Interview with Jenny Phillips, director of documentary The Dhamma Brothers; 07/07 | NewEnglandFilm.com
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0.Men sit cross-legged on meditation mats, wrapped in navy blue blankets, with eyes closed. They seem to be sleeping but a second glance shows a latent energy that proves them to be very much awake. These meditators are not Buddhists or yogis; they are inmates at the Donaldson Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison.
"I don't want people to think I'm naïve in thinking that all prisoners can be transformed," said Jenny Phillips, founder of Freedom Behind Bars Productions. "But a large number of people are just so hungry for solutions."
The company's first film, Dhamma Brothers, is a documentary following the lives of 36 prison inmates who are at the end of the line in Alabama's correctional system and whose lives are seemingly changed after being introduced to an intensive 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat. "In prison, it's so much about outer strength," she said. "But when you learn to meditate, you find a different kind of strength, an inner strength."
The title of the film derives from a name the prisoners call themselves -- Dhamma -- meaning "natural law" in Pali.
Donaldson Correctional Facility is located on the Alabama countryside near Birmingham and houses 1,500 men considered to be some of the state's most dangerous criminals. In the fall of 1999, Phillips, a licensed psychotherapist and cultural anthropologist, was researching meditation within Massachusetts prisons when she heard about a group of men at Donaldson who gathered on a regular basis to meditate. "I'm not sure why I went down there," she said. "But I did."
After an examination of the prisoners, through observation of their meditation as well as one-on-one interviews, Phillips found their lives to be filled with apprehension and danger and, even though many of these men were serving life sentences, they were still searching for some sort of meaning in their lives. "There was such a sense of misery and hopelessness there, but also such a sense of survival of the human spirit," she said.
Phillips returned to her home in Concord, MA where she contacted the Vipassana Meditation Center in Shelburne Falls. After a year of planning between the prison and the Vipassana staff, in January 2002, Donaldson became the first prison in North America to hold a 10-day Vipassana retreat. The teachers' stay with the prisoners was most likely the first time non-inmates have ever lived among inmates inside a prison.
Vipassana, which means "to see things as they really are" in Pali, is one of India's most ancient techniques of meditation. It focuses on self-transformation through self-observation. Phillips, a meditator herself, knew that meditation could offer the prisoners relief from suffering. "If you can find peaceful ways to live in prison, you're going to be much happier there," she said.
Getting a camera inside the prison proved difficult. "Prisons like to do what they do quietly and be left alone," Phillips said.
But, after pulling some strings with Dr. Ron Cavanaugh, director of treatment at Donaldson, Phillips was able to capture the transformation of the prisoners on film. "I think it was the only medium," she said. "The written word can't quite capture them -- and I think film is the most powerful medium anyway."
For 10 days, the inmates' lives consisted solely of meditation, interrupted only by eating and sleeping, which may not allow very much excitement for film, but the camera crew was not only permitted to film the meditation, but also the daily lives of the prisoners and staff as well as interviews with the inmates, their families and members of the community. The Dhamma Brothers also combines real-life media footage of the inmates' crimes and includes archival television reports, which appeared at the time of the crimes.
Inmates such as Grady, a prisoner serving life without parole, discusses his crime of standing by while two men he had just met that day slaughtered a third man. He describes being frozen with fear while he witnessed the brutal attack, and then 20 years of guilt and remorse for being afraid to intervene.
The film's website offers a reflection on the results of the meditation: "Has the retreat been genuinely transformative for the men? Or, as the Warden suggests, could they just be faking these changes to look good to the parole board? Is the transformation sustaining?"
Those questions may not have an answer just yet, but so far, the meditation is catching on. The Alabama prison is planning to have back-to-back courses in meditation in the fall and it's even spread to other prisons in the United States. "Word is getting out in the prisons that these men have changed," Phillips said.
In addition to the documentary, Phillips compiled diary entries and letters from the prisoners over the last four years to create the book, Letters from the Dhamma Brothers: Freedom Behind Bars in an Alabama Prisons which is due out this year.
Phillips says she hopes both the book and film will challenge the idea of prisons as places of punishment rather than rehabilitation. "Just locking them up isn't going to help," she said.
When the first ten-day Vipassana meditation course came to a close at Alabama's Donaldson Prison in 2002, twenty men were faced with the possibility of a new chapter in their lives. Many have life sentences and most have been deeply acculturated to the life of violence and abuse that is all too common in prisons. In letters written during a four-year period after this course, 15 inmate-meditators offer direct and intimate access to their thoughts, struggles, dreams and triumphs after taking part in this intensive, voluntary program. Corrections officers, wardens, judges and others ask: "Can this program really reform such hardened inmates? Will the changes last?" These ....
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letters will help you decide for yourself if their transformations are real or not.
The Dhamma Brothers, a documentary film about the program at Donaldson, was released in April 2008 and shown at numerous theaters and film festivals in the United States. The film aired on many public television stations in the U.S. in 2010. You can hear Oprah Winfrey talk with author Jenny Phillips and two inmate-meditators, and read from this book on the web at Oprah.com, Soul Series.
Review By: John Lewis, U.S. Representative, Georgia - February 10, 2008
"The Dhamma Brothers have taken their own passage to India and discovered a practice of meditation that guides them down their inner path toward freedom. Those of us who accept the philosophy of non-violence believe there is a spark of divinity within all of us. This book makes it plain that no human being--no matter how troubled his beginning, regardless of his race, color, nationality, or creed--should be considered beyond the reach of redemption. No one should be tossed away in a jail cell and forgotten as though his life means nothing. This book demonstrates that all some people need--even those we might consider the worst among us--is to be led toward their path to recovery, and when they are restored, their contribution to our society and the world is limitless."
Review By: Will Marston, School Library Journal - September 1, 2008
Vipassana is an ancient nondenominational meditation technique that was revived by Gotama the Buddha 2600 years ago. These letters are a testament to the power that this practice has had on the lives of a handful of men in a high-security prison in Alabama. Many of them are serving life sentences, and all of them have struggled to find peace with themselves. The course has worked wonders for prisoners in India, where it was developed. For 10 days, the men meditated with three teachers, isolated from the rest of the prison population. They began by focusing on their own breath as a way of breaking down the barrier between mind and body. Out of the silence of meditation came an awareness that was transformative for these troubled men and that has lasted for years, even in the midst of the anguish of daily prison life.
Teens in trouble or at risk would certainly find this book illuminating. So, too, would those trying to fathom how to lead a sane and peaceful life in a world that can be hard to comprehend. This book offers a chance to develop an understanding of how we can share a commonality with something as simple and as vital as a breath.
Review By: Gerald Hannon, Toronto Globe & Mail - August 11, 2008
Marcel Proust
