mind, body and life skills for at-risk youth

The Balance - lyrics of Aceyalone19 May 2009

MBA Project peoples in NYC, Decon Media, recently rereleased Aceyalone’s Book of Human Launguage The lyrics are tight and definitely on a day-to-day meditation tip. You can also listen to it at get the mp3 via itunesor read the lyrics below.
____________________________________________
Intro:
Mr. Mix Mr. DJ play that beat.
Won’t you play if for me. In the mix mister hop
forward hop back. Hop, hop hop.

Verse 1:
The second somebody dies somebody else is born
People are celebrating while other people mourn
Home may be home to you but to me it’s foreign
Even the matador don’t pull the bull by the horns
One man’s enemy is another man’s friend
One man’s poisons is another man’s medicine
So let us stand, let us sit and let us view
The changing of the guard oh it’s so hard to keep it true
It’s the balance of the scales it can’t be challenged or expelled
Soon as somebody lost somebody else prevails
Some someone is quiet at the same time someone yells
Half full or half empty water in the well
It’s the Half and Half Hypothesis the 50/50 theory
Eerie as it may seem check your balance beam
It’s the Half and Half Hypothesis the 50/50 theory
Eerie as it may seem check your balance beam
Now check your Balance Beamer with a feather and a rock
Wheath or not you find the answer is really not the plot
See it’s like Love and Hate (love…and hate)
The same emotion different weight
People Love to Hate so I know you know just how this all relates
It’s the posa and the nega tive
Mini and mega live
Arm a leg a leg an arm headed by a nigga
Like big and small
Short and tall
Night and day and so on
Some people are bashfull
Some people just love to get their flow on (they flow on)
So here goes one to grow on
I’m a go on and on and on till the principles are laid out
The scales of justice weighed out
Till your memory starts to fade out and your game of life is played out
Got to balance out the power don’t we?
Balance your emotions
Push and pull positions like the moon pulls on the ocean
Balance on one foot that’s equilibrium
Opposites attract and retract that’s a fact
I’m a Libra y’all!
180 degrees but not that hot
So whether or not you find the answer is really not the plot (really not the
plot)
Because giving is recieving (and) and seeing is believing (and)
And the solar system rotes so harmonious and even
It’s perfectly balanced

Verse 2:
Some people say life is about taking chances choices and decisions
Voices and opinions, politics and religion
Clues the past and cash and keys to the future
It’s a possibility and probability on who’s gonna execute yo ass
Some slow and analytical
Some quick fast on the dash
Like heads or tails but the head usually leads the tail
So I tell my tales from the head
Cause they’re embedded inside my cells
Real quick let me tell you about a fact I know things will even out
You can disbelieve or doubt or even shout or leave it in your mouth
Cause how you gone reason wit grand Mother Nature
Running mother Earth controlled by Father Time who’s the chaser
It’s living and dying homey
Laughing and crying dude
Trying or lying my brother
Walking or flying fool
Now half of you are gone find the time to shine
The other half gone find crime, money weed wine
Till it’s to late in a disillusion state of mind
I just found my peace of mind
Now they want a piece of mine
To late in a disillusion of mind
The orthodox is the unorthodox they just got you on the names
The insane and the sane are the same
It’s a damn shame so many people’s aim is so lame
And their gain is so minimal
Caught up in the subliminal
It’s pleasure and pain, water for the flames, the wild and the tame
The style still remains if you use the right side of your brain
Instead of going against the grain
You can penetrate the vein to the point where what remains is a stain
Of this universal thang
That we call Balance balance..

Nice Mike Giant Art/Quote

Giant: Drawing & Dharma - 1

Here is an article on meditation and art by Mike Giant – amigo de la MBA Project – from his blog on Fecalface.com. Hope you enjoy!

Thursday, 28 June 2007
The first in a series of observations on meditation practice and art making.
In every drawing I do, I try to embody steady concentration. I try to remain conscious of each individual stroke of the pen, by maintaining present moment awareness. My anchor, or object of concentration, is the breath. If I am breathing, I’m alive. It’s something I can always come back to, as way to return to the present moment. Thoughts take me out of present moment awareness. Meditation is the practice of returning to the present moment. Coming back to right here, right now, over and over. It has been the most beneficial pursuit of my life.

