Tuesday, August 28, 2012

the Dhamma Brothers


Bad Eye suggested I peep this hour-long documentary. I'm glad he passed it along. It was fucking good.

The doc is pretty low budget, but the content is what matters. It's about a super violent prison in the dirty south that opens its doors to a couple of Buddhist monks to teach meditation to the inmates. The film documents the prisoners before, during and after their 10 day vow of silence and their intense meditation sessions.

The outcome is pretty profound. 1) It's a testament that these murderers and lifers had the balls to take a class like this considering prison culture and 2) it's brilliant that years later they are still meditating and sticking to their practice. This program genuinely changed lives for the better. 

Most people don't understand that Buddhism isn't really a religion; it's a philosophy. And as such, it can be applied in a secular manner. In this case they weren't even really overtly teaching Buddha's precepts or ideology, they were teaching the art of meditation as a way to journey into the self. And they were teaching mediation and self-realization as a pathway to love and understanding.

Watch it and see. The trailer gives a pretty decent high level overview of the content of the film so you don't need me to recap that.

Steaming on Netflix. Aaaaaaauuuuuuuummmmmmm......

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