Welcome to Tricycle Talks.
I'm James Shaheen,
Editor and publisher of Tricycle,
The Buddhist Review.
In this two-part episode,
Tricycle Web Editor Wendy Joan Biddlecombe speaks with Acharya Fleet-Mall,
A senior mindfulness meditation teacher in both the Shambhala and Zen traditions.
Nearly 30 years ago,
Fleet founded the Prison Dharma Network while serving time in federal prison in Springfield,
Missouri.
During his 14-year sentence,
Fleet also founded the National Prison Hospice Association so that prisoners facing the end of their lives could offer support to one another.
Since he was released from prison in 1999,
Fleet has founded a number of initiatives to aid prisoners and others in the criminal justice system.
Wendy met with Fleet and spoke with him about why he's moving beyond prisons to train the next generation of mindfulness teachers.
In late September,
I spent nearly a week with Fleet-Mall at the Engaged Mindfulness Institute in Deerfield,
Massachusetts,
On retreat with a new class going through a year-long program of those training to become mindfulness facilitators.
Fleet had already been a Buddhist practitioner before he entered prison in 1985.
Facing the prospect of being locked up for 30 years,
Fleet devoted his time incarcerated to deepening his spiritual practice.
When we sat down together,
I started by asking him how being in prison can be conducive to spiritual growth.
Well,
That's an interesting question because I think it can be conducive and it can also not be conducive.
Some people have drawn that parallel between being in prison,
Being incarcerated,
And being in a monastery.
There are some similarities in that you have,
As they say,
Three hots and a cot.
You get three meals a day and you have a place to sleep.
Everybody pretty much wears the same clothing and you have a somewhat structured,
Regimented day.
That's pretty much where the parallels end.
Incredibly noisy environment,
Chaotic environment.
Many of the prisoners,
In my experience among my fellow prisoners,
Are trying to not be there,
Not experience their life there.
Often we get into really regimented routines,
Daily routines,
Just to kind of numb ourselves out so that time goes by more quickly,
Sleeping as much as possible,
And so forth.
And there's right under the surface,
There's a lot of anger and bitterness and a lot of strong sense of victimization and so forth.
And then you have the staff and the guards who,
They're not the kind of staff that would be holding the environment in a practice center or a monastery.
So,
Having said all that,
If one has the intention to make that time one's monastery time,
So to speak,
Or one's ashram time,
It's entirely possible to do so.
And that was my commitment.
And just being in touch with that world for a long time,
There are many,
Many,
Many prisoners,
Probably thousands of prisoners who have,
At different times,
At different places,
Really embraced this idea of being in prison as their ashram or their monastery.
That was not the norm.
When I was locked up,
I had already been practicing.
I'd been a spiritual seeker my entire life,
You know,
And I was 35 at the time,
So I'd been practicing intensively in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition for 10 years before I got locked up,
Which kind of begs the question of why did I still get locked up,
But suffice it to say I was a bit thick-headed with some rather gnarly karma and habitual patterns being caught up in all the counterculture stuff of the 1960s and 70s.
When I did get locked up,
Though,
It was a real awakening.
The most powerful thing,
I think,
Was the fact that I was abandoning my son,
Who was nine years old,
At the time,
To grow up without a dad,
The impact on his mom and leaving them with little to no resources and also the impact it had on my family and my community,
Letting my teacher down and so forth,
And as well as realizing what I'd done to myself.
And so it was a real awakening,
And initially I thought I would serve 30 years.
I had a 30-year no-per-roll sentence,
And then later,
After about,
It took about three years for my appeal to run through the courts,
They dropped one count,
And so I had a 25-year no-per-roll sentence and served 14 and a half of that.
So it really was an awakening,
And I became absolutely dedicated to practice,
And I realized early on that anything I'd be able to do with that time positively or creatively,
Which I wanted to do,
I wanted to serve.
I had the example of my teacher,
Chogyam Trungphuramse,
So I had that example.
I wanted to show up and serve.
But I realized that whatever I'd be able to accomplish,
It would come out of my practice.
Like many of my generation,
I think I'd been primarily interested in the mind and awareness and the awareness practices,
And I'd given short shrift to the ethical foundations of the Dharma and to precept practice.
