2017 BP3 Annual Retreat & Community Training Report
Next Year's Retreat: July 13 - 15, 2018
by Walt Opie, BP3 Executive Director
Participants of the 2017 BP3 Retreat at the Angela Center in Santa Rosa
The 2017 BP3 Retreat and Community Training was held at the Angela Center in Santa Rosa, CA this past July. We had a wonderful retreat and felt very supported by the staff at the Angela Center as well as by the lovely building we were in--Ursula Hall--and the natural setting there.
Sadly, in October the Angela Center was heavily damaged by the Sonoma County firestorm. According to a message on the Angela Center Facebook page, "All of our staff are safe... (the) Angela Center building was destroyed but our other building, Ursula Hall, is still standing and we're hoping habitable. We are closed to any events until further notice and pray that all stay safe." We send our best wishes for a full rebuilding and renewal of the center.
Buddhist Chaplain Rev. Susan Shannon served as our guest facilitator for the 2017 retreat. Susan is a chaplain on Death Row at San Quentin State Prison, and she is also a GRIP (Guiding Rage Into Power) facilitator who works with Jacques Verduin. She has been a student and practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism for over 40 years. We were also joined by four formerly incarcerated people or "Returning Citizens" as we prefer to call them, including Rondell Williams, Letecia Buffet Rogers, Douglas Kelley and Raphael Calix.
A sweet moment during the retreat when one small group formed a huddle
As usual, there were many highlights during this year's retreat. Our facilitator Susan offered a lot of wisdom around the overall theme of forgiveness during her presentations. To begin, she suggested that in our volunteer work "we need to cultivate a warm heart, a clear awareness, and good boundaries." She added that "a warm heart will not judge." Susan also stressed our interconnection, stating that "inner and outer disconnection" is the basis of all violence and crime.
"Healthy connection with others wires up our frontal cortex, the seat of empathy and compassion (in the brain)," she told us. She also said acceptance is easier to do in the presence of a compassionate, understanding, and nonjudgmental ally, and that understanding the causes and conditions that led up to incarceration is the key to being able to forgive oneself and others. Additionally, Susan stressed that we're all imperfect human beings, and forgiving does not mean forgetting. "We're forgiving the person, not the act," she said. "And forgiveness can't be forced."
The next day, Susan spoke about how grief and shame often lead to a sense of disconnection. She differentiated between healthy shame and toxic shame, saying that "healthy shame comes from a place of dignity and self-respect, whereas toxic shame comes from someone who feels unworthy, unloved, and has a lack of self-respect." In general, shame can keep us stuck in the past, she said. So we need to diffuse shame by naming it and bringing love and acceptance to it.
Our facilitator Susan Shannon rings the bell to start the next session
After lunch on the second day of the retreat, we had a reentry panel with our returning citizens. Letecia went first and spoke in detail about some of the frustrations she had experienced when she was first released from prison. As she has looked for work, she found, "I'm getting a lot of no's, it doesn't matter what kind of felony it is (that one is convicted for)." She said initially she had to work the graveyard shift to prove herself with one employer. In terms of what would have helped her, Letecia suggested that having a mentor to talk to "who speaks the same language" would have been ideal. She said some of the key issues involved simple things like: getting clothes, food and nutrition, finding rides, having shelter, getting computer access, and making copies.
Rondell spoke next and said he didn't like the reentry housing program that tried to force him to attend AA and NA meetings since he isn't a recovering alcoholic or drug addict. He felt like they were treating him as if he was a "criminon" (his word for it). "My agenda was very different from their agenda," he said. Eventually he told them, "I need you guys to back up off me so I can get on with my life." Rondell earned his trucking license and has found steady work driving delivery trucks ever since. He told the group, "From out the gate it would have been helpful if someone helped me get a job and get transportation, even like a moped." He added that receiving decent clothes and a weekly stipend early on would have been very supportive for his reentry.
