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

by David Sheff

Instead of working to change our true nature, we must find it. Instead of running from suffering, we must embrace it.

“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.”

Fear is a thought, and thoughts can’t hurt you”—the

“The histories of all of us in San Quentin were so similar, it was as if we had the same parents.”

Now he recognized others’ suffering, responded with compassion, and connected others’ pain with his own.

Life in Relation to Death,

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. But it’s the only way out of our misery.

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

the thing is, waking up hurts.” She added, “It’s normal to be afraid. Keep going. There’s an old saying, ‘The only way out is through,’ and it’s true.”

The lama spoke again. “You may not understand now, but it is your karma to be here,” he said. “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.”

“So, yeah, in that way the death penalty saved my life. And gave me my life.

think. He reveled in a fresh paradox: the death sentence that could kill him had given him life.

When he told Lisa about the night of the execution, Jarvis said he finally understood the power of meditation. There wasn’t much in his life he could control, but he recalled Melody once saying, “Jarvis, you can control your mind.” He hadn’t fully understood what that meant, but now he did. He could control his mind. He understood what Rinpoche had given him: a lifeline. He held on, and it got him through the ache and fear caused by Harris’s death. But even meditation itself produced wildly varying results. Sometimes he arose from the lotus position feeling a kind of serenity he’d never known. Other times he emerged feeling fragile and tender. Still other times he became lost in dark caves and emerged feeling depleted, feverish, and scared.

“But this teacher’s message was the opposite. He taught that people shouldn’t try to leave behind or transcend whatever they struggled with, because pain, sadness, and despair—he called those emotions ‘negativity’—are useful, and we can learn from them. He said people have to experience the bad feelings in order to heal.

“I know,” she said. Then she counseled, “It feels like going back to the pain will kill you, but it won’t. The thing is, yes, the pain hurts, but only by facing it will it stop chasing you. The thoughts will come, they’re very strong, and you sit with them. You experience the sharp feelings and stay there.

“When you meditate, find the mother and father and their babies. Think of the people in the stores you robbed, the boys you fought. Find them in your mind, and don’t run from them. Acknowledge them. Acknowledge what you did. Don’t dismiss them or minimize the hurt you caused them. It doesn’t help your victims or anyone else if guilt and shame drag you down. Instead, continue to leave behind your self-obsession and free yourself from your past and go forward. Continue facing your pain, because the more you free yourself from being held back by your past, the more you can focus on others. Let your experiences hurting people push you forward as you say to yourself, ‘From now on, I’m going to spend my life helping people.’ That, Jarvis, is your challenge now. That is your karma.”

She explained that 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?”

And he pointed him toward the central paradox of the faith: that the more one accepts suffering, the less one suffers.

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.

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.”

After the call, he saw a truth about Buddhism that he’d never seen so plainly before: 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.

“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… That’s how you’ll keep your young ass out of trouble.”

Peace waited where there was no past or future, and meditation was the path to that place.

“It doesn’t matter where you are if you’re suffering. Either way, you have the same job to do. You know how I never understood karma? Now, that’s karma: wherever you are, you have to face yourself.”

I got it then, what Jarvis’s first teacher had meant: all those people—in their business and boredom, in their joy and suffering—they were perfect.

Free your mind and your ass will follow. —George Clinton, Funkadelic