And when I had the opportunity,
When the Venerable Trungphuramse,
Senior alum in the Kagyu tradition,
Gratefully came to perform an avasheka for me so I could continue with my Vajrayana practice,
I also requested to take novice vows in the Tibetan tradition,
And so really embraced living in prison as a monk and exploring what that meant.
Yeah.
In your collection of prison writings called Dharma in Hell,
You talk about having very limited meditation resources.
At one point you actually practiced in a broom closet.
Yeah.
What do you think has changed in the past 20 years or so in terms of access to Buddhism and meditation in the criminal justice system?
Well,
I think prisons,
Correctional facilities of all sort,
Jails,
Prisons of various security levels are as challenging as they've ever been in terms of being there and trying to practice.
There is a lot more acceptance now of Buddhism and other Asian traditions and meditation and contemplative spirituality.
When I went into prison,
It was still pretty new,
And I'm not sure why exactly,
But prison chaplaincy tends to be dominated by evangelical Christian chaplains,
For lack of a better word.
I'm not sure what the best word would be.
But early on there was out and out resistance,
And some chaplains would literally try to undermine Buddhist or Hindu or other Asian programs.
And I think some of the Islamic prisoners had met with the same resistance.
That has really changed over time.
There was actually,
A long time ago,
There was a Supreme Court case that established Buddhism in particular and Buddhist prisoners as having the same rights to their religious practices and the resources for doing so as any other mainstream religion.
And now with the emergence of the mainstream mindfulness movement,
There's a lot of openness in prisons as well to secular mindfulness programming coming in through education departments,
Drug and alcohol treatment,
Just general rehabilitative programming.
So things have opened up quite a bit.
Prison Dharma Network has reached thousands of inmates.
Can you talk a little bit more about the work you do and Prison Dharma Network does to help connect Buddhist inmates with other Buddhist and Buddhist teachings?
Prison Dharma Network,
Which we have about 185 or 190 organizations and projects that are part of that network.
And most of them come from one Buddhist tradition or another.
But we also have member organizations that are taking Christian Centering Prayer,
City Yoga,
TM into prisons in a faith-based sense.
Although the majority of people even presenting prison chapel-based programs with some faith-based context,
They don't really do that much religious teaching.
They're mainly bringing in the practice of meditation.
There are some groups that really do train prisoners and offer them the possibility of taking precepts and so forth in some traditions and some others.
There's some of that.
So we support that faith-based work very,
Very much.
And about seven or eight years ago,
We decided it was really important to start bringing in evidence-based secular mindfulness into the mainstream of criminal justice programming.
So we established the name Prison Mindfulness Institute,
Which is kind of our main flagship name now.
And under that name,
Started bringing in and promoting more secular programming into the criminal justice system to begin with for prisoners.
And we developed our flagship curriculum,
Which is we call it a mindfulness-based emotional intelligence curriculum,
Really grounds people in basic mindfulness practice,
Mindfulness awareness practice.
But it introduces a lot of practical tools and understandings that you might call under the umbrella of emotional intelligence or social emotional learning,
Working on things like conflict management and managing one's emotional triggers,
Having more emotional awareness,
Self-awareness,
Self-regulation,
Social awareness,
Empathy skills,
Listening skills,
Communication skills,
Forgiveness.
The unique thing,
Well,
A couple of unique things,
But the primary unique thing is about seven years ago or so now we we got the opportunity in Rhode Island.
We met with the the director of the Rhode Island Department of Corrections and his deputy director.
And so we were able to start bringing mindfulness-based training to some of their staff.
And then that expanded.
We we went on to Oregon and we we've been training correctional officers and others in Oregon for almost five years now.
We've probably trained about 500 officers.
So we're we're sorry.
And then we're working with others.
We're having the opportunity to work with judges and prosecutors and public defenders.
We're working with treatment providers.
So we're starting to get our arms around the system a little bit in certain places.
I'll be going out to Santa Clara soon.
Santa Clara County,
San Jose,
California,
And beginning to train eight hundred sheriff deputies there in mindfulness.
So in that way,
We're starting to see a more structured approach to bringing mindfulness into criminal justice system.
And just recently we were approached by some of our Path of Freedom facilitators,
Volunteer facilitators out in the state of Washington who have been bringing mindfulness into Washington state prisons.
And they wanted to start training prisoners to become Path of Freedom facilitators.
And we now have four prisoners in a Washington state prison who themselves are leading approved by the prison,
Leading the Path of Freedom for fellow prisoners as as facilitators.
