Publications & Writings

The following articles have been written about and by members of the Sangha:

"Profiles Inside: Free as a Bird" from Fair Chance Project Newsletter, June 2013.
"Being Buddhist in Prison" by Vajra Kshanti, in Dharma Breeze, 2000.
Meditation and Dharma Study" by Satya Kshanti, in Dharma Breeze, 2000
"Prison Ministry" by Rev. Kshanti, in Dharma Breeze, 1999. (see below)
"Teaching Zen Meditation in Prison" by Vy Tran, in Nguoi Viet Daily News (Vietnamese Press)
Installation Poem by Rev. Kshanti at the Temple in the Heart installation ceremony.

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FREE AS A BIRD: JACK McNEILL

Is there a person alive who doesn't love a hummingbird? They whiz by like cartoon birds, defying physics, stopping suddenly to hover in front of a flower, collecting sweet nectar, then swooping up and away over houses and walls in free, seemingly effortless flight. The smallest hummingbird in the world, the Zunzuncito (aka Bee Hummingbird) is only two inches long, and found only in Cuba.

A strange serendipity involving both hummingbirds and the island of Cuba has given new purpose and meaning to the life of Fair Chance member Jack McNeill, inmate at Los Angeles County-California State Prison in Lancaster, CA. Back when California prisons still had crafts programs – before budget cuts put all such healing and productive activities at the top of the axe list -- Jack's interest in Native American beading, along with his innate eye for color and design, kept him happily crafting all types of beaded jewelry and artwork, which he either sold or traded in return for those daily necessities that family or friends give to inmates who (unlike Jack) were lucky enough to have either. Jack also donated his work as fundraising items to charitable causes. His favorite creations – hummingbirds – won him prizes and awards in arts and crafts fairs.

From his attendance at religious services and classes in the prison chapel, Jack met Ven. Kshanti, a volunteer chaplain who enjoyed connecting inmates with individuals and organizations in need, especially those who had expressed an interest in correspondence. That was the beginning an exchange that began in 1997 (and continues to date) between Jack McNeill and an extraordinary young woman named Lidia Soca, gifted writer and direct descendant of the Cuban icon José Martí, who lives in Havana, Cuba, with a diagnosis of CMTA (Charcot Marie Tooth Disease).

Through their correspondence, Jack has learned to speak and write Spanish, which he now teaches to other inmates. In turn, Lidia has learned to speak and write English, which she also teaches to other Cubans who want to learn. During the course of their relationship, Jack became aware of those too frequent periods of time when Lidia's physical and economic struggles would reach the crisis point. His response was to redouble his beading work and seek more avenues for selling. His efforts provided Lidia with money for food, and gradually enough funds to initially buy a set of crutches; then a walker; and finally a motorized wheelchair, which has added mobility, freedom, and self-sufficiency to her life. Lidia refers to Jack as her hero, and to him, she is his little Cuban hummingbird.

Jack's necklaces have taken flight from around the necks of local folks all the way to London, where one admirer sells them in her shop at the famous Portobello Road Market. They have also led to more friendships for Jack, particularly during the time when he worked at the visiting room in the prison. Some of these new friends – more like new family -- have convinced Jack to save the revenue from the beadwork so that he can use the funds to hire legal representation for himself. Now, that's a lot of birds – but if you knew Jack, you'd know that anything is possible. Just this month, he heard that the shop in London bought more of his bird pendants, and included one in their print ad!

One of Jack's friends has put up a free website for his cause -- https://sites.google.com/site/fabhandmadedesigns/ -- which will soon include photos of his beadwork. The necklace pictured here is just one of many color varieties. Each one is unique, and he will make them to order in different colors.

With the elimination of arts and crafts programs in the prison, it will be more difficult for Jack to continue making the hummingbirds. This situation would discourage many – but not Lidia and Jack. They both have the gift of true spirit – filled with endless and unrelenting compassion, intelligence, optimism, energy – and most important, love. Unyielding to all the difficulties in their orbit, they remain a triumph of heart and soul – fully Free as a Bird.

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"Prison Ministry"

Rev. Kshanti [From Dharma Breeze, Journal of the Desert and Mountain Sangha. 1999.]

This is the first time in my few short years of practice that someone has asked me to write about prison ministry. Unpredictably (or perhaps predictably) my mind went blank. It's not that I haven't ever mentioned my prison practice. I've been known to talk about it incessantly on occasion, even at the risk of endangering a few friendships. But I have never done so formally, upon request. So when I felt this sudden--vacuum--and it simply would not yieId, I was forced to ask myself what brought it on. My mental tablarasa yielded only one reason for itself: I couldn't think of anything to say about prison ministry because I didn't feel that I had one.

Neverthless, the paradoxical fact remains that, for a while now, I have been going to a prison to practice. So what, then, am I doing there, with all those other people? The answer to that question came first as a feeling. A few seconds later, words came that almost perfectly described the feeling. They were F. Scott Fitzgerald's words, his definition of a family: "a willingness of the heart."

That phrase describes the prison practice better than anything else I can think of-except, of course, the word Sangha, which amounts to the same thing. A Sangha is a family -a Buddhist family-and experiencing this mutual Buddhist “willingness of the heart” in prison has been immensely valuable for my practice.

For one thing, when you practice in prison, you are forced to put your Dharma where your mouth is.

It becomes nearly impossible to fall into the easy trap of preaching one thing and practicing another. You, yourself, have to be able to bow with a knife between your shoulder blades (metaphorically speaking, of course) before you can expect someone else to even consider doing it. Because if you can’t - if you don’t - everyone will see it, everybody will know it, and nothing you say will have any value at all. There is no room for faking or pontificating in prison practice.

Facing your fears, your age, your outrage, dealing with your worst mistakes, your most extreme and deeply rooted aversions, not giving in to violence, swimming upstream from the social current, fighting enforced prejudices, dealing with personal physical and mental discomfort - these are not abstract concepts in prison, they are the order of the day. “Easy outs” do not abound.

The pressures that test an inmate’s practice are serious, extreme, and extremely serious. That’s the bad news, and it’s also the good news. Because those who commit to meditation and compassion in this scenario develop an amazing practice, and the results are visible and impressive, to themselves and to those around them.

It becomes a joy to see how well the Dharma works. For us on the outside, the experience provides a healthier perspective and more balance-it gets harder to waste time on petty trivial issues. On the street, “soul-searching” is often a casual intellectual pastime if not an outright game. In contrast, the spiritual explorations that I have seen during my very limited prison experience have been powerfully motivated-sincere, compelling, inspiring right effort, It’s a privilege for me to be a part of that willingness of the heart, ad my practice has been immeasurably enriched because of it.