The Dhamma Brothers
| Phillips, Jenny, Anne Marie Stein, & Andrew Kukura 2007 The Dhamma Brothers. Oley, Pennsylvania: Bullfrog Films. Notes: VHS / DVD color 76 mins. | |
 Reviewed 02 Apr 2009 by:Sushumna Kannan <sushumnaa@gmail.com> Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore, India | |
| Medium: | Film/Video |
| Subject Keywords: | Meditation - Buddhism Meditation - Therapeutic use Prisoners - Religious life - Alabama - Bessemer Criminals - Rehabilitation Vipasyana (Buddhism) Dharma (Buddhism) Prisoners - psychology - Alabama Buddhism - Alabama Meditation - methods - Alabama Prisons - Alabama Donaldson Correctional Facility (Bessemer, Ala.) Donaldson Correctional Facility Documentary films |
ABSTRACT: This film documents the effects of Vipassana, an ancient Buddhist meditation technique, as it is introduced to a high-security prison in Alabama, following four prisoners in detail and the growing brotherly feeling among the community.
The word for 'Enlightenment' in the Asian traditions is "mukti" or "moksha" which means freedom or liberation. If you thought taking a meditation technique that aims at such an enlightenment to prisoners in jails was a bit too literal, you would be wrong. For, the film The Dhamma Brothers captures brave attempts by the prisoners that even the unimprisoned would find difficult to carry out.
In The Dhamma Brothers, Jenny Phillips, a cultural anthropologist and psychotherapist, tells us of the significant change in prison inmates brought about by Vipassana meditation. These include a special feeling of brotherhood, love and compassion: a feeling that actually spread among people both within and outside the prison. Philips focuses on four of the practicing prisoners and interviews their families, friends, and the administrators at the W E Donaldson Correctional.
The film captures not just the pain of being restricted and cut off from society but also the specific traumas of life behind bars. A prison administrator points out that there is organized crime within the prison and an inmate confesses that he perceived the prison as an hostile environment, "I felt like I had to have this image [of the officers] if I wanted to survive here." The practice of Vipassana has resulted in an attempt to "rise above prison culture" and deal with the stressful life inside prison.
Vipassana is a meditation technique the Buddha gave to the world 2500 years ago; it originated in India and means "insight" or "to see things as they really are." Vipassana is taught around the world using the format developed by S. N. Goenka and teachers trained under him. It is a 10-day course that involves preparation through observation of silence and practice of sheela (abstain from killing, stealing, sexual activity, speaking falsely, and intoxicants) which is for calming the mind. Participants practice aanapaana, a concentration technique in which one learns to focus attention on one's breath as it enters and leaves the nostrils. The practice of Vipassana itself is about observing sensations throughout the body without the interference of thoughts, understanding their nature, and developing equanimity by learning not to react to them. Finally, meditators are taught loving kindness (metta) or goodwill towards all. The course also includes listening to lectures by S. N. Goenka.
Vipassana is taught free of cost all over the world and is run by donations from practitioners who are urged to give with the feeling 'that another person may benefit from the technique.' One of the participating inmates, Rick Smith, says "Vipassana was the hardest thing I have ever done." The Vipassana routine is probably stricter than prison schedule, says Vipassana teacher Jonathan Crowley. Relaxation is the long term goal of the course, but the 10 day course involves very hard work.
Dhamma in Pali or "Natural law" is the aim of a Vipassana practitioner. True to that aim, Rick Smith says in a letter to the Vipassana teachers that "Vipassana doesn't attempt to make life anything other than 'what is'. It doesn't teach me what the universe is; it shows me 'how it works'."
The film does not present a good introduction to Vipassana; it introduces Vipassana only through the experiences of the practitioners, teachers and administrators. But I suppose this lack can be ignored given the complexity involved in representing an experiential knowledge-tradition. For more details on the Vipassana technique visiting their website dhamma.org would be useful.
The stories of the four prisoners worked well in invoking reflection in the viewer. Most of them were charged with crimes of first degree murder and gang-related violence and were serving sentences of between 16 and 30 years in prison. The film prompts us to ask if the prisoners deserve another chance and short clip responses from the Alabaman public are varied. When an inmate invokes the African American psycho-social experience, we hear the complicated story of how one ends up taking to a life of crime. Other interesting perspectives question the 'punitive' model that prisons often represent, instead of a 'rehabilitative' one.
Positive responses to Vipassana from both prison administrators and inmates were note-worthy. What Vipassana helped achieve, according to an administrator at the W.E. Donaldson Correctional, was the understanding that "sensations are driving your behavior'". As one inmate practitioner put it, Vipassana "gives a choice. I can now choose how to react to things..." Another inmate felt very pained that he couldn't share Vipassana with many more inmates, while another said he had started laughing at the way he was relating to things, "The old habit pattern is to react to sensations...but Vipassana asks us to observe."
The Dhamma Brothers also tracks the shutting down of the Vipassana program at the W. E. Donaldson facility in 2002 because of demands made by the chaplain services at the prison. But it was back in 2006 when the administration changed. An Alabaman woman says in the film, "I'm a Christian. I don't believe in Buddhism or any kind of witchcraft at all," showing that Vipassana faces challenges in the American 'deep south.'
The film provides crucial clarifications while introducing Vipassana: that it is a non-sectarian, non-dogmatic practice that does not require faith in any religion or in Buddhism. Vipassana is purely experiential. Its experientialism is similar to Indian and other Asian traditions. Historically, it was the European/Western framework that 'saw' religion in every culture. (For an argument on this, see S.N. Balagangadhara The Heathen in his Blindness (1994) [1]. Further, one realizes that it is not only that the European framework saw 'religion' in all cultures; it also classified phenomena into different religions. Thus even Social Science scholarship today sees the differences between Hinduism and Buddhism as differences that are of the kind between two separate religions. In truth, the dictum in the Gita, "Atmani... pashyanti atmanam" [2] (The Self sees the Self, in The Bhagavad Gita, 13: 24) comes true in Vipassana. Criticisms of Vipassana, as either scientific or unscientific, are actually based on the assumption that it is a religion, and rely solely on the western critique of religion. These criticisms fail to see what the prisoners of Alabama saw.
The Dhamma Brothers also includes four short films on "Meditation and the Brain", "The Legal System", "Practicing Vipassana" and "Reflections from the Dhamma Brothers." It would be useful for students in psychology, sociology, law, cognitive science, Eastern philosophy and related disciplines.
Jenny Phillips has compiled diary entries and letters received from the prisoners over four years into a book: Letters from the Dhamma Brothers: Freedom behind Bars in an Alabama Prison. To read a small sample of these letters, visit the film's websitedhammabrothers.com.
Notes:
[1] Balagangadhara, S.N. 1994 'The Heathen in his Blindness...' Asia, the West and the Dynamic of Religion. Leiden, New York, Koln: E J Brill.
[2] Full verse is as follows: "dhyAnena Atmani pashyanti kechit AtmAnam AtmanA. anye sAnkhyena yogena karmayogena cha apare" (13:24) ("By meditation some behold the Self in the self by the self, others by Yoga of knowledge and yet others by karma yoga.") In The Bhagavad Gita 1965 Commentary by Swami Chidbhavananda. Madras: Tapovana Publishing House.
To cite this review, the American Anthropological Association recommends the following style:
Kannan, Sushumna
2009 Review of The Dhamma Brothers. Anthropology Review Database. April 02. Electronic document, http://wings.buffalo.edu/ARD/cgi/showme.cgi?keycode=3312, accessed April 8, 2009.
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