A nonprofit group brings one of Buddhism’s core practices to former inmates. And the Dalai Lama is listening.
Newsweek: It’s hard to imagine a more unlikely pair discussing politics at New York’s swanky Mark Hotel last week: Moses Weah, a 21-year-old African-American from the South Bronx, currently residing in a Times Square shelter, with corn-rowed hair and a rap sheet longer than his untucked T shirt and, not 10 feet away, dressed in his saffron-and-maroon monk’s robes, 68-year-old Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tibet’s spiritual leader in exile.
Surrounded in the hotel’s small conference room by 17 former prison inmates, meditation teachers, meditation teachers, State Department security agents, a film crew and actor Richard Gere, who helped facilitate the gathering, Moses held forth so passionately he half rose from his seat. “It’s about making money, man. Uzis aren’t made in the ghetto. Nobody in the hood’s making money off the Dolce & Gabbana we’re wearing. Prisons are about making money for the dudes the prisons. They us to fail. They us to go back.” His Holiness listened and nodded and replied without using his translator, “I too could be in this prison. That potential is inside all humans. But so is potential for transformation. You must keep on path for what is good inside you.”…