As artists, many of us have had experiences where we are working on a piece for a long time, and after a while, we realize we were on auto-pilot. It’s the realization that we weren’t really conscious during the process. Sometimes I get lost in idle thought and don’t pay attention. I think of that as being distracted, or lost. Other times, I get in the creative flow and work from a place free from thought, free from conceptualizing. That’s the observational position I like to work from. It’s as if I’m watching the drawing happen, not consciously making it happen, even though my senses are acutely concentrated on the pen moving ink across the paper.

I think “reality” is that which is already here, but free from our concepts about it. As artists we can experience that state of ultimate reality, or freedom, while art making. I believe we can all learn a lot from this practice, so I offer these words of encouragement.

by Mike Giant

Giant: Drawing & Dharma - 2

*Here the second article on meditation and art by Mike Giant – amigo de la MBA Project – from his blog on Fecalface.com.
Sunday, 29 July 2007
Part 2 of a series of observations on meditation practice and art making:

I’ve learned a lot from the transitional mindstate between deep sleep and the waking state. Sometimes my body begins the process of “waking” while I’m in the midst of a horrible nightmare. As my mind moves into the waking state, I become “conscious” that the nightmare experience is just imaginary. My experience transitions from being “in” the nightmare to “observing” the nightmare as a simple mental process. In those waking moments, I can acknowledge the horrible thoughts my mind is producing as “nightmare”, and let them go. They’re not real. I don’t have to dwell in such an unwholesome mindstate. I have the capacity to just let those thoughts go and start fresh.

During sleep, my mind is free to create without restriction, using the information accumulated by my senses as its medium. When I’m awake, because my senses are activated, the dreamlike “noise” of my mind retreats to my sub-conscious. But that subconscious noise is the base from which I experience the world. If my subconscious is ruminating something violent or painful, and I’m unaware of those thoughts, I may react in anger or fear in my “awake” conscious experience.

For example, sometimes I feel like I’m just having a bad day. I get up on the wrong side of the bed, I feel shitty, clumsy, angry, frustrated… and I could just go about my day continuing to feel like that. Or, I could sit and meditate for half an hour and listen to what’s on my mind. Usually, once I can observe my base thoughts in meditation, I can acknowledge them and let them go, thus relieving a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety. It’s a much better way to start my day, and a much better state of mind for making art.

Learning how to understand my mind in this way has been the most beneficial aspect of my meditation practice. I no longer feel as though I am my thoughts. I see my thoughts as the creative process of mind. Nothing more. This simple acknowledgement has deepened my understanding of the world and my place in it more than any other. I also feel much more personal freedom since I’ve begun to experience my thoughts from this observational perspective.

I hope these words inspire and heal.

The Official MBA Staff Shirt

The Official MBA Staff Shirt – and many more – are now available via Zazzle. This shirt can be seen on our staff in various Bay Area Juvenile Halls, and is now available to the public as well. The Design uses original art from Mike Giant and all the money we rake in will go to funding MBA’s work. Mens, Womens, Organic and Fitted Shirts available!

The Guru's Of Hip Hop19 May 2006

This article appeared in Yoga Journal a while back. It’s one of the hottest articles ever on the subject, featuring Wu Tang, Russel Simmons, Heirogliphics, Afu Ra and more… You can download or read it here.

The LAKERS Meditate?17 May 2006

An Interview on Meditation, Basketball, and Responsibility with George Mumford
George Mumford is a meditation teacher, consultant, and sports psychologist. For five years he worked with an NBA Championship team, the Chicago Bulls during the Jordan years. He currently is a sports psychologist and meditation teacher to many athletes and sports teams, including the Los Angeles Lakers. In the interview he talks about how he uses meditation with professional athletes. He also recently visited one of the classes conducted by our sister organization, Lineage Project East, at a juvenile hall in Brooklyn, where he was interviewed by Soren Gordhamer.

Soren Gordhamer: When you teach mindfulness to the Chicago Bulls or the Los Angeles Lakers, what do you feel that you are offering?