 
Top, Raphael and Rondell strike a pose; below, Douglas sits in the garden at the Angela Center
Douglas went home to the Mojave Desert and enrolled in college immediately after being released so he could take advantage of the FAFSA program (Federal student aid). He said at first he felt like he "got dropped onto the planet with no notice" since he didn't even know how to use a cell phone. He told the college kids he met they could call him "Encino Man" (referring to the 1992 film about a frozen caveman who thaws out and experiences modern life for the first time). He now has a job as a mechanic and says he is getting very good grades in his college classes. He said that Buddhist practice in prison had taught him about "the power of the mind."
In a letter we received after the retreat, Douglas wrote to BP3: "When I first experienced Buddhism (in prison) it was watching another individual dealing with difficult people in a very hostile situation. His calm composure, his focus and ability to adhere to the situation left me with questions. So, I asked him: What enables you to handle these problems with such ease? He simply said... Buddhism. I too wanted what he had, the calm composure, the ability to adhere to the problems and find a sensible way that the majority would approve of to deal with the problems without creating more problems. Education is the ability to handle almost all of life’s problems without becoming emotionally charged... Buddhism to me means that the inner peace is from making amends to ourselves and the ability to give to others before giving to ourselves. The gentle ear, the kind smile, the eagerness to make some know that you really care, goes a long way. On the retreat, It was so good to be around my teachers, the ones who helped me find the freedom within even though my physical body was incarcerated..."
Raphael shared his story last. He said, "I don't feel like an ex-con. I do feel like an ex-monk." Of the four, he was the most recently released returning citizen, having gotten out of San Quentin in early 2017. "I'm still very new to everything," he added. 'What's normal to you is abnormal to me. I've never lived a normal life." He told us that one of the things he appreciated about getting out was "just to sleep in a room by myself. I hadn't been able to do that in 33 years." He said that getting out is "shocking and highly emotional." He said he still practices meditation constantly, and "my overriding concern is to be connected," especially to a sangha. Healthcare has been an issue for him. He has an old bicycle for transportation around Sacramento, where he lives now.
One story Raphael shared was that, "For me the best day on this side of the wall was in January when it was a raging storm outside--wind and rain--and there was nobody to say you can't go out there. And I went (out in the storm)..." It was moving to picture Raphael standing out in that pouring rain and heavy wind, perhaps with his arms outstretched, just letting it all wash over him, relishing his freedom.
On the last day, Susan shared some stories about leading a meditation group on Death Row at San Quentin. She said we can contact her if we are interested in being a pen pal with someone on Death Row. She told us that she has seen some amazing things while teaching the Dharma on Death Row. "When you cultivate Bodhicitta, your life is likely to change," she said. "Old friends and family members may reappear in your life out of the blue. Your case may change for the better. Your sentence may get reduced." She wasn't making any promises, of course, but it sure sounded worth a try for anyone inside looking to make a change. We ended in a circle with a bow.
Please Save These Dates!
The next BP3 retreat will be held July 13 - 15, 2018 at the Insight Retreat Center (1906 Glen Canyon Rd. Santa Cruz, CA 95060). New volunteers are strongly encouraged to attend at least one retreat. Registration information will be available soon on our website here.
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Eddie's Story
by Diane Wilde, BP3 Founder
I am a Buddhist prison chaplain. My sanghas are in prison, and the people I minister are primarily Maximum Security, Level 4 prisoners, located in Northern California. I have found it to be a prime place to practice Dharma, both for myself and for the sangha members I have had the good fortune to count as my spiritual friends, and even as my teachers.
Recently I have been providing spiritual advice to one particular prisoner whose story I want to offer here. His name is Eddie. He has given me permission to relate his circumstances and his own experience with the Dharma, with the harm he caused and his subsequent efforts to address his actions. Eddie is his real name, but I won’t use his last name out of respect for his victim’s family.
