Stories about rehabilitation
6 Buddhist wisdom stories about rehabilitation from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Cards from the primary schoolStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Arriving early at Karnet prison farm, Ajahn Brahm is dragged by a prisoner, Nick, to a board covered in cards — and Nick is crying. A primary-school principal, wanting to warn…
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Nick, I remember his name, oh this is, okay I'm gonna go off on a tangent, but this is another emotional story which I really really love. Nick, he came up to me once, because I was at the airport waiting to pick up somebody else, another monk from the airport, and I felt the hand on my shoulder, turned around, it was Nick. I taught him in jail and he looked reasonably, in a really good suit, he said “look I'm doing really well now, thank you so much, I'm still meditating every day Ajahn Brahm! I'm still meditating!” And I always remember Nick because he was inside for dealing drugs. And I also remember this occasion once when I went to teach, arrived five minutes early, he grabbed me and said “come over here” and there was a wall. I was teaching meditation in the education part of the education wing of the prison and on the wall there was this huge number of cards, greeting cards, all to Nick, from little five, little grade five, grade six children: “Nick, thank you for coming to my school
- Puppies for young offendersStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Brahm reads that Western Australia gave repeat juvenile offenders, aged 16 or 17 and beyond the reach of counsellors, a puppy each to train. Every session the puppy jumped…
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I read it in the newspaper in the local Western Australia. There's some really smart person here in this state, there're lots of smart people in government. Rare, but there are some. [laughter] Decided to take some of these juvenile offenders who got into all sorts of trouble with the law. Instead of like bagging them up in a jail again, or giving them counsellors because sometimes the counsellors can't do anything either. Instead, they gave them dogs. They assign every one of these really bad juvenile offenders, a little puppy to look after, to train. And the results were incredible. And they were saying instead of like a counsellor, another human being. Yeah, they've been there. They've done that. They went to sort of to that little puppy little dog to train and to get to know and every time they went to this session with their puppy, the puppy would jump all over them and lick them. No counsellor ever does that. [laughter] Not even a monk does that. I'm not going to lick you. But, these dogs would do that. And they just melted some of these really repeated offenders. And they were just only 16 or 17 and gone through just a lot, a lot of therapies, and that really got to them.
- The man sentenced for having a coldStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Brahm recalls Samuel Butler's satire Erewhon, read as a student: a society where what we call crime is treated as sickness needing therapy, while illness is punished as…
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there's a wonderful book written written over a hundred years ago it's called "Erewhon," by Samuel Butler. And apparently, that really influenced the great British playwright George Bernard Shaw. It changed the way he looked at some of these social problems and the reason why it was a very effective argument against the way we treat "criminals," or people who've done harm, with punishment, was that it used the satire. It envisaged a society in which, what we call crime today, is looked upon as being a sickness and therapy, therapy, therapy is the only response to crime. If somebody steals, they go and see a doctor. If somebody rapes, that's looked upon as being a sickness. Punishment is not really looked at at all. But somehow, a rehabilitation of trying to work out and remedy that glitch in human nature. But, when it came to health matters, if you were sick and ill, that was because you were careless and you were punished. Part of that book, a chapter which I will always remember, was of a court scene in which there was a poor man who had a cold. And when he had a cold (there's many colds going around right now [directed at audience], there's a cough already, you'd be in trouble in this society), because he had a cold he was in the dock, charged with being sick. And because he was sniffling, he had no defense and so the judge pronounced him guilty of having a cold and he, before he gave judgment, uh, sentence sorry, the punishment, he said, "This is not the first time you appeared before me, you were here last week or three weeks ago with a cold. I warned you then, if you don't eat better, take better care of your health, let go of your stress, it's your responsibility to be healthy and you have been negligent, and your cold is causing a danger to other people! You're being heedless, you're not caring for others, you're spreading your germs to other people, that's not appropriate, you should be punished: three years in jail for having a cold, being a repeat offender!