George Mumford: The opportunity to be in the moment. In sports, what gets people’s attention is this idea of being in the zone, or playing in the zone. When they are playing their best, they can do no wrong, and no matter what happens they are always a step quicker, a step ahead. That happens when we are in the moment, when we are mindful of what is going on. There’s a lack of self-consciousness, there’s a relaxed concentration, and there’s this sense of effortlessness, of being in the flow. We have that experience in other parts of our life, but we equate it with sports because there are rules and guidelines, and it is a situation where you get immediate feedback. When we are in the moment and absorbed with the activity, we play our best. That happens once and awhile, but it happens more often if we learn how to be more mindful. By mindful, I mean being aware, being engaged with the present moment. Mindfulness is useful because it is through this that we can see what is going on. It means knowing what needs to happen and doing it.

SG: Do you encourage the players you work with to do meditation practice?

GM: Oh, you can’t do it without the meditation practice. This is not just about being good in sports, this is warrior training. You can’t just be focused in a basketball game; it’s a full-time job. Warriors have known this for a long time. When you go into combat, you cannot be afraid. You have to be able to deal with your emotions and be clear about what you are attempting to do and how you’re going to do it. A lot of people go out and play basketball and don’t think much about it. That’s fine, but when you get into organized basketball and other team sports, you’ve got to know what your teammates are doing. Mindfulness teaches you how to develop certain skills and possibilities. When it comes to sports, you’ve got to know what you are doing and its impact. So you can look at a basketball game as just going out there and playing or you can look at it as understanding the science of basketball, understanding how to be the most effective basketball team. On one level, you have to bring in your personal skills, but on the other hand, you have to blend your skills with your teammates’ skills.

For example, if you are in a game and shooting a free throw, you have to pay attention. If it is short, you need to shoot longer next time. If it goes straight and hits the front rim, you need to get more of an arc on the shot. Now, what informs you to do that? A lot of this stuff we do automatically, but there is a process to it. Do you go in and say, “I’m going to make this shot”? No, ideally, you have practiced so much that all you have to do is step up to the line without thinking about it, and shoot.

SG: Without self-consciousness?

GM: Yes, without self-consciousness. Sometimes you can do that, sometimes you can’t. If the person fouls you pretty hard or if the official missed three other fouls or if you just had a shot blocked or if your girlfriend or boyfriend is in the stands, it might be harder. But the bottom line is that when you go to the line, you cannot have distractions. One of the main abilities to playing well is concentration or focus.

SG: Do some of the players give you a hard time when you come in and have them meditate?

GM: No, they don’t give me a hard time because I come with an impressive resume. I’ve worked with MJ (Michael Jordan), the Bulls, and Phil Jackson. I come in and I’m supported by the power structure. I first just get them to the table. I try to get them interested. I have got about ten seconds to get their attention. Once I get their attention, I tell them the benefits. When I talk about being in the zone, they understand that. After that, I have them try it. I tell them that if they try to get in the zone, they can’t. But if they pay attention, the zone will happen as a by-product. There are other elements involved, but that is the main part. It’s about the ability to be both relaxed and alert.

SG: Do you have athletes who do mediation before a game?

GM: I encourage them to do meditation all the time. This may include before a game but is not limited to this.

SG: How long a meditation do you do?

GM: It depends on the team. I find the balance that is right for the group. The amount of time is not as important as the quality.

SG: And the response?

GM: Some are into it, others are not. But even if they don’t like it, they will benefit from it. So the real question is, are they teachable? I get resistance from some people, but I never got any overt resistance from the Bulls. When you are a team, you do what is good for the team.

SG: We have kids who often relate the mindfulness meditation practice to drug experiences, that the feeling of being relaxed and peaceful is similar to what they seek in drugs.

GM: You don’t have to explain it to me. I was a heroin addict for a long time, so I know. It’s a similar kind of high, but different. When you first meditate, you may feel good but it is not likely going to give you the same experience as certain drugs. When you take drugs, the drugs have an impact on your receptors and your endorphins. They are helping you experience something that you already have. They ignite and sensitize you to feeling your own endorphins. It’s internal. So the question is, how to develop that so you have other ways to access it? That’s when you have the experience of being in the zone.

However, some people try to get a certain high as a means of getting away from their current emotional state. Mindfulness teaches you that it is by opening to your experience that you get freedom from it. It does not work to try to get away from a particular experience. It is about opening rather than pushing away.

