Chapter 4 - The Tattooed Bodhisattva

After a few months I had acquired a fairly extensive Buddhist library in my cell. I devoted all of my time to the Dharma. Even my art reflected this as I drew nothing but Bodhisattvas or Dharma related symbols. My teacher will not take money from students, nor will he accept donations. I wanted to offer something back to him to show my gratitude and he told me that an example my artwork would be an appropriate gift.

I"ve sent him two handkerchiefs, which I spent a great deal of time on and he was very grateful. [I"ve seen them, and they are very beautiful! I am going to ask him to do some artwork for the website – BIONA Webmaster]

It was enormously difficult to practice in a situation where noise and distraction was the rule, rather than an exceptional occurrence. My teacher lives in a world of silence but it was seldom quiet here. I now believe that overcoming this hardship has made my mind and practice stronger.

I learned that noise is not a distraction unless you allow it to disturb your mind. Noise simply is. You can learn a great deal from observing sound. It has a beginning, middle, and end like all phenomena. The sounds that once annoyed me actually helped me to advance in my Dharma practice.

The things my teacher had begun telling me about the four noble truths suddenly became clear to me. The first noble truth is that life is suffering because it is not satisfying. It is fragile and temporary. This is an easy thing to understand in the situation I was in. However, the noise factor suddenly made clear to me what Steve was telling me about the second truth.

The Second noble truth is expressed as the origin of suffering, but what I now directly realized is that extra pain is caused in the mind because we struggle against the nature of whatever reality we experience. Yes, life is inherently suffering, but we make things worse because we cling to mental fantasies and become attached, instead of accommodating ourselves to things as they actually are. The third noble truth is that peace or happiness is not dependant on our environment. You can be happy anywhere because, as my teacher explained to me, "It is not what happens to us, it is how we respond to the things that happen to us that makes us happy or miserable." The fourth noble truth is the eightfold path that shows us how to practice if we truly want to end suffering. (See "Walking on the Path" for more information about the Eightfold Path.)

As my understanding of the Dharma grew, Steve made it clear to me that teaching is not an honor it is a responsibility. It is really the next level for any advanced student that wants to continue to learn and develop spiritually.

I accepted the fact that helping others to free themselves from the morass of suffering was my next task, but how was I to accomplish this in such a hellish environment? I had to find a method that would allow me to reach others, but prison is a completely different kind of society so methods considered "normal" on the outside simply wouldn"t work here.

I tried talking to inmates who were obviously in deep states of suffering, but my first efforts met with little success. I decided that I needed something solid that would show I knew what I was talking about before anyone would take me seriously.

So I focused my energies on writing a book, which my teacher promised he would make available to others if it turned out. My efforts were well rewarded when BIONA published "Walking on the Path." The book did well in the world outside of these prison walls and has now been read by thousands of people.

I"m glad that it was able to bring benefit to English speaking people all around the world, but my ministry needed to be centered on the prison population because these people are societies discards, and to me this was intolerable.

My first book gave me a voice that other inmates could suddenly hear. I had something substantial that I could place in their hands. It also showed them that they could accomplish things while sitting in a cell.

It was during my study of "The Lotus Sutra" that I started thinking about expedient means. The Buddha taught people according to their level of understanding. How would Shakyamuni have reached the men in this prison? He would have had to take a unique approach to this particular segment of society, as conventional methods probably wouldn"t have worked well. He would have been interested in seeing results, not in whether or not the methods he used broke the conservative teaching mold. I now had an intellectual approach to reach inmates, but very few of the men in here are actually the cerebral scholarly type.

I decided that I must find a way of planting the seed of Nam Myoho Renge Kyo into their lives because it would eventually come to fruition in one lifetime or another if they would only sincerely make the effort to chant even one time. This Buddhism is the doctrine of planting as well as of the harvest. The lotus flower is used as the symbol of this teaching because the lotus produces seeds and fruit simultaneously.

Many Buddhists believe that you create a cause and then later receive an effect. This is simply not the case. Cause and effect are simultaneous; once you make a cause the effect immediately results, although the effect is often stored away as energy until the proper circumstances prevail.

Once again it was tattooing that gave me the opening I needed. I had the mantra tattooed on my back and the results were immediate. Inmates would stop me and ask what the words meant and I would then have the opportunity to talk to them about it. It wasn"t hard to get them to repeat the phrase, especially after I explained that they could get good things just by respectfully chanting the words.

I do not recommend this course of action on the outside world, and there are probably teachers who will hear of this and feel that what I did was wrong or disrespectful. My best response to this is that the tactic fit the environment and it worked. It was results I was looking for and I got them. My personal ministry began to grow. When I leave prison I can always preach dharma with my shirt on, so this won"t really be a problem.

Tattooing also brought me what I really wanted most, a student who would continue my work when I left here. I met another young man who did tattoo work and we became close friends. At first it was only the tattooing that we shared in common that brought us together but soon he was asking me about the phrase on my back and he became a sincere dharma practitioner. His faith and resolve were soon tested when his beloved father died. His father"s death proved a valuable dharma lesson about the transitory nature of all phenomena.

The prison Dharma movement continues to grow at a rapid rate all over the North American continent. While there are some organizations that are supporting this movement the sad truth is that very few teachers are willing to make themselves available to students in prison and that Dharma materials are difficult to come by. It is my hope that books like the one you are currently reading will open the minds and hearts of Dharma practitioners everywhere so that this challenging situation can be overcome.