— If one uses this time and experience of being in prison to practice meditation, to practice dharma, then being in prison, even though it is believed you are in prison by outside people, in reality it becomes a retreat for you. —

Lama Zopa Rinpoche

Our Teachers

 

“Stealth Buddhism”

From our Mar-Apr 2008 Liberation Newsletter


Herb Cunningham has been teaching Buddhism and meditation in prisons in North Carolina and Virginia since 1995. “Meditation is really stealth Buddhism,” says Herb. “We’re teaching the Dharma without the prayers and prostrations and that kind of thing.”

Originally from Texas, Herb has lived in North Carolina since 1965 and is one of the first members of FPMT’s Kadampa Center in Raleigh. Since 1997 he’s run the North Carolina branch of LPP.

After his business’s financial crash forced him to file for bankruptcy, Herb started reading books on meditation and Zen. “I had a lot of anger towards a lot of people,” he said.

He also began reading Essence of Refined Gold by the Third Dalai Lama to prepare for a meditation course with Dr. Don Brown, a student of Lama Yeshe’s.

“I started reading the book and it got into all this Tibetan Buddhist business with all these lists – three of this and six of that and thirty of this and I said I don’t want this stuff.” So Herb decided not to take the course.

“Then I read: ‘Better to fill your mouth with excrement than speak ill of another.’ It hit me like a lightning bolt!

“I’d just come from a business situation where I’d been cheated mightily and was not at all shy about bad-mouthing the people who cheated me.” That line was “the trigger that got me thinking about how the mind works.” Herb called Don back and took the course after all.

In 1995 North Carolina’s Central Prison asked Don to teach a meditation course at the prison. He wasn’t able to do it, so Herb went instead.

Now, between them, Herb and the North Carolina team of Ben White, Shanti Wykoff, Andre Smith, David Machles and Paulette Veloon teach in eleven prisons: Brunswick and Lawrenceville in Virginia; and Nash, Caledonia, Warren, Central’s Death Row, Federal Medical Center Butner, Butner Low, Butner Medium, and Fountain and Southern Correctional Institutions for Women in North Carolina.

Herb says that his anger in the past helps him relate to many prisoners now.

When asked what encouragement he has for people in prison he says, “Remember what Kirti Tenshab Rinpoche told me in 1994 when I asked him what was the best practice. Thinking he would name some tantra or other prayer or practice, he said, ‘The best practice is to have a good heart.’”

 

 


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