- The retreat cook on work releaseStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Without a cook for a nine-day retreat at Jhana Grove, Ajahn Brahm finds Carl, a brilliant cook who does everything alone. At the closing thanks he has gone — back to the prison…
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We were teaching a retreat many years ago and we couldn't find a we couldn't find a uh a cook for the retreat. So I managed to to grab this guy to do the the cooking for us. And he was brilliant cook. He did it all by himself and he did a wonderful job. And at the end of the retreat when we start to thank people, he disappeared. He'd gone. They said, "Where's Carl? We want to say say thank you to him." And so he's back in kind of prison farm now. He was on work release. And I told people then that Carl was in prison for multiple rape. And straight away people said, "I jump on. You mean you let a multiple rapist come and cook for us for 9 days? Isn't that dangerous? I said, "No, look, I know him. He wouldn't hurt the fly. He never did. He did those crimes when he was uh young and involved in drugs. He wouldn't do anything now. He never did. But the main purpose of not telling them first of all and telling at the very end was to say just how How unfairly do we judge people? He's changed. He's uh paid for his crimes. Maybe not paid. I'm not sure. But he's certainly just leaving him in jail to rot is not going to help anybody. But let him come out. He's I think he's Where is he working now? He's got married to a nice uh girl now. And I think he's working. He's in the northern suburbs somewhere. Osman Park. No, not Osman Park, but somewhere around that area. Really nice guy.
- Two child killings, two societiesStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Brahm recalls an article comparing two similar tragedies. In England, a toddler (Jamie Bulger) was abducted from a Liverpool shopping centre and killed on a railway line by…
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Some few years ago, I should've kept this article because there was a brilliant article, it was concerning the killers of Jamie Bulger, (whatever his name was) this young -- was it two or three year old -- who was abducted in the shopping center in Liverpool tortured and killed on the railway track by some, was it, eight or nine year old children. And the whole culture of England at the time especially driven by the tabloid press, was wanting the blood of those two killers even though they were very, very young and they'd done a terrible terrible thing. To take the life of a two year old, and it's not just one person's death it's all the tears and the anxiety and the stress and the devastation of all of the people who knew that child, let alone the parents. But what I never knew at the time was pointed out in this article was that at about the same time a similar event happened in Norway in the town of Trondheim, north of Oslo where I think, two boys lured (I think) a girl into the snowfields, and had similarly killed her. And the similarities between the crimes were very close. But what was very dissimilar was the way those two societies dealt with the problem. As many of you know, the Jamie Bulger case, those two kids were put into some detention center, and the tabloid press just wanted them to be really punished hard and the parents were just waiting for them to be released so they could kill them. And even the public did not want them to be released. I read in the newspapers there was some idea of sending them to Australia where they wouldn't be known, new identities so they could live their life and the British public was saying, "No they don't deserve any freedom." That's what I read. With those other two kids the following day after they were caught they both went to school accompanied by psychiatrists and a social worker. They were not put into any punitive institution. Very, very soon, the mother and father of the child who died came to a closure, came to forgiveness and moved on in their life. Whereas the parents of Jamie Bulger never moved on as far as I know. The whole town of Trondheim came to a closure. They realized a terrible act, but the only way to move forward is not to wish harm on the killers. So many years later, one of the killers of that (I think it was a) little girl in Trondheim is perfectly well adjusted having a successful life completed the education, had really moved on, and so did the family and the rest of town. There's one of the killers still has social problems and some psychological problems, but nowhere near like the pain which was spread around England because of the Jamie Bulger case. To see those two separate accounts of a similar tragedy, one where there were many victims and their victimhood was, I dare to say, cherished and attached to and made much of. And the other one, where rehabilitation was the main aim and goal, to see the effects of those two cases I sure wish I'd lived in Norway than in England.
- 'Whatever you're doing, come and do it again'Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Years ago a senior prison officer at the Canning Vale jail phones Ajahn Brahm insisting he come back to teach himself, not send other monks. Why? In his whole career, he says, he…
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I remember just uh getting this phone call years ago from one of the prison officers in the jail in Canning Veil. I think that's Hake. I'm not quite sure. They keep changing the names of the prisons. But anyway, in that prison over there, there was one of the prison senior prison officers and they really they wanted they made sure they wanted to talk to me. And I said, "Why?" He said, "We want you to come back to our prison to teach your meditation or whatever you're teaching over there." I said, "Look, I'm really busy these days. Got so many other duties. I usually send other monks to actually to go there." And he said, "No, we want you." I said, "Why?" He said, "Because something has happened. I've been in this prison service all my life." He said, "And I've noticed that every prisoner who comes to your class, everyone once they're released from jail never comes back again. Zero recidivism." I thought, "That's impossible." Said, "What have I been doing?" He said, "I don't know what you've been doing, but come and do it again, please.