Eddie is Filipino and at 16 years old was an active gang member in his Los Angeles neighborhood. He apparently had a difficult home situation, as is the case with most of the men I have met who are in prison for a variety of crimes. Since I spend most of my time at Level 4 prisons, crimes are usually violent offenses such as murder and rape. Inmates come from families which too frequently are comprised of an absent father and a mother who is overwhelmed with supporting her large brood. Sometimes there are no family members involved at all. Young men are left to raise themselves. It’s an old story that we hear time and time again. When there is little supervision or guidance, young people look to neighborhood gangs for validation of themselves. They yearn to be a “somebody”–someone who is respected, connected with a community and cared for in some way. They want to be part of a group where they feel ‘safe.’ Eddie was a product of that environment. Unfortunately, it all backfires.
READ FULL STORY
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The Power of Kindness
Excerpted from How Love Wins: The Power of Mindful Kindness with permission from Zen teacher and author Doug Carnine, who will send you a free copy of his book if you are interested in using it in prison (just email him at dcarnine@uoregon.edu):
While I have practiced mindfulness for over 40 years, the idea that mindfulness and kindness might be intertwined didn’t sink in until I started corresponding with Roy Tester in 2009. Roy is an inmate at the Tucker Unit, the notorious Arkansas maximum-security prison depicted in the fact-based, Robert Redford movie Brubaker. Roy was looking for someone to answer his questions about Buddhism. It wouldn’t be an understatement to say that Roy had had a difficult life. He experienced repeated sexual and physical abuse at the hands of his father throughout childhood. His mother did nothing to protect him. After years of suffering and leading a criminal life, Roy murdered both parents and was sentenced to life in prison without parole. It was in prison that Roy became interested in Buddhism. Through his Buddhist practice, he became more kind and mindful. He gradually came to recognize that practicing kindness and mindfulness was essential to forgiving himself and attaining some degree of happiness.
I’m telling you about Roy to demonstrate that the practice of mindful kindness can benefit everyone, ranging from those who have a privileged life, like me, to Roy and my other prison friends who have been convicted of violent crimes, including murder. Roy and his students, who are fellow prisoners, tell their stories of personal transformation through mindful kindness in my book Saint Badass: Transcendence in Tucker Max Hell.
Through our correspondence, I learned more about Roy, and encouraged him to undertake “kindness projects,” even providing him with modest amounts of money to support this practice. For one such project, he traded two ice creams and a bag of vanilla wafers for two old radios, and then spent $2 repairing them. After fixing them up, he gave the like-new radios to two longtime inmates he knew were really struggling. Roy described how one of the inmates was lethargic and “messed up” from psychiatric drugs, while the other had no family or friends on the outside who would write to him or support him.
Roy wrote:
Hurts your heart to see how cruel time can be to some of these guys. The looks on their faces, in their eyes when we gave them the radios, well, the HAPPYS that beamed from them was priceless. I wish I could adequately describe it—You know the “HAPPY LOOK” I am talking about, when you’ve helped someone and they appreciate your help. Especially someone who rarely receives any kindness, who is basically ignored in life like they don’t matter. Well we’re showing some guys that some people do care about ’em.
Roy experienced first-hand the power of kindness, and it transformed his practice and his life. “The key to less pain and suffering for anyone is to focus on others,” he wrote in a letter to me. “Damn it, it works because I use it daily. Just getting folks to really try it though ain’t easy, because most everybody is so used to thinking about self only.”
Soon I was writing to several more prisoners who were interested in kindness and mindfulness. Their letters to me, and sometimes to one another, described unrelentingly abusive childhoods that grew into lives of violence and crime, their eventual submission to prison life, and their initial and then growing commitments to mindfulness and kindness.
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The Joy of Giving and of Asking
by Brett Wheeler, BP3 Board Chair
 Buddhist Pathways Prison Project (BP3) comprises a caring community of people who know the joy of giving–of our time, our heart, our kindness and compassion. We are at a point where we must explore the joy of asking for financial support, as well. A well-known verse from The Dhammapada touches on both our aspiration as volunteers with BP3 and the needs of BP3 as an organization:
If one speaks the truth,
Is not angry,
And gives when asked, even when one has little,
Then one comes into the presence of the gods.
