total silence throughout hours of sitting. Based on Buddha's 2,500-year-old teachings, Vipassana means to "see things as they really are" in the Pali language.

Working with inmates, Stewart and Crowley of the Vipassana Meditation Center of Shelburne Falls transformed prison space into a makeshift retreat center.

From these experiences, Phillips made "The Dhamma Brothers," a fascinating look into the hearts and even souls of violent criminals. It is a thought-provoking documentary that raises serious questions about the nature of current correctional practices.

Read more: http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/entertainment/movies/x489647519

Staring at Death, and Finding Their Bliss

As Buddhism inches toward the pop culture mainstream, practitioners are taking its tenets of mindfulness, acceptance and compassion to populations in need of spiritual guidance, namely prisons and centers for troubled youths.

Prisoners have been practicing meditation on their own through outreach programs for years. The Prison-Ashram Project began in 1973 and in 1989 the Prison Dharma Network was founded, an umbrella organization now encompassing over 100 prison volunteer groups from different Buddhist traditions. Donaldson’s 10-day course would mark the first time that an intensive retreat would be held in such a high-security prison in the United States, Ms. Phillips said.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/13/movies/13dhar.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

How to succeed in business: Meditate

(Fortune Magazine) -- The crowd of Harvard Business School alums who gathered at their reunion to hear networking expert Keith Ferrazzi speak earlier this summer might have expected to pick up strategies on how to work a room, remember people's names, or identify mentors. But tactical skills, it turns out, aren't what turned Ferrazzi into a bestselling author or sought-after speaker.

Instead Ferrazzi let his fellow alums in on a little secret. The key to connecting, he told the group, is "not being an a**hole." And the most effective path he's found? Meditation. Exercise and prayer work too, he said, but meditation has been so effective that he now spends ten days every year at a silent meditation retreat. In other words, the man whose latest book is "Never Eat Alone" credits much of his success to alone time.

Like Ferrazzi and Shapiro, the most intrepid corporate types gravitate toward vipassana meditation centers (the term translates to "insight"), founded by S.N. Goenka, an 83-year-old ex-Burmese businessman. Though inspired by Buddhism, Goenka centers are secular, and the introductory retreat features ten days spent in "noble silence." "It takes that much time for people to calm down," says Andrew Cherng, the chairman of Panda Restaurant Group (as in Panda Express).

Read more: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/07/23/100135590/?postversion=2007072009

Meditation may fine-tune control over attention

Everyday experience and psychology research both indicate that paying close attention to one thing can keep you from noticing something else.

However, a new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that attention does not have a fixed capacity - and that it can be improved by directed mental training, such as meditation.

The new study, which appears online May 8 in the journal PLoS Biology, examined the effects of three months of intensive training in Vipassana meditation, which focuses on reducing mental distraction and improving sensory awareness.

The research group found that three months of rigorous training in Vipassana meditation improved people's ability to detect a second target within the half-second time window. In addition, though the ability to see the first target did not change, the mental training reduced the amount of brain activity associated with seeing the first target.

Read more: http://www.news.wisc.edu/13762

Meditation Sharpens the Mind

Three months of intense training in a form of meditation known as "insight" in Sanskrit can sharpen a person's brain enough to help them notice details they might otherwise miss.

These new findings add to a growing body of research showing that millennia-old mental disciplines can help control and improve the mind, possibly to help treat conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

"Certain mental characteristics that were previously regarded as relatively fixed can actually be changed by mental training," University of Wisconsin neuroscientist Richard Davidson said. "People know physical exercise can improve the body, but our research and that of others holds out the prospects that mental exercise can improve minds."

Read more: http://www.livescience.com/1488-meditation-sharpens-mind.html

Buddha Battles Dragon Of Addiction At UW

That's how we'd put it. But the snorer terminology that University of Washingon researchers are using is mindfulness-based relapse prevention (MBRP). Scientists do not know how to package things, that's all. The short story is that meditation is being studied as an alternative to Christian-based 12-step programs and their higher power, says the UW Daily:

Read more: http://seattlest.com/2007/05/03/buddha_battles_dragon_of_addiction_at_uw.php

What’s New in Science

UW scientists are testing a new approach to drug and alcohol addiction treatments, called mindfulness-based relapse prevention (MBRP), which melds Buddhist meditation techniques with traditional therapeutic approaches.

Many people use drugs or alcohol to self-medicate underlying psychiatric conditions like anxiety or depression, according to an article in the April 2007 issue of the Southern Medical Journal.

