Prision break
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An inmate in a Californian prison recited one million Medicine Buddha mantras and dedicated them to RinpocheÂ’s long life. He then wrote requesting Rinpoche to be his guru. Rinpoche responded as follows.
My very dear Kenny,
Thank you very much for your kind letter.
Regarding your request for me to be your guru—I accept. You try, and I will try. You have a responsibility, and I have a responsibility. You have the responsibility to follow, and I have the responsibility to guide.
Thank you very much for reciting the Medicine Buddha mantra one million times. It would also be very good if you could recite the Heart Sutra 5,000 times, so that you can quickly realize emptiness. Through that, you will develop wisdom. Only then can you end the most terrifying prison of karma and delusion. And only then can you be free from the prison of samsara, which is being caught in the cycle of death and rebirth and all the sufferings, and having to experience them again and again.
Without freedom you will take rebirth again and again, without a secondÂ’s break, continuously, because your own aggregates are contaminated, full of delusion and karma. Because of that, they are in the nature of suffering, and so you will have to experience suffering again and again. Continuously, you are caught in this always, from life to life. Actually, this is the most terrifying prison.
What ordinary, mundane people call prison, where you are, is actually similar to the places where hermits live in retreat. It is like where those ancient yogis, the great holy beings of the past, present, and also the future, spend their whole life or many years, in isolated places, caves, and hermitages, sometimes in extremely poor conditions. By disciplining their body, speech, and mind and living in virtue, they create the cause for happiness, not only temporal happiness but ultimate happiness. This causes them to be liberated from all suffering and its causes, and to achieve enlightenment and liberate so many sentient beings.
For these yogi practitioners, your conditions—being locked up in a room alone—would be seen as those of the luckiest person, as you have the time and opportunity to practice. Without the condition of being in prison, your life would be full of distractions, sense pleasures, delusions, etc. and you would just follow these distractions and never seek the Dharma or have interest in Dharma. You would never be inspired or try to practice, because there is so much distraction from the mind (inner delusions and superstitions) and so many distractions outside. Even if you are not alone but are locked in a room with many people, then also this situation should persuade you and remind you that you should never waste your life, that you have a most precious human body, and you should use it to practice and to develop your mind toward enlightenment.
Meditation and reciting mantras are very important practices. But a very basic practice, which is more important than those, is practicing having a good heart and being kind to others, developing loving kindness, compassion, and universal responsibility. When you sincerely practice being kind to others and you want to give every single cause of happiness to others, then, even if you don’t expect it, the result is that naturally everybody becomes kind to you and is happy with you. They listen to you, and in this way, you can help others. You can talk to them about the path, how to get out of the most terrifying prison—samsara—and achieve everlasting happiness and total liberation. -
So, actually, prison is a wonderful place to practice Dharma, and a quick way to develop your mind on the path to enlightenment. Also, it will help you to have faith in karma and to learn about karma because you have created the cause in the past and this is the reason you are experiencing your situation. Even if somebody insults you, beats you, or puts you in prison, all these things are teachings to wake you up from the deep sleep of ignorance. All of these things are conditions for us to be enlightened and to realize true suffering and the true cause of suffering—that it does not come from outside; it is a dependent arising. By realizing the true cause, you will see that there can be a total cessation of that, which is ultimate liberation and ultimate happiness. This is what we should attempt to achieve. This allows us to see the path, that there is a path already explained by Buddha, from his own full and true experience, having completed the path and been freed from all the suffering in samsara and its causes: delusion and karma. Not only that, but Buddha has achieved full enlightenment, and has enlightened so many sentient beings in the past, and even right now is enlightening beings. In the future, the Buddha will be doing this in every second until all beings have achieved enlightenment. The Buddha has taught the whole path to enlightenment, so that beings can achieve liberation from suffering and from the real prison: samsara. This not only happened in the past, it is happening even now, in the present. Therefore, you can achieve enlightenment by following this path, by practicing, reading Dharma books, and performing the practices.