SG: For a young person who is in a situation where they have done a lot of harm both to themselves and others, and they are wanting to change from a more violent warrior to a spiritual warrior, what do you think can help bring that about?

GM: Oh, very simple. You have to understand that your actions have consequences. It’s important to notice your intention. Sometimes we do not know that we intend to hurt people until afterwards. If you realize that you have hurt people, this is a spiritual undertaking. All the spiritual traditions talk about this. You have to take personal responsibility, and not say the drugs made me do it or my friend made me do it. Then you have to make amends. But the main thing is to learn from your mistakes and not do it again.

You can say that my friend made me do it or the person pissed me off, but you made a choice to act in a certain way. You can make another choice. You can walk away next time. But you think, “I’ll be a chump if I walk away.” Well, that’s an idea you have. You do the act so you will not be thought of as a chump but then you are a jailbird. Would you rather be a chump or a jailbird? It takes more courage to walk away than to stay and get involved. If you shoot someone, that person has relatives, they have homies. Actions always have consequences.

You have got to focus on yourself. It is a lot harder to conquer yourself than it is to conquer others. This is the hardest thing we have to do, but it is also the most beneficial. And it all happens in the present moment. This moment is all we’ve got. It is only in the present moment that we can make changes. And you are not just making these changes for yourself; you are doing it for everyone. Everyone will benefit.

KRS-1 & Saul Williams Lyrics 5 May 2005

KRS-1, old school hiphop icon, and master slam poet, Saul Williams, kicks it about meditation:
(lyrics from the soundtrack Slam)
[KRS-One]
Word..
Sonja.. you know you saw her in the movie
And my man Saul, he’s like THIS!

[Saul Williams – singing]
There is no ocean like the one, within
Look to the moon rise with the tides, and swim
[repeat 4X]

[KRS-One – speaking while Saul sings]
Uh-huh, yeah, yeah
KRS-One, coming through.. like this
Uh-huh, do it, do it like that, like that
Uh, uh-huh

[Saul Williams – sings first two lines]
Saul the road to Damascus, come follow me
The serpent swallow the moon, but it won’t, swallow me
(Yeah, speak the word!)
Intellect is like a major city
Laden with concrete, metal
Advanced modes of transportation
Shining buildings, and fenced in parks
Spirit is the mountain’s forest wilderness
and vast countryside that surrounds it
Too many people live in the city
Struggling day to day for mere existance
Most have forgotten how to live off the land
They only experience nature on class trips
and short-term vacations
For those that live in the country
Cities are like amusement parks with high prices
and temporal satisfaction
At the end of the day, they are tired
and ready to go home, and relieve their ringing ears

[Saul Williams – singing]
There is no ocean like the one, within
Look to the moon rise with the tides, and swim
[repeat 2X]

[KRS-One]
Uh-huh, speak the word
Hyper-accelerated meditations talk
The reversal of this word dispersal is thought
There is no difference between thought and talk
like the blackboard chalk and homicide chalk
they both give outlines
One is designed to outline the mind
The other outlines the body after a crime
Could it be that these two chalks are connected;
meaning the body gets outlined when the mind is neglected——or poorly directed
Like the teacher with the chalk
Or is the teacher the beginning of the homicide we talk?
Be selective in your speech
Cause the chalk of the two technical teaching has taught each
Knowledge Reigns Supreme Over Nearly Everyone
Nearly every daughter, nearly every son
Ignorance reigns supreme for some
They chase the sum, inviting the I-R-S to come
Make the connection, choose your direction
Use your protection when sexin AND hexin
Things come back cause they really never left
If the secret to meditation is found in the breath
then speech is another form of meditativeness
Whattya say to this latest rhyme or poem?
Some have been known to quiet the mind through
OHHHHHHHHHHHMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

All lyrics are the property and copyright of their owners.
All lyrics provided for educational purposes only.

