Fleet Maull

Posted by Madrone Phoenix.

Homeless Day Memorial Service Providence Journal Video

This morning, the Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless held its annual memorial service at the Beneficent Church in downtown Providence for those who have died while living on the streets during the past year. Fleet was invited to offer the prayer of reflection for this year’s event, both a Buddhist minister and representative of the Providence Shambhala Meditation Center and as an activist with years of “street” experience.

As many of us know, Fleet Maull has his fingers, toes, heart and mind in many places within our human society and culture, one of them being a leader of Bearing Witness Retreats, specifically Street Retreats, which he often leads with his comrade and friend, Genro Roshi of NYC.

This year, as part of the Memorial Service offering, friends and family members made quilts of  pillow cases sewn together, each carrying the name honoring the life of someone who died on the streets during the past year.  Fleet opened the contemplation with an acknowledgement of all those names which were sewn into fabric hanging from the balconies on either side of the large church vestibule of this historic church.  He opened with a powerful reminder of those people represented on those banners by saying,

“We all know that the issue of homelessness is as complex as the individual. It is not a generalization, it not a statistic, it is every individual life. This idea of remembrance, and what one usually talks about in terms of remembering is re-membering, as in to make whole, to put back together. This is a time to bear witness to those who are falling through the cracks in our society. The way that we can bring our lost brothers and sisters and all of us back together is to re-member, to bear witness”

Acharya Fleet Maull then lead us though a guided meditation in which we were instructed to make a connection to ourselves, our bodies. He instructed us to honor any emotions, thoughts or feelings that might be present.“Take a moment to be present to yourself, your own heart, your own experience this morning.” As we sat there with one another in silence for several minutes, Fleet helped us to remember our brothers and sister who have died during the past year; he brought us back to our hearts, and with each in-breath we were instructed to take in the pain and suffering of all those who have died on streets have been exposed to. He encouraged us to breathe in and bear witness to “their isolation, their pain, their longing to be connected, cherished, and remembered…” As we sat there taking in that pain and sadness, Fleet offered a glimmering gem of hope, that all the pain taken in can be dissolved within the vast expanse of our hearts. And in doing so, Fleet empowered us to breath out “Mercy, kindness, recognition, honor…”

Fleet closed with a big, and never overstated message of Basic Goodness. “We do care, we are a good, decent human society, and yet this problem is still there. I invite us to be willing to be in a space of Not-Knowing (one of the three tenets in the Bearing Witness Model), where we actually have to bear witness and be in the pain, while at the same time realizing we are a good society and that somehow, we are still allowing people in our communities to live on the streets without homes, and trust that our within our hearts, we will discover the loving actions and compassionate actions that are called forth”

It was a deeply powerful and meaningful memorial service, after which we had the joyful opportunity to volunteer as servers at a lunch meal for several hundred of Providence’s homeless population.  These men and women of all ages and backgrounds, including a few children, sat a long tables in the church meeting hall enjoying their meal and talking amongst themselves as the volunteers served hot soup, sandwiches, salads, soft drinks and desert.  We all had a wonderful opportunity to be of service and enjoy simple conversations and connections.

Posted by Madrone Phoenix.

As we’re gearing up to start another semester of Prison Dharma Network programs at the ACI (Rhode Island’s own extensive prison system), people often wonder why we do this kind of work. I tossed the question to Fleet this morning, asking him “What would someone get out of going to volunteer in the prison and why would anyone want to do such a thing?” 

His response:

It is not so much about what one would get out of volunteering in the prison, but more about the opportunity one has to support other human beings who are in a difficult situation. Most of us – compared to the majority of prisoners – have been dealt a better hand in life and have often come from more resourced circumstances. By going into the prison, we have an opportunity to give something back. Personally, I feel that any kind of service, where we are actually focused on meeting the needs of other people, is one of the most transformative activities we can engage in for ourselves and others.  It is to our own benefit, indirectly; yet, if we have that mindset or motivation going in, it does not work so well. However, if our mindset is genuinely focused on others, the indirect benefit is that we are not focused on ourselves, which is very healthy thing. 

Many of the world’s wisdom and faith traditions – religious traditions, shamanic traditions, philosophical traditions, psychological traditions – all agree that our primary hindrance is selfishness, or an exaggerated self-interest. It is quite understandable how we get there and why we find ourselves so focused on our own needs, our own wants and our own desires. We do this because we think that is what is going to make us happy. But all these traditions, throughout human history, have found that focusing on ourselves – in that small-minded way – actually makes us unhappy. Spending some time, where we are actually focusing our attention on the needs of others, not in some rescuer way or savior role, but in a conscious and genuinely caring and compassionate way of being there and supporting others is a very healthy and transformative use of our time and energy.

I find that when I do this kind of work, whether with prisoners or similarly when I’ve done hospice work and visited patients, I always return from those engagements feeling a tremendous sense of peace and well-being and even joy. People who do this kind of service work universally say that they receive so much more than they give. People have often said to me, “I wish I could give more because I receive so much.” However, we can’t go into service work with that attitude. If we go in with the attitude of “What’s in it for me? What am I going to get?” then that undermines the whole process.  The indirect benefit to ourselves actually comes from spending some time where we are not focusing on our own needs.

Prison work is not for everyone. At the same time, I think it is a very important form of service and social engagement for those who are inclined to do it. In Jungian terms we talk about the shadow – those fragmented, denied and disowned parts of the self – that show up, often running our lives, in the forms of negative impulses, addictions, inappropriate humor, compulsive and self sabotaging behaviors. This shadow works on collective level as well, and

our prison system is clearly one of the darkest elements of the societal shadow in this country.

This Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) has become a self-perpetuating, multi-billion dollar industry that feeds off the suffering of human beings. In the process, it has de-funded education, health care, and other social services, completely turning our social system on its end.  Instead of putting our resources where it would keep people out of prison and help people to lead valuable, rewarding and healthy lives, we are shifting our valuable and limited resources to building prisons and warehousing prisoners.   By de-funding the health, educational and social support services and programs in all those under-resourced parts of our society, we are guaranteeing the next crop of prisoners for a mindless, self-perpetuating industry.

This is a really important part of our society on which to focus our attention and compassion. If we are interested in transformation and a more peaceful, healthy, sustainable society, then I think those of us who are interested need to address that shadowy world inside our prisons and bring some light there. If nothing else, we can acknowledge the innate goodness and dignity of all beings by simply bearing witness to the lives of the children, women and men who are caught up in that system.