The Buddhist on Death Row: How One Man Found Light in the Darkest Place

by David Sheff

“When you begin to panic, picture the upsetting events and feel the uncomfortable feelings from a safe distance. Instead of being inside them, you can watch them come. If you watch them come, you can watch them go.” The teacher had said to remember that “fear is a thought, and thoughts can’t hurt you. Thoughts can’t kill you.”

I may be sentenced to death, and I’m sitting here breathing!

And how strong, how invincible is the human spirit that any of us, our children, that we can have such confidence that we would have been able to withstand the conditions, the effects of Mr. Masters’s upbringing on him any better than he has been able to do?”

People should ask themselves two questions every night before bed: “If I die tonight in my sleep… What have I done with my life? Have I been of benefit or have I caused harm?”

Meditation is hardest when we’re most afraid, because it forces us to face our fears when all we want to do is run from them.

She understood at last what the Buddha had wanted her to see, that no one escapes suffering and no one escapes death.

waking up hurts.”

One of the key Buddhist teachings is that you don’t take anything as gospel just because someone told you.

“People always talk about their perfect meditation cushions, and sometimes I think it would be nice to have one, but maybe people without a cushion are luckier.”

“I said you are fortunate. As hard as it is to accept, this is where you have to be now. You may not see it, but you are fortunate to be in a place where you can know humanity’s suffering and learn to see the perfection of all beings and yourself. Learn to see their perfection.”

the death sentence that could kill him had given him life.

I don’t think too many prisoners would live under the boots of their misery if they knew that the amount of work is the same to make ourselves miserable or make ourselves strong.

“Maybe you didn’t let your practice slide because you’re in a bad place, but you’re in a bad place because you let your practice slide.”

Groundlessness is terrifying, but it’s an opportunity.”

“People think as a Buddhist you want to transcend the everyday, transcend the past, transcend the pain. But the goal isn’t dangling above the messiness of life, it’s sitting in it; you don’t want to transcend the past but be there fully. When you fully connect with your past… that’s when it begins to lose its ability to harm you—to control you. What

karma boils down to one relevant fact and one vital question. The fact: “This is where I am today.” The question: “How will I use it?”

The man and other inmates nearby listened raptly as Jarvis read letters from the prisoner’s mother, whose loving words lulled the tier to sleep.

We’re all doing time. We’re all in prison. We’re all on death row. And we can all free ourselves.

“People on the yard saw what I was doing, and they looked up, too. They passed the chart around and asked questions. I looked around and saw men from one side of the yard to the other all looking up to the sky. One of the rarest spectacles I’ve ever seen. Then I look over at the guards in the gun towers—they were looking up, too. Everyone just looking into the sky.”

“there’s no protection from pain and grief. It’s a fantasy to think we can be protected. You wouldn’t want to not feel grief when someone dies. What kind of person would that make you? A very coldhearted person.”

That’s the Buddha he had to kill—the illusion that anything outside ourselves can save us. What he learned is that Buddha can’t save us. Jesus can’t. Allah can’t. Only we can save ourselves.

the Buddhist path there’s progress and regression, and regression can be progress and vice versa. As Pema told him, “It’s not like we learn something in Buddhism, pass a test, and move on to the next state of being.” We can regress because of the internal process of changing and awakening; we may grasp a profound idea and then lose it. And sometimes it happens that life throws a wrench into our practice.

“Look at this, man, look how beautiful.” Caught in the sunlight, the leaf seemed to glow. Freddie marveled, The smallest things Jarvis makes the biggest thing over, and the biggest things he sees as nothing at all.

Recognizing suffering—living fully in it, unguarded—compels us to prevent it or reduce it when we can. When we set out to support other beings, when we go so far as to stand in their shoes, when we aspire to keep an open heart even when we want to close down—that’s a warrior in Buddhism.”

Yes, enlightenment is often taught as going to the top of the mountain, but then what about all the suffering you’ve left behind down below? Enlightenment is more like a triangle. You go up one side and reach the top. It doesn’t keep going up, it goes down then. It goes down and down right into the pain and the joy experienced by humanity. That’s where you find compassion, and that’s where enlightenment lies.”

“the path is going down and down and down into their suffering and the suffering of all the people. You embrace them. You join them. Compassion isn’t about looking down on someone who’s in worse shape than you and helping the poor person. It’s about a relationship between equals. You understand their suffering. You’re completely in their shoes. It comes from softening our hearts, opening up to our own and others’ pain. To me, that’s enlightenment.”

Breathe in feelings of heat, heaviness, and claustrophobia, and breathe out feelings of coolness, brightness, and light. Breathe in completely, taking in negative energy through all the pores of your body. When you breathe out, radiate positive energy through all the pores of your body. Do this until your visualization is synchronized with your in- and out-breaths.

People can simultaneously feel the world’s sorrow and the world’s joy.

But on the way, a counselor—Jarvis remembered him clearly, Hershey Johnson—stopped him, took him to another room, sat him down in front of a TV set, and switched it on to some cartoons. He sat down at a desk to do paperwork and left Jarvis watching Tom and Jerry, The Flintstones, and The Jetsons. Jarvis forgot where he was and started laughing, then looked up and saw Hershey watching him. He felt caught. “Like he caught me being what I was, which was a little kid pretending to be a man. I was swearing and fighting, pushing people and stealing from them—but that wasn’t me. I wasn’t mean. I was acting mean. I wasn’t violent. I was acting violent. Hershey came over and said, ‘Jarvis, you don’t have to be what everybody’s telling you you have to be.’ ”

“Breathe in all that pain, Jarvis. Breathe it all in. Then breathe out what you need. Here’s the magic of tonglen. You’ll begin breathing in your own pain, but you’ll soon realize you’re breathing in everyone’s pain. Then, after you breathe in all that poison, you’re breathing out into the world—to every person. You’re breathing out what you need and what everyone needs. What do you need? What does everyone need? Compassion, caring, and love.”