Common Ground18 December 2004

December 2004
Say Yes to Meditation
by Mona Ausubel
Noah Levine was 7 when he first smoked pot. He was drinking at 8, doing acid at 11, speed at 13, and heroin at 16. Deep in the Santa Cruz drug and punk scenes, Levine got arrested for numerous infractions. During one of his stints in Juvenile Hall his father encouraged him to meditate. Noah recalls sitting in his cell, closing his eyes and counting his breaths. As he did so, he remembers feeling his fear slip away. Afterwards, through a twelve-step program and study with Buddhist teachers — including His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Norman Fischer, and Thich Nhat Hanh — Levine began to steer his life away from drugs and violence.
But this is not the picture of a monk on a mountaintop. “I see spiritual practice as a form of rebellion,” insists Levine. As he writes in his recent book Dharma Punx, “To some extent, the whole punk movement is based on the Buddha’s first noble truth: the truth of suffering and the dissatisfactory nature of the material world.” For Noah, being in the mosh pit and sitting zazen are not so different. “It’s the same energy, the same willingness to do whatever you need to survive, but it’s turning it inward,” he says. “With meditation, my rebellion turned into an inner revolution.”
Now 32 and living in New York, Levine continues to take his work into the justice system through his nonprofit, The Mind Body Awareness Project. He finds that the inmates respond to the fact that he is painted with tattoos. “They can tell that I am from the same world, not some white do-gooder trying to save them.” He pitches the idea of meditation to them as an act of courage. “It’s easy to sit back and laugh, but it’s hard to sit still and pay attention — to face the realities of the heart and mind.” He notes that some inmates walk away, but many stay and take refuge in the practice, finding that it’s the first time their heads have been clear in a long time.
Noah also works with the wider public, leading weekly workshops and retreats. Although he is now a practicing psychotherapist, he still goes to punk shows. “What this is all about, what I’m really doing, is teaching in the community. Trying to introduce Buddhism to people in their teens, 20s, and 30s who think it is just an Asian mystical thing, a hippie peace and love ethic. I’m saying ‘No, these are practical, applicable tools for our world.’ We’re taking meditation out of the white middle class and onto the streets.”

Fleet Maull: Meditation After 14 Years Locked Up17 May 2004

The following are excerpts from an interview conducted in San Francisco between Fleet Maull and MBA Board Member, Andrew Getz and by Martha Mahony.

Fleet Maull served 14 years in prison from 1985-1999 on charges of drug trafficking. While incarcerated he founded two national organizations; Prison Dharma Network, and Prison Hospice Association. He is currently an adjunct faculty member at Naropa University, an ordained priest in the Zen Peacemaker order, and he is U.S. Director of the Peacemaker Community, a global interfaith network working to integrate spirituality social action, and peacemaking. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Youth Horizons: Fleet, I want to ask you to tell us something about your teen and young adult experience – did you have any spiritual intimations as a young person growing up?

Fleet Maull: When I was very young I remember life as being kind of magical, very vivid, I had a sense of being plugged in to reality. At some point in early childhood- probably about the time of starting school I really remember that fading and the world going from being very vivid and very colorful to being kind of black and white and losing that sense of magic. That’s probably a normal developmental process that you’re supposed to make peace with, but I remember being kind of pissed off about it. I was always looking for that- I graduated from high school in 1968, and so the whole youth culture and drug culture, and revolution of that era was happening. I got involved in drug use and then it was , “Wow, there IT is again.” So I thought I had rediscovered this magic. But it turned out to have a mirage-like quality. To some extent it was genuine, but it had so much baggage with it and a shadow component that led to such addictive things in my life.

YH: For a lot of at-risk youth any discussion of aliveness tends to gravitate towards drug stories or stories about doing—

Fleet: Yeah, all the high-risk behavior…. That’s exactly what those behaviors are all about. A lot of at-risk youth are seeking these edgy activities in ways that are very self-destructive – I think they’re just trying to connect with being alive.

YH: How can one invite that sense of aliveness in healthy ways?

Fleet: That’s a difficult piece especially when you’re working with youth. I would get them involved in high adventure, high interest kinds of things like rock climbing—high adrenaline stuff, but with good adult mentors. What happens when we’re traumatized in various ways as children – is we’re experimenting … putting our being out there and then we start getting feedback from the world. Even in the best family we’re going to start getting “no’s,” so to some extent we get the message that part of me is not safe, that part of me is not OK. And when those “no’s” come in the form of verbal abuse or emotional abuse, or sexual abuse or physical abuse, it means a whole part of ourselves starts to shut down and eventually we find ourselves in this tiny little box. We’ve lost our voice… lost the energy of our own being and that’s how we get so shut down. And in that small world that we end up living in, it doesn’t feel alive anymore, it feels dead. And I think that’s why our young people are looking for all these edgy activities – high-risk activities to just to try and reclaim their sense of being alive.