~The Dhammapada, verse 224
In many ways, we already live up to these words. By serving, all of us have felt the presence of “the gods.” Showing up in scorching heat or coming by snowy roads to join the communities we serve–we speak and hear the truth, we show and receive kindness, and we give and receive generosity, no matter how small the offering. In these ways and many others, we have felt the nearness of something perhaps godlike, perhaps sacred, certainly something profoundly free and healing, even behind concrete walls, steel bars, and razor wire.
Yet beneath our truth-speaking and kindness is the practical reality that it costs nearly $70,000 every year to support the work we are doing. In many ways, this fact has snuck up on us by virtue of our success. For many years, BP3’s work was supported by just a few individuals and foundations that provided the majority of the funds needed to keep our organization running. During that time, we grew slowly, from providing Buddhist services at a single prison, to a few prisons, and then to more than ten prisons. Over the past two years, that number has doubled to twenty prisons, where our volunteers teach mindfulness, wisdom and compassion teachings and provide safe spaces every day for healing, community, and truth-telling.
With this expansion, the tiny budget we survived on has been stretched beyond what it was designed for. Thus, for the first time this last year, BP3 began reaching out and asking for support more broadly–from individuals, foundations, and state funders. Last year the CDCR awarded us three new Innovative Grants to expand our work into additional prisons or yards. This is welcome support, but it is also restricted to setting up our program at the new prisons only, not providing ongoing programs where we have already established our presence. While the funds help us begin to build temporary community and offer teachings and intensive practice times, they cannot be used to support our core mission of providing Buddhist services, meditation, and ongoing community on a regular basis to all twenty prisons.
With our need for generosity greater than ever, together we must begin to create a more sustainable stream of funding for our work. This effort requires developing not only the joy of giving, but also the joy of asking. One might think that asking for a little help should come easily to Buddhists. For generosity is a pillar of Buddhist practice and values, and it sustains communities of practice throughout the world. Yet many of us know the discomfort in making the pitch, sending out requests for support—especially when what we are asking for is money—writing grants, or making a sale. But such are our alms rounds, and in these discomforts may we learn to cultivate a deeper sense of joy and interdependence.
In short, we are requesting that each of us consider helping BP3 to develop new avenues of funding and a wider pool of potential donors. Your contribution may be in the form of ideas for fundraising, creating email lists for individual giving, finding other granting sources or foundations, creating regular fundraising events, or brainstorming new ideas.
To offer your ideas or to volunteer your expertise, please email us at info@buddhistpathways.org.
If you would like to make a fully tax deductible donation of any amount to BP3, we welcome that, too.
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BP3 Financial Report
by Lori Divine, BP3 Treasurer
The growth that began in 2016 with two grants received from the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has continued in 2017 with an additional three grants from CDCR. The CDCR grants only fund specific activities at specific prisons and do not cover the costs of daylongs, mileage, teacher dana, books, etc. for our other operations which are funded through operation grants and contributions. The grant funds made it possible for BP3 to retain the services of a half-time Executive Director who serves as the Program Administrator for the grants and assists with operational functions such as grant writing, fundraising, the training retreat, and newsletter.
The two CDCR grants received in 2016 ended in June and August of 2017. The three grants received in 2017 are three-year grants funded one year at a time. They began on March 1st of 2017.
BP3 ended the 3rd quarter of 2017 with $43,526 in total cash, $15,326 of which are CDCR grant funds which are not yet earned. CDCR funds the grants in upfront incremental blocks of 50%. However, BP3 can only use these funds for appropriate expenses incurred against the grants. In addition, payroll and accounts payable liabilities of $9,720 had accrued leaving $18,480 available for operational expenses. $18,630 of the funds is in an investment account at Parasol Tahoe Community Foundation and is part of a $25,000 donation from one of our founding members that helped to launch BP3. These funds are not restricted, but to the extent possible, have been held in reserve to ensure the continuance of BP3.
