Directing 4000 prisoners to meditation
From TheBuddhism.Net
The prisoners, who are sentenced to death and life imprisonment at the Welikada (Sri Lanka) Prison, are to be directed towards loving kindness meditation this year; the prison sources revealed.
The objective of this program is to bring peace to the minds of these convicts and guide them towards the righteous path.
As the first phase, a meditation program would be held on the 26th January 2013 in the Temple Ward from 3.00 to 4.30 p.m. where 400 grievous convicts would meditate as one. This program would be held every Saturday, throughout the year by the welfare division of the Prison Department.
(From “Sinhala Bauddhayage Handa” page)
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Most of the prisoners have no recourse to rejoin the society, they should be given the opportunity to understand their mind and to a certain extend what have they created for them to land up in prison.
This reminds me of the documentary Doing Time Doing Vipassana documentary in which Vipassana meditation was introduced in India’s largest and most notorious prison Tihar. According to the documentary, the exercise was a great success because they had managed to reduce hardened criminals to tears of remorse and many turned over a new leaf. Some were even seen hugging and weeping on the shoulders of the prison wardens. It is of course not so simple but I am inclined to believe that if it is introduced properly and systematically, it can do wonders for these hardened criminals. It might even be more effective than just wasting them away in these large institutions, many of which are just waiting to return to society in order to start their criminal activities again.