[Dharmajala] AN INTRODUCTION TO ANGULIMALA: the Buddhist Prison Chaplaincy Organisation

Mon, 22 May 2006 21:00:36 -0700

Dear all,

Sekuntum teratai untuk anda semua, para calon Buddha.

Untuk mengingatkan kembali tujuan dari Dharmajala yaitu Belajar, Berlatih, dan Berbagi Hidup Berkesadaran guna memfasilitasi terjadinya Transformasi Diri, Transformasi Sosial, dan Pelestarian Lingkungan Hidup, saya tampilkan salah satu bentuk dari praktik Dharma kontekstual yg membumi. Semoga kita yg di Indonesia dapat mewujudkan praktik-praktik Dharma yg seperti ini.


Salam Perjuangan

JL

ANGULIMALA

the Buddhist Prison Chaplaincy Organisation
http://www.angulimala.org.uk/

SPIRITUAL DIRECTOR:   Ven. Ajahn Khemadhammo OBE 

PATRON:    Right Honourable, the Lord Avebury
 
 
ANGULIMALA'S OBJECTS:
  • To make available facilities for the teaching and practice of Buddhism in Her Majesty's Prisons and other places of lawful detention or custody.
Specifically:
  • To recruit and advise a team of Buddhist visiting chaplains to be available as soon as there is a call for their services;
  • To act in an advisory capacity, and to liaise with the Home Office chaplaincy officials, with individual chaplains within Her Majestys Prisons, and with any other relevant bodies or officials;
  • To provide an aftercare and advisory service for prisoners after release.
 

THE NEXT ANGULIMALA WORKSHOPS

The next one will be at The Forest Hermitage

on Saturday, June 24th , 2006, from 10 a.m.

Then after that the next will be in September

on the same weekend as the Springhill Buddha Grove Celebration

and the date for that has yet to be discussed with the Governor.

These workshops are for Buddhist prison chaplains,
otherwise attendance is by invitation and then only open to members of Angulimala.

 

An Introduction to Angulimala

 


WANTED

Volunteers to be Buddhist Prison Chaplains at specific prisons.



Links to some useful Angulimala documents and information

Membership forms can be found here.

 

Links to some useful prison related sites and information


 

 

ANGULIMALA

the Buddhist Prison Chaplaincy Organisation
The Forest Hermitage,
Lower Fulbrook,
Warwickshire   CV35 8AS
United Kingdom
telephone 01926 624385
Registered Charity No. 294939
Last updated on March 25th, 2006.

The Buddha Grove Peace Garden at Grendon Prison
(photo by Tim Page)



AN INTRODUCTION TO ANGULIMALA
by  Venerable Khemadhammo Mahathera  OBE

 
The Buddhist scriptures relate that one day, after his meal, the Buddha went out from the monastery where he was staying and walked towards a great forest, seeing him going in that direction various people working in their fields called out to warn him that in that forest dwelt the dreaded Angulimala.  Little is known for certain about Angulimala but the usual account of his life has him the son of a well-to-do family and at one time a brilliant student at the university of Taxila, then the Oxbridge of India.  At Taxila, other students were jealous of him and succeeded in poisoning their teacher’s mind against him with the result that the teacher asked of him what he must have believed would be an impossible honorarium, a thousand, right hand, human, little fingers.  Unbelievably, instead of giving up and slinking off home without graduating, this young man set out to collect those fingers and pay the fee.  Presumably, he quickly discovered that people were reluctant to willingly give up their little fingers and so he was forced to resort to violence and killing in order to obtain them.  Then he found he had nowhere to store these fingers.  He tried hanging them on a tree but the birds stole them so his solution was to string them about his neck.  For this gruesome and growing garland of bloody fingers he was nicknamed Angulimala, meaning ‘finger garland’.  This was the man then who peering out from his lair spotted the Buddha coming towards him and who that day had about his neck nine hundred and ninety-nine human, right hand, little fingers.  This powerful and athletic serial killer who had already successfully resisted several attempts to apprehend him grabbed his weapons and dashed out to murder the Buddha and complete his score.  He expected quickly to overtake his prey and finish the job but a very strange thing happened for even though the Buddha was only walking, serene and unhurried, Angulimala, despite his formidable strength and speed found he couldn’t catch up with him.  Eventually, exhausted, angry, frustrated and dripping with sweat, Angulimala screamed at the Buddha to stop.  Then the Buddha turned and speaking quietly and directly told Angulimala that he, the Buddha, had already stopped.  He had stopped killing and harming and now it was time for him, Angulimala, to do likewise.  Angulimala was so struck by these words that there and then he stopped, he threw away his weapons and followed the Buddha back to the monastery where he became a monk.  Later, the King, ignorant of what had happened, came by leading his troops out to arrest Angulimala.  Being a very pious monarch, he called in to pay his respects to the Buddha and to inform him of what he was up to.  The Buddha asked the King what his reaction would be were he to discover that amongst this assembly of monks sat Angulimala.  To the King it was utterly unbelievable that such a foul and evil person could now be a Buddhist monk and seated amongst such exalted company but were it the case, he answered, he would certainly pay his respects and make offerings.  Then the Buddha stretched forth his right hand and pointing announced that there sat Angulimala.  When he’d  mastered his fear and recovered from the shock, the King having paid his respects said to the Buddha how incredible it was that, “What we have tried to do by force and with weapons you have done with neither force nor weapons!”  In the course of time, after a period of some trial to himself, Angulimala did eventually succeed in purging his mind of all greed, hatred and delusion and realised the Buddhist goal of Enlightenment.
 