It would be very good if you could take the Eight Mahayana Precepts. You can request Ven. Robina Courtin to explain how to take them and how to keep them, and she can also give them to you. If you cannot keep all Eight Precepts then take whatever number you can keep. Also, if you want to, you can take the five lifetime precepts, or, if you wish, the eight lay precepts. Living in morality is one fundamental spiritual practice that is a very important source of happiness for you and for all living beings. This is also one of the best contributions that you can give to this world, for world peace.
Also, if you can, practice having a good heart as much as possible every day. It doesnÂ’t matter where you are, whether you are at home or in prison, alone or with people: practicing a good heart makes your life so meaningful, satisfying, and fulfilled, and it doesnÂ’t matter where you are, even in the hell realms. By practicing a good heart, whatever suffering and difficulties you are experiencing, you experience for other sentient beings. This makes everything so much better. You have much more happiness, and you enjoy things so much. It is how Jesus Christ lived, taking on the suffering of others, and like many other bodhisattvas: so many beings have done this practice. The result is full enlightenment, total liberation, and the perfect ability to liberate others. -
To dedicate your life to achieving happiness for others is the best way to achieve happiness yourself and the most positive result. You become like the sun rising in the sky, illuminating everything. In this way, you achieve happiness now, every day, every hour, and every minute. By continuing to live your life like this, you go from happiness to happiness, from life to life. When you pass away, at the end of your life, you have so much happiness and no regret, and not the slightest fear of dying or the slightest worry of death. Actually, you have incredible enjoyment. Then, you can even die for others, to cause happiness for all living beings, temporarily and ultimately (enlightenment), and to free all living beings from all suffering and its causes.
Once you have faith in different buddhas, it is good to chant their mantras, as many as possible. You can use your time in prison to practice, to purify negative karma, to purify all the defilements, and to collect extensive merit, as much as possible.
It is good to read authentic Dharma books—not just any book on meditation or what is called “spiritual,” but authentic books, especially the lamrim, which means “the stages of the path to enlightenment.” Ven. Robina can guide you on which books are good to read. Here are a few:
A Guide to the BodhisattvaÂ’s Way of Life by Shantideva
37 Practices of the Bodhisattvas
Essence of the Heart Sutra by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. This will give you a
very wide view of Buddhism.
In Praise of Bodhicitta by Khunu Lama
Letter to a Friend by Nagarjuna. This is an extremely good book to read.
Liberation in the Palm of Your Hand by Pabongka Rinpoche
Lam Rim Chenmo by Lama Tsongkhapa
You can see that people who are not in prison—who are at home or who are traveling around, sightseeing, going wherever they want to go—in fact are living in the real prison, the most harmful prison, because they are trapped in desire, like a fly that has jumped into a candle, is completely covered in wax, and dying. They have flown into the hot liquid and been burnt to death. Or, it is like being caught in a cage, and then killed. Being caught in attachment, totally living in attachment, is like being caught by a giant tidal wave that has completely covered the city. Being totally covered by attachment is like that.
When one is living with attachment 24 hours a day and following attachment, one’s whole life—doing the things that one’s attachment wants, and always working for attachment—becomes negative karma. Because your actions are performed with attachment, clinging to this life, the result is that there is no peace and so many problems, one after the other. It leads to so much confusion and dissatisfaction, and your heart is filled with misery. Also, you harm many other sentient beings because of attachment and anger that arises when you don’t succeed in getting what your attachment wanted. Or, if there is some interference, then anger arises and it destroys you. It destroys the cause of your happiness—your merit and good karma—and it harms others. The result then is to be reborn again in the hell realms, preta realms, or as an animal. Once you are reborn there, it is extremely difficult to come back as a human. It’s not certain how many eons it will take to receive a human rebirth again, let alone to take a rebirth and be able to follow the path to liberation and practice Dharma. Therefore, spending one’s whole life following attachment and being full of worldly attitudes is totally devoid of happiness. It is like eating poison that is sweet, but causes death—like licking honey on a sword. -
You can see now that all these people, even though they are not in a prison building, in reality are in the most frightening, heavy, deep, shocking, terrifying prison. It is like living in a solid iron box that is very hard to get out of; they are trapped inside an iron box of ignorance.
