— It is truly amazing how life and life experiences look when one views the reality of impermanence. It changes the whole picture. Seeing things, situations and thoughts in this light can cure many kinds of delusions and mental problems. —

Darren Johnson, Lanesboro Correctional Institute, North Carolina

 


— Even if someone has only one day left to live, even only one hour left, they still have an incredible opportunity to make the human body-which they have received just this one time-most beneficial. —

Lama Zopa Rinpoche

World Watch


Orchestral prisoners find freedom behind bars of music

By Simon Romero, The Scotsman.com, 13 July 2008

LOS TEQUES, VENEZUELA -- When Nurul Asyiqin Ahmad was taken seven months ago to her cell at the National Institute of Feminine Orientation, a prison perched on a hill in this city of slums on the outskirts of Caracas, learning how to play Beethoven was one of the last things on her mind.

"The despair gripped me, like a nightmare had become my life," said Ahmad, 26, a law student from Malaysia who claims she is innocent of charges of trying to smuggle cocaine on a flight from Caracas to Paris. "But when the music begins, I am lifted away from this place."

Ahmad plays violin and sings in the prison's orchestra. In a project extending Venezuela's renowned system of youth orchestras to some of the country's most hardened prisons, Ahmad and hundreds of other prisoners are learning a repertoire that includes Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and folk songs from the Venezuelan plains.

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  • JUNE