Teaching to Relearn the Dharma
Content Warning
Hi, readers.
A preface, perhaps a content warning for those of you who would prefer to not read this entry:
I'll be discussing Buddhism, my beliefs and my practice, and brushing up against the subject of drug abuse in this one.
I also address death in this post.
I've been at Blessington for over three years now, and actively practicing Buddhism for just as long. Before coming to prison, I had heard of Buddhism, but never really bothered to look into it as I had been raised Missionary Baptist.
I walked away from Christianity when I was in my early twenties, a number of years after my father's death, and a number of attempts to get the Christian faith to make sense to me. The problems I had were finding people who taught only love -- I would hear "Love one another!" out of one side of the mouth, only to be intertwined with "But don't love this person if they're X/Y/Z". Dad didn't verbally teach "don't love if ..." as a Reverend, but his actions spoke louder than words; I never emerged from the pocket dimension at the back of the closet while he was living. Finding nothing better in the faith of my parents after both of their deaths, I abandoned the church, spending time as an atheist even after a desperate last hurrah, a hungered seeking for an answer that did not damn me to a hellish end simply for not conforming to the heteronorm, for not damning other nonconformists.
At this time, I was still blind to Buddhism beyond a passing reference in an episode of The Simpsons. This is in the mid-2000s, where broadband internet was becoming a thing in homes, where cyber cafes still existed, and you could look up anything online for a half-baked answer. LLMs were not a creature of the times; AltaVista was on its way out as Google was roaring in.
In that same wave of seeking, I was also homeless. Without dad, without mom, I was working a dead end job and hardly surviving (never mind living or thriving). Mom's passing induced a severe level of financial hardship that I simply could not bear. So, I was put out of my childhood home and forced to become very adult, very rapidly, all while trying to reconcile the concept of a higher power.
This was the trigger for my atheist years. Surely, I asked of no-one, If there is an overwatch of some kind, kinder things would be happening to myself, and to those in this world.
In that time, I fought like a mad beast, keeping its head above water until my feet found purchase. I survived two years of a transitional housing program that led to me sharing an apartment with another person at the end of it all. My experiences took me from dead end cashier job to queer person of colour (y'know, a QPoC) in tech, a notable pay rise (and a partial collapse as the housing bubble imploded upon itself), and through some interesting health outcomes that I'm stuck with to this day.
In that time, I moved from atheism to agnosticism: So, it can't be exactly luck of the draw that all of us exist in this manner. I don't know who, what, why, or how it happened, but it's ... kinda nice. I'd love to know the real origin story, though, and I've crossed one or two things off my list of things it could be. One day, though...
Still, I had not explored Buddhism, hadn't even looked it up, really. It was aversion ingrained by a couple of decades of another faith tradition that caused that.
Fast forward some years, to my then-housemate wanting to move to Oregon. What was I, a QPoC, going to do out west, away from other PoC? I hadn't initially given it any thought, kept blowing off the question. He kept asking, so I demanded a plan on how things would look and work if we moved, thinking he was not serious about the idea. I told him I would give it active consideration if he wrote a plan, figuring he would give up on asking.
... He wrote a plan.
... It was conceivable.
Suddenly, I'm a drop of melanin in an ocean of white... and it's actually nice. I actually fit in. People are laid back, more relaxed, friendly, helpful. Buddhists exist, but I still didn't look into Buddhism yet. They're just chill folks, which to me is such a thrill after the high energy church stuff I endured as a child, the dead church I tried as an adult. There was no proselytizing in every other breath, and I respected the heck out of that.
I go several years of my life out there, moving from survival to living, to even thriving when I get a phone call. It's a call that's rough when you get it once in your life; I happen to be in a circumstance that calls for me to get it twice in one's lifetime: my (biological) mother has passed away. Can I make it to her funeral?
I wasn't ever very close to her, and my handling of loss is far different than most others. I do feel grief and sorrow, but I don't immediately shut down and become nonfunctional like so many do in the face of loss of a familial unit. I never have. I reflect on the good and bad times I have had with that person, and then I move on. I'll feel that hole a year later, two years later, a few years later for a day, because I do miss that person, but in the moment when everyone else is crying, I'm dry-eyed and trying to hold everyone together and up.
This shows at a funeral that I flew to at great expense and fear: I do have a fear response for flight, hooboy, do I. I was born with a perfectly good ground to walk and roll on, but I could not drive fast enough to get back to where I was born to see someone who has died one last time.
One Sedative Later
I'm flying, ma. I'll be there one last time, before they take your flesh away.
I'm still not a Buddhism practitioner yet, but we're getting there.
Not long after her death comes mine in a proverbial sense. A visit from my local police brings me to my local jail, to which police officers from Florida come and transport me via airplane to Florida, where I lived in a filthy, FILTHY jail cell for five months before being bussed off to prison.
It was in prison that my third eye was opened in an interesting context: There is a meal plan called RDP/CFO (Religious Diet Plan/Certified Food Option), which consists of bagged meals. Meals are generally comprised of canned pinto beans, raw vegetables, and crackers or bread at two meals per day, a serving of fish at one meal per day, then a bowl of cereal and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich at breakfast seven days a week. Compared to what Aramark was serving us at the reception center, this was a MEAL.
To get on RDP/CFO, you must go to the Chapel and sign up. So I did.
I get called back several days later and told that my application for a religious diet was denied because I don't have a religion on file; do I want to put one on file? "You don't have one because no-one ever asked me. Buddhism, I guess, if you have it."
I was still denied because they make you wait six months from one denial for any reason before they let you reapply. So starts a timer there.