YH: What role do you see for mindfulness meditation in working with these youth?

Fleet: What I find powerful about basic meditation training whether it’s with youth or adults, is just getting that first hit that you have a mind. I mean, that sounds kind of funny. “Well, I know I have a mind.” But actually there’s this intense flow of habitually patterned conditioned thought that’s running your life. Most of us don’t realize that until we somehow are introduced to it, wake up to it. It’s just running our lives… It’s like, does a fish really have an awareness of the water? And so when you begin to meditate you actually see that ….and through enough practice of mindfulness one is able to see that there’s this connection between thoughts, feelings, actions and consequences.… because these youth have been finding themselves in the consequences over and over and over again. So if we can begin to get that sense and slow our mind down enough to see that there actually are places of freedom… suddenly we see ourselves in the midst of one of these patterns and wake up and it’s like, “Oh, I recognize this. I don’t feel like going to the hole today so I’m not going to hit this guy.” We were clueless about having that option before.

YH: How long has it been since you were released?

Fleet: I was released in May of 1999 so it’s coming up on 3 years.

YH: Have you ever looked back at the decision to turn yourself in or regretted it?

Fleet: No, I’ve never regretted it, actually, not at all. That was one of the first times in my life that I ever took anybody else’s advice. [Laughter] I’ve never been very good at that. I’m still not great at it … the idea of being on the run was not attractive to me at all. And, yet, I knew that the government was threatening to put me in prison for 30 years and that wasn’t very attractive. [Chuckle] That was pretty scary. And so I really left it up to other people in my life – primarily to my teacher. And my teacher encouraged me to stay and just face it and I’ve never regretted it, ever. The 14 years I spent in prison were just an incredible, powerful, transforming journey – very, very scary, very painful journey in many ways at many times, but really it was a time of tremendous transformation.

YH: Can you tell us a little bit about how you related to that period of your life?

Fleet: I was a federal prisoner, taken to the county jail, and I spent 7 months in the county jail just going through trial and sentencing. And I was never granted bail so once I turned myself in I never got out. The minute the cell door shut I had just a profound experience of really, really deep regret and remorse. It just caused this really deep-seated turn, a kind of conversion experience. Or I think of the Greek term Metanoia, of just this kind of deep 180-degree turn in the depth of one’s being. And I really developed this profound desire to eradicate any kind of harmful or negative things out of my life. And to be of benefit in some way. It just radically changed me.

*Fleet spoke of the predicament of those who are convicted of a crime and incarcerated and how difficult it is to find a way to access the support needed to do the work of inner transformation… *

Fleet: Not knowing where to open on any level to one’s own heart, one’s sadness and regret and no way to reconnect with any real sense of being in relationship with others or a sense of community. There’s no trust… your inner world is shame, the outer world is just a reflection of that coming at you. The community outside is just demonizing you. So you just go into a cocoon of armor and live in that place of armor and aggression. And that’s what incarceration does to most people.

YH: And isn’t that really an extension of what a lot of people who end up incarcerated and many other people – many of us – are trying to recover from in the first place, is early shame?

Fleet: Yeah, absolutely.

YH: In the program that we’ve started in the juvenile halls we really try to communicate to the youth that it’s like a practice group. It’s not a group where we come in and give the answers. It’s a practice group where all of us sit together, meditate together, do some yoga together, and then share our experiences together. And, to me, something remarkable happens as soon as you create that kind of a premise. These guys even at the age of 16, 17, very defended will start to talk about – and it doesn’t take much – they’ll start to talk about their lives. It really does shift and they seem to hunger for that.

Fleet: Oh, absolutely… create the ground of community where there’s permission for them to get into – be vulnerable and expose their humanity and get authentic about their lives. They have a huge taste for that. I mean, what we see in the work we’ve done with adults in prisons through the Beyond the Release program is once people break open they have this huge thirst and passion for that kind of authenticity because they’ve been living – locked up in this shell… I think the best role is really some kind of facilitator who can hold a space and which you then train them how to hold the space so they all become space holders for each other. To me, that’s the way it works.