“We found that the number-one trigger for relapse for people who have been through treatment for alcohol and drugs is negative emotional states,” said G. Alan Marlatt, a psychology professor and the director of the Addictive Behaviors Research Center. “If people are feeling bad, and if they’ve used drugs in the past to make themselves feel better in the short term by getting high, then, unless they’ve figured out or been taught other ways to cope with these negative emotions, they’re a big trigger.”

The MBRP program helps people cope with these emotions by teaching them Vipassana, a Buddhist meditation that emphasizes mindfulness, said Sarah Bowen, a psychology graduate student involved in the research. Mindfulness is the ability of the meditator to be “in the present moment,” observing his or her thoughts without judging them, said Neharika Chawla, another psychology graduate student who works on the treatment.

Read more: http://dailyuw.com/2007/5/2/whats-new-in-science/

Seeing things as they are

I SPENT 12 days and 11 nights in a mango orchard in Dasmariñas, Cavite this March reflecting on my miseries and learning a meditation technique to bring back the balance in my life.

I spent 10 of those precious days and nights hugging trees, picking flowers, avoiding eye contact and literally not speaking a word, eating only vegetarian meals twice everyday (no more meals after noon, just tea and fruit at 5pm) and meditating at least 8 hours a day.

I didn’t know that learning how to meditate properly would be this lonely and difficult but I was determined to do it and have been signing myself up for this 10-day course for the last 2 years so I knew what I was getting into.

Now, 14 days later, I’m happy to report that I got more than what I bargained for.

The technique I’m talking about is Vipassana meditation. The word Vipassana is a Pali term (a language spoken in Northern India during the time of Siddharta Gautama) which means “seeing things as they really are.”

The technique teaches us to use “insight” –– to look inside ourselves and how we directly experience the world and to use this to cultivate personal wisdom.

Read more: http://www.dhammaweb.net/dhamma_news/view.php?id=274

Learning equanimity: Being happy in spite of daily tragedies

You feel like the world is punishing you for all the bad things you've done in the past and has chosen this day to hand you retribution.

Can you imagine yourself staying balanced and "happy" even if everything in your day has gone absolutely wrong, such as the one above?

No way!

Ok, maybe for some loosing a wallet, a cellphone and a cat is not such a big disaster. Some people have lost more than these, in bigger disasters. But does it really matter?

The point is, when we experience pain or suffering, do we lose the balance of our minds such that we are overwhelmed with grief, or fear and become paralyzed? Do we become self-destructive or abusive? Do we react with anger towards ourselves and others?

Is it possible to see through this pain and suffering objectively? Is it really that hard to remain calm, peaceful? Act with love and compassion?

What if I tell you that YES, it is possible and YES, we can all learn to stay balanced and happy even when in the midst of life's tragedies, big or small.

How?

By learning a technique called Vipassana meditation.

Read more: http://www.dhammaweb.net/meditation/view.php?id=72

"This isn't meditation; this is boot camp for your brain"

When my old flatmate told me about a Vipassana meditation course she'd been on while traveling in New Zealand, I found myself listening properly rather than cynically. She said it had taught her how to stand back from negative situations and people, just observing instead what was happening. She didn't have to say that she was happy; it came off in waves.

Read more: http://www.flickr.com/photos/7852554@N03/498880358/sizes/l/

rivers in the stream

“My goal was to purge myself of all weakness so that I could write ‘perfect’ songs as reliably as a machine."

...... His relationship with his mother, Beverly Shoenberger, was strained. “He was in a difficult situation, and we had gotten to the point where we couldn’t even really talk,” she says. “I loved him, but I didn’t understand him or how to reach him.” When he started Vipassana, she was concerned. “Rivers had been going through a lot of problems in the prior few years, and I was concerned that it might be harmful for him,” she says.

  But then one day, after going months without speaking, Cuomo sent his mom an email after returning from a ten-day course. He apologized for anything he had done that might have hurt her and said he now understood that he was 100 percent responsible for his own life. This simple sentence, Shoenberger says, was the turning point. The changes she then began to see in Cuomo were dramatic. “I don’t even have words for it. It was huge. I felt like I had my son back. He was becoming more deeply himself, like this was the grown-up Rivers of the boy that I knew.”

Read more: http://web.mac.com/karafin/iWeb/amykarafin.com/Articles_files/karafin161.pdf