Inside Mindfulness Program for prisoners

Pathway Zen facilitates weekly practice groups at Brisbane based male and female prisons. A customised, 12-week Inside Mindfulness course is tailored to introduce participants to concentration and mindfulness practices. This program is modelled on the Prison Mindfulness Institute’s Path of Freedom curriculum, which originates from the United States.  The Inside Mindfulness Program is facilitated by Arno Hess and supported by a team of volunteers from various traditions in Brisbane. For further information, please contact Arno via email: arno.hess@pathwayzen.org.au

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Mutta – Free

One morning after begging for my food –

looking down at one more meal I hadn’t worked for, hadn’t paid for, hadn’t earned.

A life of debts I could never repay, pushing in on all sides, like the weight of the sea.

I blinked, and a tear fell into my bowl.

Would it always feel like this?

Just as the moon rises up from the bottom of the sea, a handful of rice lifted itself from the bottom of my bowl.

And my heart rose with it.

I wish I could tell you how it tasted – that first bite of food as a free women.

(Matty Weingast – The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns)