Prison Stories
The Buddha in the Big Yard
On losing a place of worship and losing a friend in prison
Renzi and I used to take care of the Buddha. He sits outside the prison chapel on a small patch of earth that was allotted to Buddhist prisoners by a warden, long since retired.
On this patch of earth, our Bodhi Tree is a maple. It has a stout trunk and gnarled roots that have grown out of the ground in many places. Hard to believe it blew into this prison during a windstorm as a seed, sprouted from a crack in the sidewalk, then was planted, by a Buddhist, where it now grows.
A pair of apple trees are nearby. They are siblings: sprouted from seeds of a single apple smuggled out of the chow hall. They, too, were planted by a Buddhist.
Between the trees is a pond. It is not big — in fact, it is smaller than a bathtub in the free world. But it is the only pond I have ever seen, or heard of, inside a prison.
Beside this pond is where the Buddha sits. And for as long as any of us can remember, He has always been here, watching over our Sangha meetings, sitting with us in practice.
The only reason Renzi and I were allowed to take care of the Buddha was that the chapel officer, Ms. B., let us. When we first asked, she said no, because it was not our assigned work area. But a week later, she stopped us after a Sangha meeting and told us that she would permit it. Renzi thanked her with a bow and a Tagalog-inflected pronouncement of gratitude.
For several years, Renzi took off from his job in the afternoons, as a janitor at the school, and I took long breaks from mine, as a clerk inside the chapel, so we could cut grass, rake leaves, keep the trees neatly trimmed so the Captain would not make us cut them down, and pull the weeds that grew around the Buddha. It was while doing this that we discovered that, like us, Ms. B. liked birds.
We believe in the ability of human beings to change for the better by working with their minds to cultivate compassion and penetrate ignorance.