So that's a whole new development.
I think a whole new possibility of things going much further.
So when you work with these law enforcement officers,
Do they volunteer?
Well,
The first two programs we did in four correctional staff in Rhode Island and in the first wave,
The first one we did in Oregon,
Both times some were kind of ball and told by their supervisors.
And it didn't work out too well.
There's too much resistance.
So we've really emphasized in Oregon and the other places where we're doing it that to have it be voluntary and and then have it kind of catch on by word of mouth.
Actually,
In Oregon,
We have a long waiting list of correctional staff,
Both correctional officers,
Treatment providers and some administrative folks.
And that's just developed by word of mouth.
People seeing that it's making a huge difference in their life.
And the reason there's the openness to it is because corrections are starting to wake up to the fact that their employees face really serious health risks.
And there's been a rash of suicides over the last number of years,
Tragically many,
Many suicides,
You know,
And they're drying early of every chronic stress related illness and substance abuse issues and overweight and as well as suicides.
And so there's an openness now to begin dealing with.
So we're bringing it in in that way.
Now,
Having said that,
I'm going to be going out to Santa Clara County and they're going to require all 800 of their sheriff's deputies who work custody.
After that,
Then they want to work with the patrol deputies,
But they're going to require them all to go.
Now,
What they're going to to begin with is just a four hour,
Half day program.
But even in four hours,
What I always write off the bat,
I try to give people some really simple practical tools,
Some simple self-regulation tools using breath and mindfulness where they can immediately make a difference in their life.
And people go,
Wow.
Oh,
Yeah,
I can you know,
If I'm all stressed out,
I can I can learn to actually calm myself down on the spot.
And people value that.
So there's a lot of inner work that's going on with meditation and mindfulness.
But if you're in prison,
You're exposed to a number of external factors such as sentencing guidelines.
What are some of the high points and setbacks that you found?
Well,
Ever since I began this work,
I would say for a long time in terms of that,
Things were getting darker.
The whole emergence of what has been called mass incarceration and and just increasing numbers of those incarcerated and terrible racial disparities within that socioeconomic disparities and educational disparities and all the injustice in that.
So it was getting darker.
And for a long time in our work,
We and with those we work,
We felt like we were kind of lighting candles in the darkness.
We knew we've always had confidence that we're doing good work,
Important work,
And that we're reaching a lot of people and bringing transformation and healing into people's lives.
We're giving them the tools to do so for themselves.
But the system as a whole felt like it was just getting darker.
Starting to shift six or seven years ago,
And I think really politically on both sides of the aisle,
So to speak,
People were realizing that,
You know,
This isn't working.
Now that we have this huge system now,
We can't afford it actually really began to choose in 2008 with the economic collapse of the housing crisis.
The states were running out of money and going bankrupt.
And and they were realizing,
You know,
All those resources had been shifted out of infrastructure and schools and health care into building prisons.
Well,
There wasn't any more money and and they didn't even have the money to run the prisons they'd built.
And so so that shifted things that kind of cut the momentum of the growing what's been called a prison industrial complex.
So but that cut the momentum of things began to change.
And with the Obama administration,
Especially in the second term,
There were some real wonderful signs.
Unfortunately,
That momentum,
I think,
Is stalled a bit with the current administration.
But in the criminal justice world,
I don't feel that.
So among criminal justice professionals,
I feel I still feel there's tremendous momentum for change and reform.
People want to see things work better.
They want to feel like they're doing something that's helping for the most part.
And so I think we're still on a track towards reform,
Even if the current administration has kind of plateaued it for a bit.
I feel positive about where things are going.
And I feel confident that as a society,
We're headed overall in the long term in a more progressive direction.
You're not just working with the criminal justice system,
But you've expanded the practice to include those who work with trauma,
Mental health practitioners,
Chaplains.
What are some of the things you've been thinking about as you start to train the next wave of mindfulness teachers?
As with the emergence of the mainstream mindfulness movement altogether and in the field of criminal justice,
Where we've seen a greater and greater openness to this.
And even,
You know,
A real of the beginnings of almost a demand for this kind of work.
The question is arisen,
Who's going to deliver it?
And this is arisen in other cycles,
Circles as well,
Where,
You know,
Mindfulness is going into health care in a big way through the Center for Mindfulness and other organizations into the military,
Into K through 12 education in a big way.