They had Buddhist study at the reception center... but would never let people go to it. It was scheduled at the same time and in the same place as the Muslim Jumah service, but never happened. I was now a Buddhist practitioner with no resources at all, and no fellow practitioners in my dorm to ask questions. Lost, I am, drifting in a current, wherever I may go, I go.
Fast forward a few months, I get shipped a couple of times to what's considered my resident camp, and so I'm now at Blessington, up in the Panhandle. 1,800 beds, and I would swear I'm the only Buddhist practitioner on the compound. There is nothing here for Buddhists; Chaplain can hand you 37 flavours of The Holy Bible, two types of the Qur'an, but if you ask for just about anything else, he can hand you a shrug. Good luck? (Humor: our chaplain has a box containing the Mahabharata, but no books in the Chapel on Buddhism, despite our best efforts to this day.)
I'm not easily daunted. I do my own stunts, as they say.
I get into the Faith and Character Based Program here: you cannot deny a person because their faith isn't your majority prevalent faith from participating. From there, I get access to something called the National Prisoner Resource List (something that FDC has inappropriately banned in one iteration), which contains resources I can write to! I'm desperate for knowledge of the faith tradition that I selected, and so I write to the Buddhist Association of the United States from that guide, who have a book program, as well as a correspondence course that I can take in order to learn more.
I receive my first Dhammapada after writing them, and I'm upset. It's so short, and it makes way, WAY too much sense. :)
I write for the correspondence course to Rev. Thich Nu Phap Lan in Pearland, Texas (all the while musing, "Is it 'pear land' or is it 'pearl and'?), and after a little mail confusion, we get started on the course.
I gain access to more books, more knowledge, and to my mentor, Terry. Between Sister Phap Lan and Terry, these ladies have taught me much on my journey. They helped me find the courage to approach our chaplain to start a sangha (a congregation) here at Blessington with another fellow Buddhism practitioner, and in turn, find out there are several practitioners who are here.
Relearning.
The journey above brings me to just a few months ago. A buddy of mine here has had a journey of drugs that, in part, landed him here in prison. He's come to me several times to ask about Buddhism, because he rarely sees me as someone who is nonplussed about a situation, nor do I raise my voice more often than I feel that I must to communicate a problem. I'll generally articulate the issue, place the ball in one's court, and expect them to resolve said issue forthwith.
I tell him, with kindness, that Buddhism did not make me this way, but it meshes well with how I prefer to be. The easiest lessons to take away as a novice or initiate is to learn to live a life of no harm to others, and no harm to your 'self', because we are all the same being with many extensions if you look at it that way. Self-harm, therefore, harms others, and thus it is prudent to look at the Five Precepts, especially the last one which is the abstention from intoxicants that bar (give cloud to, obscure, or block) the mind.
If you have barred yourself from your own mind through the use of drug or drink, are you able to be mindful of the effects this has upon your child directly, or by proxy?, I asked him not unkindly. I did continue, It's not to say that one can never have a pint, or drink a glass of wine, or have a shot of sambuca in a glass of Dr Pepper. On the contrary, what it says is "Do I know where responsible me ends?" For me, a glass of wine -- a Riesling -- is about at the edge of my envelope of responsibility. For you, it could be a pint of beer. If you are able to, in the moment, enjoy what you are having, without latching on and trying to stretch that moment into two, three, twelve beers, "uhoh, why are those lights blinking behind me?" Enjoy a drink responsibly.
He tells me this was revealing to him, because other faiths he's encountered are busy damning him for drink or for drug.
"We're all interconnected humans, bro. It hurts us when you're far out where the signal's faded," I gently tell him, referring to the dreck that floats around in the prison system, the roach spray and seasonings on toilet paper and the weird crystals people find. "Prison is a hard place, and an amazing place to practice the Dharma. If you can manage any practice HERE, imagine how powerful you're going to be outside in two years."
Indeed, in less than two years, he is headed home. He worries and suffers now, because he's here, his child is outside and is getting into trouble without their father physically in their life. He spends time blaming himself for the mistakes he made that led him to where he currently sits in a prison dorm.
"Blaming yourself," I say in another conversation, "is it productive, counterproductive, uplifting, draining? Evaluate the way you are spending that energy. Meditation is a way to evaluate things -- our minds are like muddy water. There are two ways for water to clear: a flocculant, or sitting still. I don't have a way to pour flocculation powder into my mind, so the next best thing is to sit still with my thoughts. I'm not here to think thoughts, but instead, to let the big chunks have a chance to settle down out of the stream into the river bed below."
Of course, my inner nerd sent him on a side journey on the mention of a flocculation powder, so we chased a squirrel in the form of me talking about a YouTube video of Mark Rober getting some of the scummiest looking water he could find, mixing a flocculation powder produced by Procter and Gamble into it, and ending up with potable water in a handful of minutes.
When the squirrel was good and chased, Fat Gus had had her share of walnuts (I welcome you back from your YouTube side journey, friend), he returned to the understanding of not avoiding a thought, but allowing the mind an opportunity to let it settle, reflecting upon his journey and using what he's learned to move forward. He knows that he needs to use skillful means to be present with his child when he goes home, and those skillful means can be transmitted from him to the child over time, as well.
What he might not know is that he's already transmitted his understanding of the lesson back to the one that wanted to help him, as well as to two others who had been moving in similar circles with him. Two other people who had been lost in the roach seasonings have asked about the Dharma in the last couple of weeks. If the Dharma is the one word they need to hear above all others, the word that alleviates their suffering, then may they gladly hear it.
This reteaches me one other lesson: there is no "other", only "we". Just because these gents were lost in the bug sauce and flavor crystals does not mean they won't try to find their way. If I am going to live up to the vow I accepted in this node, in this iteration, I can't keep othering people. I just need to keep radiating kindness, peace, and love, and that's what I've learned again.
With metta,
Jayel