Fleet went on to describe how his inner transformation found it’s expression in service…

Fleet: …there was this count called continuous criminal enterprise, which is the so-called “king pin statute,” and that’s why I went to trial and I lost- and that statute carried a no-parole clause with it. The paper the next day said I would be 65 when I got out and so I arrived in federal prison thinking I was there for 30 years and it was pretty shocking. …very fortunately I was sent to a prison hospital. I thought I was going to go to Leavenworth, which is a heavy federal penitentiary, but I was sent to the federal prison hospital…. I was surrounded by people who were dying of cancer, dying of AIDS, had DT’s, paraplegics, quadriplegics, blind people – can you imagine being blind and being in prison? Because this was a hospital suffering was just all around you. It was just amazing, it shook me out of the drama I was caught up in about myself…all the training I’d had – very direct training with my teacher Trungpa Rinpoche, kicked in-I just started showing up and seeing how I could be of service.

What follows are some excerpts of the ways in which Fleet was able to use his understanding and his unique gifts to serve others….

Fleet: I headed over to the education department and they gave me a job as a tutor. It was a regular 9-to-5 job and that was a very rich path of service and a very challenging area ‘cause to be a teacher in prison – there’s a very egalitarian thing among the prisoners that you’re all the same and if anybody tries to stick their head up just a hair’s breadth you’re going to get shot down.…And it can get very threatening. You can get killed over that. So I patiently and very thoroughly made friends with every individual over and over again, so I could learn how I could cajole or push or encourage them into learning. So that whole experience of teaching in prison was like a spiritual path all by itself…
….I went to the chapel and asked if they had any meditation programs and they didn’t. I said I wanted to start one and they said I couldn’t. And so I asked if I could just sit in the chapel – it was empty when I was there. And the chaplain couldn’t come up with a good reason why I couldn’t go sit in there, though it was very clear that she wanted to. And so I just started showing up and sitting and sitting and got some other people to come sit with me, and it just kind of emerged into a group. Pretty soon, through some kind of subterfuge or something, we became recognized as a group and I led a meditation group and taught meditation there for 14 years… Several thousand went through that group over 14 years….
… And then this is in 1985-86. The whole AIDS epidemic was just taking off and they had all the AIDS patients locked up back in the mental health wing in a secure unit for their own protection, basically. I was taking movies back there and they wouldn’t let me stay , but I would take the projector, and I started putting magazines under it and bringing stuff back to them and getting into relationship with them, getting to know them. I got very concerned about their situation. I started writing to all kinds of AIDS organizations on the outside to see how I could get involved and get help. I started thinking about trying to start a hospice program. Then I ran into another inmate who was a (paraplegic) patient up on the hospital floor – he had befriended two patients who were dying and just kind of stayed with them through their death on his own ward where he lived. He had started working on a proposal for a hospice program, so I joined forces with him. In 1987 we started off with just a voluntary visitation program, but eventually grew it into a full medical program. I helped devise the training program and worked with training volunteers. I got material about our program published in major hospice journals and then started a national organization to promote that model out into the country, which is one of the two organizations I still direct – National Prison Hospice Association.

We asked Fleet to reflect on what he thought would be an effective model for working with at-risk and adjudicated youth…

Fleet: Like anything an effective model has to be done well. I believe you need to take an integral approach, addressing the whole person with a variety of effective tools for transformation. I think you’ve got 16, 17, 18-year-olds who need to be doing some kind of deep emotional clearing work to deal with all that childhood patterning. If you can introduce them to some kind of body-mind discipline- yoga and meditation, tai-chi—that they’re attracted to and get them involved in the arts in the context of a community building process. If you can empower them to take responsibility for lives, and get them involved in some type of community of service. It’s doing all of those things together, doing them well in an integrated fashion and within a context of empowerment, of adult to adult peer relatationships, that will be most effective.

YH: I really agree with what you’re saying, and thank you so much, Fleet, for taking the time to share you story with us. It has been so inspiring to hear how your incredible journey has unfolded and continues to be of benefit to so many of us…Thank you!