In pursuit of that same ideal, in 1971 I abandoned my promising career as an actor and went out to Thailand to further a consuming interest in Buddhism and deepen my practice of meditation.  I was then twenty-seven years old.  I had the good fortune to be accepted by the Venerable Ajahn Chah, one of the greatest of the Thai Buddhist masters and I spent my years in Thailand in the northeast, close to the Lao and Cambodian borders, at forest hermitages and monasteries under Ajahn Chah’s guidance.  In 1977, Ajahn Chah was invited to London and being English it was natural that I should accompany him.  It was supposed to be a stay of just two months to explore possibilities but within a week or two Ajahn Chah had decided that while he would have to return to Thailand as planned, I would be staying on.  This was at the old Hampstead Buddhist Vihara on Haverstock Hill and this was the address that the Prison Service then had as its Buddhist contact.  It wasn’t long before letters came from Pentonville and Parkhurst prisons asking for someone to go to those prisons as the Buddhist ‘Visiting Minister’ and coincidentally the chaplain at Holloway women’s prison also rang up for someone to visit a newly arrived Buddhist prisoner there.  Later, on the weekend when the Queen was celebrating her Silver Jubilee, Ajahn Chah and I were seated together on a train and I asked him what he thought about my responding to those requests.  He answered with one word, “Go!”  And I’ve been going to prisons ever since.
 
Inevitably, the people I began to see at the first prisons I visited were moved on to other establishments and I dutifully followed.  Rapidly I began to collect appointments as the Visiting Buddhist Minister to an increasing number of gaols and more and more of my time came to be spent sitting or standing on trains and walking and hitching from prison to prison.  From 1979, I was based on the Isle of Wight but in 1984, I accepted an invitation to move up to Warwickshire.  That move enabled me to team up with Yann Lovelock living in Birmingham who by this time I had drawn into the prison work and we were able to push forward the idea of providing a properly organised Buddhist prison chaplaincy with the aim of making Buddhism available in the prisons. 
 
The story of Angulimala teaches us that the possibility of Enlightenment may be awakened in the most extreme of circumstances, that people can and do change and that people are best influenced by persuasion and above all, example.  ANGULIMALA, the Buddhist Prison Chaplaincy Organisation was founded on Magha Puja Day in February l985.  The festival of Magha Puja celebrates an occasion when the Buddha explained his teaching in its simplest and most universal form as, “Give up what is unwholesome and wrong, cultivate what is skilful and good and purify your mind - this is the Teaching of all the Buddhas.”  It reminds us that behind the exoticism and intellectualisation, the need for practical application lies at the core of everything the Buddha said.
 
Following consultation with the Prison Service Chaplaincy, ANGULIMALA was recognised in March l985 as the official representative of Buddhism in all matters concerning the Prison Service in England and Wales.  ANGULIMALA has since been referred to as the Buddhist Nominating Authority and is now officially the Religious Consultative Service to the Prison Service for Buddhist matters and the Prison Service contributes to its costs.  I am a member of the Prison Service’s newly formed Multifaith Chaplaincy Council and referred to as the Buddhist Adviser and in the Queen’s Birthday Honours this year I was appointed an OBE for services to prisoners.  Since June of 1999, when I led a workshop in Edinburgh we have been active in Scotland.  There are also thoughts of a branch in the West Indies, we have contacts in America, Russia and Nepal and I have visited prisons in Thailand.
 
ANGULIMALA does not favour any form or school of Buddhism over another and has the backing of most major Buddhist organisations in the UK.  Membership is open to anyone in sympathy with its aims, whether they wish to play an active part or not.  By early 2003, we had forty-seven chaplains working in about a hundred and twenty of the penal establishments in England and Wales.  A committee that meets quarterly and which helps with the wider organisation oversees our several activities.  Currently Lord Avebury is the Patron, Rev. Saido Kennaway of Throssel Hole Buddhist Abbey co-ordinates the appointment of Buddhist Visiting Ministers, Sue Wood is the Secretary, Rob Yellowhammer is the Treasurer, Charlotte Proctor co-ordinates ANGULIMALA SCOTLAND and I am the Spiritual Director.
 
