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The Most Important Thing I Was Ever Asked to Do

The summer of 1973 ushered in some very interesting changes where I lived. Through no effort of my own, many of the five-acre lots around my property were being purchased by folks drawn to a back-to-nature lifestyle. Unsurprisingly, many of these people were into some form of meditation and yoga. I was still holding on to my self-concept of a meditator wanting solitude in the woods, so I had little interaction with my new neighbors. I must admit, however, that my afternoon walks became more interesting as various rough-sawn cabins began to spring up in the woods around me.

A man named Bob Tilchin purchased the property directly behind my house. I had not known him before, but he was into yoga and Sufism and was a very gentle soul. He hired my friend Bob Gould to help him build his house, so it all felt like family. One day Bob Tilchin came to me and asked me to do him a favor. He was pen pals with an inmate named Jerry at Union Correctional Institution (UCI), a maximum-security prison about forty miles north of Gainesville. Bob had promised to visit this inmate once in a while but now had to go out of town. He asked me if I would visit Jerry while he was gone. This was a very strange request for me. I had no prior experience in this area, and I was still very protective of my attempts to live a solitary life. As the voice of my thoughts said No, the voice of my lips said “Yes.” I had no idea what it would be like to go into a maximum-security prison to meet a total stranger, but I was about to find out.

I drove up to the prison one Saturday morning and met Jerry, a young black man, in the designated visiting area. We spent a few hours together discussing topics similar to what I had been teaching in my classes. He seemed genuinely interested, and he was a very intelligent young man. He had been doing meditation for some time, so we spent a while meditating together. Jerry expressed his appreciation for the visit and asked me to come back. I had noticed that other than Bob Tilchin and me, no one else was on Jerry’s approved visitors list. Our meditation together had been amazingly deep, and I felt overwhelmed by peace when I left the prison. Somehow, being in that setting had touched something very deep within me. Before I was even out of the gate, I was looking forward to coming back.

When I returned to see Jerry for the second time, he had a surprise for me. He had so enjoyed our visit and our meditation together that he had created a list of five or six other inmates who wanted to meet for group meditation. I contacted the authorities and found out that such a group meeting would only be possible as a religious service. Jerry considered himself a Buddhist, and I had done Zen Buddhist meditation, so I started what was probably the first Buddhist group in the history of a North Florida prison. We met in the chapel every other Saturday morning, and the whole scene was quite surreal for someone with my background. When I arrived at the prison, I would pass through the main gate that was surrounded by double coils of razor wire. I would then pass through two more gates before I was searched and patted down. Shortly thereafter, a call would come across the loud speakers in the various cell blocks, “BUDDHIST.” From a very quiet place deep inside myself, I watched that voice in my head say, How in the world did I get here?

The group grew over the years, and when Jerry was transferred to Florida State Prison, I also did a group there. It may have been acts of surrender that originally put me into those prison groups, but once I was there it was my heart and soul. Whenever I would go into the prisons, I would feel a powerful increase in the spiritual energy flow within me. And my meditations were much deeper when I sat with the inmates than when I sat for hours at home by myself. I didn’t understand what was happening, but I looked forward to every visit as an experience of spiritual upliftment.

I ran the groups pretty much like the classes at Santa Fe. I did not plan any sessions; I just let the energy give the talks. The men were able to relate immediately to the notion of the talkative voice in their head. They were very receptive to learning how to quiet that voice and deal with the inner patterns of anger, fear, and strong drives. The inmates’ deep-seated sincerity about their spiritual growth made those prison groups one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. A single request from my neighbor Bob Tilchin, to which I had initial resistance, grew into more than thirty years of working with the incarcerated. The men in my group became a part of my extended family, and they continue to live in a place deep in my heart.

It was the summer of 1973, and in the most unlikely of places, my heart center was learning to open. I was being taught how to serve. This is not something I would have come up with on my own. My whole being thought my path to self-realization was about meditation. Fortunately, life knew better, and she was starting to guide me away from myself through service to others.