While there is an “I,” it exists by being merely imputed by the mind, that which performs the function of abandoning suffering and achieving happiness. We believe there is an “I” that is not merely labeled by the mind, that exists from its own side, which can be found inside the body or on the aggregates. We believe that there is a real “I,” and we hold onto this and believe, one hundred percent, that such an “I” exists. This is a hallucination and is the root of all our superstitions and delusions, such as attachment and anger, as well as all the rest of the sufferings, including the cycle of death and rebirth and so forth.
Living one’s life under the control of this ignorance is actually the heaviest prison, which all these people are living in—those who think they are not in prison. They are not only caught in the heavy iron box of ignorance, but their limbs are fastened by the chains of karma, and on top of that they only generate non-virtuous thoughts, such as attachment, clinging to this life, anger, and so forth. It is so difficult for them to practice virtue, to have compassion or loving kindness toward others, to practice patience and other virtuous thoughts, such as renunciation. Apart from being in this iron box with their limbs fastened, there is also no light. It is pitch black: no sun, no moon, and no stars. It is totally dark, one cannot see anything at all, and one is carried away by the strong, violent waves of the ocean. There is no peace and happiness in samsara, even for one second—no real peace or happiness in any of the six realms. This is the extremely heavy prison that people in this world are in. It is very important to look at other sentient beings in this world, and see how much they are suffering. They are the real prisoners.
As long as you are practicing Dharma, you are not in prison. When you practice renouncing attachment, stopping clinging to this life, future lives, and samsaric happiness; right view—emptiness, the very nature of phenomena; bodhicitta; and on this basis, tantra, which is the quickest path, you are liberating yourself from prison and bringing yourself to liberation and enlightenment. -
By having this realization, you are no longer in prison. As you become free from all wrong views and concepts, you become the liberator and you are no longer the prisoner. Even if ordinary people call you a prisoner, because you are in such a physical condition, in reality you are not. Every day that you practice virtue, you are creating the cause of happiness, to be free from those emotional, negative thoughts and negative karma. At these times you are not a prisoner, and you are not putting yourself in prison. But whenever non-virtuous thoughts arise and you follow them, you are putting yourself in prison.
Here, I am relating prison to wrong concepts. The other way to think is that these are all hallucinations: hallucinated attachment, anger, ignorance, self-cherishing thoughts, jealous mind, and pride. Each wrong concept is a hallucination, and you get trapped in all these hallucinations.
It is good for you to read Dharma books, and practice as much as you can. Where you are you have the best opportunity to achieve all your future livesÂ’ happiness, in this physical condition that ordinary people call prison. You can also achieve liberation from samsara, and you can achieve enlightenment, so that you can enlighten all other sentient beings. That means you are working and preparing yourself to enlighten all sentient beings by being in this place that ordinary people label prison.
It is very important to practice and persuade the mind to abandon the cause of suffering— negative karma—and to practice the cause of happiness—virtue. It is also very important to develop compassion by seeing how much sentient beings are suffering. Therefore, you need to help sentient beings, and for that you need to develop your mind on the path to enlightenment.
Therefore, you should enjoy your situation by practicing Dharma in prison, developing your mind, and transforming your situation into happiness. Then, prison becomes a beautiful island, a pure land. It becomes heaven.
Here are some pictures for you to look at while you perform your prostrations and that will help you to collect merit, and for you to look at while you make prayers every day.
With much love and prayers,
Lama Zopa Rinpoche -
Wow!
I feel quite liberated already already just reading this...... 