We organise quarterly workshops and all appointed Buddhist chaplains – the pejorative ‘visiting ministers’ has been abandoned - are expected to attend at least one workshop a year.  At these, following devotions and meditation at 10 a.m., the day is broken up into three sections that follow in whatever order is convenient.  The Buddhist section focuses on some aspect of the Buddha’s Teaching and Practice with a particular regard to how it might be applied or taught in a gaol.  In the specifically prison section, with the aid of a guest speaker, someone working in the Prison Service or in some way connected with it, the aim is to broaden our team’s knowledge of how the prisons are run.  Guest speakers have included a prison officer, a member of a Board of Visitors, a trainer from the Prison Service College, the Governor of Whitemoor Prison, the Head of Prisoner Administration Group at Prison Service Headquarters, Graham Clark who was formerly Governor of Wandsworth Prison, the Prisons Ombudsman, Sir Richard Tilt who was at one time Director General of the Prison Service and Sir Stephen Tumim and Sir David Ramsbotham who were both formerly Chief Inspectors of Prisons.  During the Report-In section, all the chaplains present have a chance to summarise their recent prison activities and of course, this is also an opportunity to ask questions or discuss anything arising from these reports.
 
In Britain there is currently a wide diversity of Buddhist schools and practices, and were it necessary to provide chaplains representing all of these it would be a nightmare for us and for the Prison Service.  Fortunately, this diversity is represented within ANGULIMALA’S membership and amongst its chaplains and there is broad agreement that what should be offered is a basic Buddhism with provision when necessary for whatever school or form of practice that might be required.
 
When I decided to respond to those original requests back in 1977, I had to consider what I had to offer people locked up in prison.  I, after all, had never been incarcerated, I had never been in a prison, I didn’t know where the prisons were and I wasn’t even sure I had ever seen one.  But when I sat down to think about it I realised that like prisoners I as a monk had spent quite a lot of my time shut away in small spaces and I too had had to face myself in that solitude.  There were differences of course.  I had made forest monastic seclusion my choice and when I sat and faced myself I had had at my disposal an armoury of meditation techniques as well as the guidance, the example, the wisdom and the support of those who taught me.  I had also been purposefully seeking to understand my life.  There were differences but there were similarities.  I too had been uncomfortable and it was my sense of unease that had led me to look beyond the then narrow confines that restricted me for answers.  Yes, I realised, I did understand something about imprisonment.  And after all, quite apart from any comparisons between monastic and prison life, aren’t we all imprisoned by our greed and aversion, by our ignorance, and our prejudices and attachments.  It was my belief then, as it is now, that Buddhist techniques enable us to escape such imprisonment and being free to enjoy a secure peace.  Thinking along these lines, I decided that I did have something to offer those in prison.
 
I have always disliked the way that some individuals try to thrust their ideas and beliefs on other people and I only like speaking about Buddhism and what I do when I’m asked.  This I believe is the right attitude.  We have a responsibility to make Buddhist Teachings and Practice available and to respond when required but beyond that, it’s up to the individual concerned.  And to those who accuse me of embracing what some people like to call Buddhist social action, I explain that what I do in the prisons is more or less what I do in the monastery.  The difference is that while usually people can come to the temple, for prisoners we have to take the temple to them. 
 
I really wish there weren’t prisons.  Buddhism teaches that none of us is perfect and that all determined actions have their results so we might question whether it is right for anyone to sit in judgement on another and impose penalties and whether indeed it’s necessary.  But the reality is that prisons do exist, society does demand something from those who offend against its interests and many thousands of human beings now and in the future will spend portions of their lives in prison.  To me it is shameful that that time should be wasted.  So, as anywhere else, in order to alleviate suffering and offer people the hope of a better and happier future, but especially for prisoners to salvage something positive from their predicament, we try to make the Teachings and Practice of Buddhism available in the prisons.
 
(An early and edited form of this article first appeared in the January 2000 edition of the Prison Service Journal.)
 
 
WAYS YOU CAN HELP
  • By joining ANGULIMALA.
  • By donating time, money or Buddhist literature - any or all of these.
  • By acting as a pen-friend.
  • By helping produce educational literature.
  • By being a prison visitor.
  • By becoming a visiting Buddhist chaplain.
  • By offering help with aftercare.
  • By discussing our work and ways you can help us in your respective Buddhist groups and centres (we will provide speakers or a tape if these are required).
 
 

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