“The judge said the world would have been a better place if you’d never been born. Breathe that pain in. Then breathe out a message for you and everyone: the world is a better place because you were born.”

Guards carried Roberts’s body out of his cell and placed it on a gurney parked directly in front of Jarvis’s cell. Jarvis stared at the man on the gurney whom he’d known for years but had rarely seen. One of the guards began pumping his chest with the heels of his hands, but there was no response. The guard didn’t stop. Jarvis recognized the CO. He had a reputation for brutality, and over the years Jarvis had been one of the targets of his cruelty. As Jarvis watched, the guard worked feverishly to revive Roberts, but his work was in vain. He bent down and put his ear near Roberts’s mouth. Then he placed two fingers gently on Roberts’s neck. At last, the guard said quietly, “He’s gone.” The guard looked up and saw Jarvis staring at him. Both men were nearly crying. It was risky for Jarvis to say anything—he didn’t know if the volatile guard would lash out—but he addressed the cop. “Thanks for trying.” Jarvis said it again. “Thanks for trying to save him.” The guard studied Jarvis. He said nothing, but his look revealed his bewilderment, and then he averted his eyes. Jarvis was left with sorrow over his neighbor’s death but also something incongruous and disorienting. Though he’d known the guard for years, he hadn’t seen him as a person until that morning.

Jarvis felt physically lighter. He told her, “It takes a lot of energy to carry hate. Letting it go… I feel…” He searched for the word and then found it: “…liberated.”

Hope and fear are two sides of the same coin. Both are traps. But remember how both rob you of the present moment.

He was despondent for weeks. During that period a visiting monk pointed out that Jarvis’s reaction “wasn’t very Buddhist.” Jarvis replied, “Fuck you.” When she heard about his response to the monk, Pema laughed and told him it was exactly the right reaction. The Buddha couldn’t have said it better himself.

the measure of a Buddhist’s progress isn’t how a person avoids falling, because falls are inevitable; the true measure is how they bounce back.

“Buddhism is about how we’re all the same, in this world together, struggling. Life is hard for everyone—we’re all suffering together.”

“People think it’s Buddha saying ‘Sit down, wake up, pray, find a robe, shave your head, empty the mind.’ It’s not like that. It is that you can take in the thoughts—the bad thoughts—the good ones, too. You can sit with them. You practice, and you realize if you don’t run from your fears, your doubts, your past—whatever hurts you—when you face them, they stop chasing you. It changes how you feel about yourself, your life, even here. Buddhism also changes how you react to events. So if you stop running, face your shit…

“Free your mind and your ass will follow.”

“I was meditating and became this bird. I was flying. I realized I was flying in the sky and could go wherever I wanted to go.”

Jarvis often thought of a parable Pema once told him: A woman walking in the forest comes upon a pride of tigers. (Jarvis joked, “In Buddhism, tigers are always around teaching stuff.”) The tigers begin chasing her and she runs. They’re getting closer when she comes to a cliff. There are vines growing down and, holding on to them, she descends. But then she looks below her and sees more tigers waiting at the bottom of the cliff. She looks again and sees a mouse above her gnawing at the vines. When she looks straight ahead, she sees beautiful ripe strawberries growing in front of her. She looks up and sees the tigers, looks down and sees more tigers, and looks above her and sees the mouse chewing the vine onto which she clings. Then she takes a strawberry and savors it.

“You want to feel others’ suffering,” she said, “but not drown in it. Then you’re no good to anyone.”

When they talked about reincarnation, he thought about recycling cans and bottles, his father’s business. But by then he’d realized he didn’t have to believe in a literal life after death to understand that the concept is true in at least one way. It was true of Chagdud Tulku and of his mother. Like them, Pamela was alive inside him and in the hearts of everyone who loved her.

Every repetition is different; the lessons are different because you are.

Ambivalence is truer than certainty. Allow yourself to feel both. Don’t fight it. If you do, you’re fighting yourself.”

This whole Buddhist trip is that death will come—it always does. But in the meantime, there’s life. And damn that’s a good thing.

“My fantasy has been that getting out will bring me happiness,” he said. “It’s always something—I think we all do it. We think if we get what we want we’ll be happy. We fantasize that a relationship will bring us happiness. We think we’ll find fulfillment, an end to our suffering, and we can stop running and we’ll sleep soundly all night. But I see the truth in letters people write me. They’re chasing that illusion of happiness. They have the two-car garage, the beachfront home, their perfect children and cute dog, and they still feel depression. If you have everything and still are depressed, now, that’s a bigger problem than what I have. You have all that, and you’re feeling shitty? That’s not freedom. I’m freer than that.”

wherever you are, you have to face yourself.”

“I sit in the morning and at night,” Jarvis said, “but basically I’m meditating all the time now—every minute. I feel like I’m living in a state of meditation. I feel the joy of connecting to my friends on the inside and outside even as I live with the weight of their and others’—everyone’s—pain.

These poor people. These poor children. It’s Christmas, come see your father on death row. These poor women. God, what a life. Jarvis interrupted my thoughts. “Man,” he said, “are you seeing this?” He was scanning the room, too. “Look at these beautiful people. This room is filled with so much love today.” I looked from cage to cage again, and saw what he saw. Where I saw sadness, pain, and regret, Jarvis saw light and joy and love.