Now into the corporate world and all kinds of sectors of society and in our work very much into the criminal justice system and related social services and human services.
And initially in the beginnings of the mindfulness movement,
Most of the teachers came out of the various Dharma traditions.
But that's a very limited pool of people.
If you're part of those traditions,
You may think there's a lot of us.
But if compared to the size of our society and our country is very small and even among that group,
Those who are inclined,
Those who are trained as teachers,
Even a smaller group.
And then among those,
Those who are inclined to do this kind of engaged work is smaller still.
So clearly we knew we couldn't depend on that group alone.
We needed to train up people who are already working in these fields professionally and who wanted to work as volunteers.
And we need to really,
As you said,
Expand the circle.
So that's why we started the Engage Mindfulness Institute.
And really my colleague,
Kate Crisp,
And I,
Who's been my primary colleague and work partner in this work for many years,
He's been executive director of Prison Mindfulness Institute,
Prison Dharma Network for many years.
We both feel that with whatever time left we have on the planet,
What we really aspire to do is to train as many people as we can to do the work we've been doing and do the best job we can at doing that.
So that's why we've started the Engage Mindfulness Institute and we're specifically training people in classic mindfulness and,
You know,
Pretty much the shared understanding of mindfulness in the mainstream movement.
We're not training them to lead a particular intervention.
We're more broadly training them to share the basic practices of mindfulness as well as to facilitate various mindfulness based interventions.
And specifically those who are interested in doing so with vulnerable populations and underserved communities and so forth.
And in many of these communities and with many of the individuals our students and aspiring teachers and facilitators will work with,
There is a lot of trauma.
So we're really emphasizing a trauma informed approach to sharing the practice of mindfulness and reaching out to the experts and bringing that expertise into our training and into our community.
It seems that because secular mindfulness is a newer field,
It doesn't seem to have a uniform way of certifying teachers.
And to many can kind of feel like the Wild West.
What do you see emerging and what do you think Engage Mindfulness's role is in setting a standard?
Right.
It is a little bit the Wild West now,
But that's the beginnings of any new field is like that.
And it's my hope that,
You know,
As we move into certifications and associations and where that can then go as state licensing board,
I mean,
It can get,
You know,
Like it is in other fields,
It can get a bit oppressive at times and also get too expensive for people to become trained.
So that's the downside of at the other end of the spectrum.
And of course,
At the Wild West side,
Then you have people are not certain about people's credentials and qualifications and you can have some not so deep work going on sometimes.
So what we're doing is we're trying to provide the best,
Most substantial program we possibly can that is economically doable for people.
We don't require a master's degree.
Some programs do that are more university based.
So our program is more open to lots of people,
But we do set a very high bar.
I think our program is is is certainly as substantial and deep as any that are out there.
And we're continually trying to improve it.
And we set a very high bar with our students.
We make it very clear to them that this is like any university based professional certification program and they need to really set a tide,
Significant time in their life to go through it.
It's a big commitment.
But then there's a whole certification process of final exams and submitting videotapes and getting a faculty assessment and a self-assessment.
We set quite a high bar.
And we're also participating with this group that is establishing this International Mindfulness Teachers Association.
And we will continue to participate with them and with other organizations and colleagues to to evolve this field and set high standards.
Beyond the world of prison reform and the work you're now doing at the Engaged Mindfulness Institute,
How do you hope that faith based and more mainstream secular worlds move forward together?
So most of the methodologies that are being mainstreamed in the so-called mainstream or sometimes called secular mindfulness movement do come from the Buddhist tradition,
Do come from sort of basic Buddhist teachings of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sūtra and others.
But they're present within all the current contemplative Buddhist traditions,
Whether it's Zen or Tibetan or Theravāda traditions and others,
Insight,
Meditation and so forth.
And that doesn't say for someone to deepen in those that they have to become a Buddhist at all.
And really,
The ground out of which most of them came was more of a almost a human and a spiritual science or a contemplative science as opposed to something religious,
Per se.
And so I think one can really sink into and study the roots of these methods where they came from and go deep in that,
Both in terms of studying practices without having to become a Buddhist in any way,
Shape or form.
I do feel that it's important that we bring the ethical foundation that these of the traditions these practices came out of into the mainstream mindfulness movement and all the different senior mindfulness teachers and training organizations are talking about the same thing,
Emphasizing the importance of the ethical context,
As well as that mindfulness is not attention training alone.