Earned revenue for the CDCR grants in 2016 was $30,438, and at the end of the 3rd quarter of 2017 was $45,586. Donations in 2016 were $20,460, and at 9/30/2017 were $14,408. Grants for operations in 2016 were $20,500, with $20,000 coming from the Kalliopeia Foundation which has funded BP3 for three years. However, beginning in 2017 they are no longer funding BP3. This is not due to any dissatisfaction with our performance. It is common for foundations to change the organizations they fund every year. The loss of grant funding for operational expenses in 2017 has put greater emphasis on fundraising. Our Executive Director and Board are actively looking for new grant funding as well.
Our total expenditures for 2016 were $72,124, $30, 438 of which was reimbursed by the CDCR grants. As of 9/30/2017, total expenditures were $76,676, $45,586 of which was reimbursed by the CDCR grants. $2,620 was spent on business expenses such as bank fees, storage, and accounting and payroll fees. BP3’s overhead rate is 3.4%, which is excellent. The majority of our funding goes to programs.
We are extremely grateful to our volunteers for their generosity of time and spirit.
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The Cost of BP3
We offer Buddhist services in 20 California prisons now. We actually operate on a fairly modest budget and keep very low overhead. Where does the money that we raise go? Below are some of the goods and services we provide:
- Yoga mats
- Zafus/cushions
- Study materials
- Mileage reimbursement for volunteers to reach remote prison locations
- Bulk books for inmates, such as Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness
- Travel costs for formerly incarcerated people to travel to the annual BP3 retreat
- Scholarships for formerly incarcerated people and lower income volunteers to attend BP3 retreat
- Healthy vegetarian lunches provided for prison sanghas during 2x per year daylong retreats (when prisons allow)
- Teacher dana (honorariums) for 2x per year prison daylong retreats
- NEW Emergency Fund: These funds allow us to offer vital support to recently released people who desperately need a lift up. So far it has been distributed to former BP3 sangha members to help provide transportation to a remote job and for dental work, among other things. The need for this kind of support is growing steadily as more people are being released from prison in California.
BP3 is funded by donations and grants. The grants we’ve received have enabled us to expand our programs to new prisons. We expect to increase the number of prisons we serve over the next few years, and will eagerly seek new channels of funding, in addition to meeting the requirements of our current grantors.
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Sangha News
- BP3 recently produced a new video. Check it out here on YouTube. Thanks to Board member Eric Metzgar for filming many of the "subjects" during our 2016 retreat. Most of the still photography is by Walt Opie, taken at CSP-Solano. Also, thanks to everyone who agreed to be filmed for the video!
- Congratulations to Ven. De Hong, who recently received a Certificate of Appreciation in recognition of his "time, effort and dedication as a volunteer at California State Prison, Los Angeles County." In his recent report which included this news, De said, "I would like to share the recognition with all of you (fellow BP3 volunteers). Thank you!"
- If you are well-versed in social media, we are looking for one or more experienced social media volunteers to help us out! If interested, please email us at info@buddhistpathways.org.
- We recently reprinted the Buddhist Meditation Services booklets, so we now have plenty on hand. If your prison sangha needs more BP3 service booklets, please contact Walt at waltopie.bp3@gmail.com to order more. We will mail them to you free of charge. If you need any, we also have some great Buddhist books and magazines that were donated to BP3 for our prison sanghas. Contact Walt about those, as well.
- As a reminder, BP3 will reimburse mileage at $.25 a mile for those volunteers that wish to receive assistance with the expense of traveling to the prisons. We ask that all requests be submitted at least quarterly and no later than 30 days after the end of each quarter. This helps us know how much funds are needed and how to project forward for the following quarter. For more information or to receive reimbursement, please contact Lori Divine at loridiv.bp3@gmail.com.
- We held a BP3 daylong fundraiser at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City on September 23. We met a number of wonderful new potential volunteers interested in serving the incarcerated population of California, and we also raised some much needed funding to support our programs. Thanks to many generous individuals, we received over $4,500 in donations. We are very grateful to IMC for offering us the use of their center free of charge for the day!
Donate to BP3 here: www.buddhistpathways.org/donate/
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