That the factors,
The qualities of attention are very important.
You can sometimes I talk about and others have talked about mindfulness is kind of a three legged stool that you have intention.
What's your motivation for practicing yourself?
And then if you're sharing your practice,
What's your motivation?
Being clear about that.
And then and the motivation,
For example,
To relieve your own suffering,
To relieve other suffering,
To awaken,
To help others awaken,
To help co-create a better world,
A more sustainable world,
All these kind of motivations.
And then attention obviously is very important.
A big part of mindfulness training is training our capacity to self-regulate our attention and in doing so increase our overall awareness.
But then there are the qualities that we bring,
The attitudinal qualities that we bring to that attention.
Things like kindness,
Self-compassion,
Non-striving,
Non-judgmental quality,
Openness,
Curiosity,
All of these kinds of.
So all these are important and all these are being honored within the mainstream mind.
If you listen to John Kevins or Saki Santorelli from the Center for Mindfulness or many other teachers out there in the mainstream mindfulness movement,
Everyone is emphasizing that it's not mere attention training,
That it is the motivation is important.
The training and self-regulating attention and awareness is important and bringing in these qualities and these attitudinal qualities of compassion and kindness and curiosity and so forth.
And I think it's important that that conversation continue and I think there are many people coming from different faith traditions in the U.
S.
And around the world who are getting interested in mindfulness and then bringing it back into their religious traditions.
And in some cases that's being welcomed and in some cases maybe others of their faith or congregate are going,
Oh,
What's this?
Is this covert Buddhism or what is this?
But then people are going,
No,
It's just like becoming more present,
You know,
And then some people go,
Well,
We already have this in our tradition.
We can point,
Great,
You know,
But I think the fact that the conversation,
It doesn't mean that mindfulness just has to stay out in the secular world.
I think it,
You know,
I think eventually,
You know,
As long as the Dalai Lama is pointed to the need for a universal ethics and a humanistic ethics and even a secular ethics.
But I don't think,
You know,
This doesn't need to be at the emergence of a secular or mainstream mindfulness movement.
I don't think needs to happen at the expense of the faith based world.
I think it can all be a little more fluid and a little more integrated over time.
And there will be those people who will just,
You know,
Never ascribe to a particular religious tradition and be more comfortable in a,
You know,
In a however they define a non religious context.
And there will be those people that enjoy having roots in one religious or faith based tradition or another.
But,
You know,
We don't have to see like think they're like two opposing camps or something.
It's really all one thing.
And I think the more communication they can enrich each other,
I think is my main point that these these traditions,
Both secular and religious,
Can enrich each other very much.
Yeah.
I've been here at the Engaged Mindfulness Institute for a few days,
Sitting in on the opening retreat for your year long course.
If someone wants to train with you,
What does Engaged Mindfulness Institute offer?
We just finished the the introductory retreat,
Which launches people into the first year program,
Which potentially leads to what we're calling a 300 hour mindfulness facilitator certification.
And if people want to go on to year two,
There's a possible 500 hour mindfulness teacher certification.
Year two involves a lot more training,
Retreats and practice,
But also 100 hours of practice teaching with a supervisor.
And both programs emphasize study and practice and retreat practice and a lot of learning.
They're both trauma informed.
And if people want to find out about it,
The Engaged Mindfulness Institute,
It's www.
Engagedmindfulness.
Org.
We've always felt it was really important to be in touch with,
You know,
Leading teachers and colleagues and all the different traditions that we're involved with.
So even when I was in prison,
I started developing a board of spiritual advisors for Prison Dharma Network,
Reaching out to the various different Buddhist traditions and even other contemplative traditions,
And had many of the eminent preeminent Dharma teachers and as well as Father Thomas Keating,
Christian Centering Prayer,
The Trappist monk,
David Cooper,
A teacher of Jewish meditation,
Contemplative Judaism and others.
And so we had this somewhat large board of spiritual advisors.
And when we started to start this program,
Well,
We'll start there.
And we reached out to them and great,
Very gratefully,
One after another,
They all said yes.
And then we started expanding.
And we've tried to recruit a diverse faculty and also incorporating more and more clinicians.
We have three of the leading trauma therapists in the U.
S.
So at any rate,
People can go online and find out all about it and engage mindfulness.
Org.
James Sheheen
