A few years ago, I used to walk the track while pondering the cosmos with my homeboy JG at a private prison in the Florida Panhandle by the shady name of Blackwater (no relation to the infamous private-sector security firm that dominated the headlines in Green Zone Baghdad during the second Iraq war).
Although he was 15 years younger than I was, JG and I had a lot in common — same hometown, same circle of friends, both audiophiles, both sports fans, both committed to self-mastery and a life free from the enslavement of addiction. We were also both doing a substantial amount of time: him, 10 years; me, 30. But for all the things we had in common, there was a fundamental rift in our philosophies regarding the prison sentences we were serving and how we approached them.
JG is a Christian who is also well versed in The Secret, The Prosperity Bible and other new-thought, mind-over-matter, mustard-seed doctrine. His guiding principle is Biblical, Matthew 21:21-22 which, to paraphrase, says “Prayer and faith without doubt can wither fig trees and move mountains.”
While I don’t subscribe to any religion, I lean Eastern, spiritually, and call myself Buddhish. Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha has had a profound impact on my life. I’ve read Michael Singer’s The Untethered Soul three times and We’re All Doing Time by Bo Lozoff has been a constant companion and manual to me for over a quarter-century in the chain gang. My guiding principle is straight out of The Four Noble Truths: Desire is the root of suffering and contentment is the way out.
Day after day, lap after lap, we debated our philosophies and invariably arrived at the same dead end. In a nutshell, JG believed that through prayer, visualization, and faith he could will his way out of prison long before his distant release date. I believed that through meditation, gratitude, and acceptance, freedom could be attained right here, right now, regardless of my release date.
We hit a stalemate. He thought it was cowardly of me to accept my conditions without a fight. I thought he was naรฏve to believe in the impossible. In the end we had to agree to disagree. I was in my tenth year of incarceration at the time and he was on only his second. Sooner or later he would come to the realization that hope hurts and learn to find peace in the present moment without clinging or resisting.
Fast forward two and a half years. We had both been transferred to different prisons and I was so immersed in writing the final scenes of On the Shoulders of Giants that the only time I departed the story world of Izzy and Pharaoh was to eat, sleep, and shower. So I was shocked when I called home one day and my mom told me that JG had won his appeal. It was all over Facebook.
That night as I lay in my bunk, I thought about JG and Blackwater and all those afternoons spent walking the track and debating the power of faith vs. the freedom in acceptance. Guess he won that argument.
But since then I’ve been wondering, have I robbed myself of miracles by failing to expect them? Would I be home right now if I hadn’t tapped out and surrendered to my circumstances? Are desire and contentment really mutually exclusive? Maybe there is a Tao between these two polarities, a middle road that allows for both ambition and inner peace.
I won’t say that JG’s release caused a radical shift in my belief system, but it did inspire me to open my mind, adjust my philosophy, and leave a little room for hope… at least a mustard seed’s worth.
Malcolm Ivey / Author 
Man, after reading your story, I figured you have many stories to tell. What an intense journey you’ve been on, parts of it, I feel I’ve been close to but never quite fell. Thanks for still standing and I look forward to reading more and understanding. Peace, Harlon
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Thanks, Harlon, I appreciate your encouragement.
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By now you may have realized you were both right. I’m a Buddhist – but not what people think of when they picture a Buddhist. No Dalai llama follower or Zen or the standard fair of monk type Buddhism and NO statues of the Buddha in my house. I believe exactly what your friend said. I believe our life is created by what we think it is. If you thoroughly believe – completely – and don’t doubt, your mind will produce it for you. We have heard, “You are what eat” “What goes around comes around” “You reap what you sow” and the Nichiren Buddhist teaching -the law of cause and effect. You are everything you have caused to happen to yourself. It is up to you to cause your future. How do you do that? That requires a longer answer.
So . . . Make the causes to change. Accept responsibility for everything and don’t ask anything outside yourself to fix what’s wrong. That’s a cop out. The concept of a God planning your life and praying for this entity to bestow gifts of happiness on you is plain ludicrous. Except many people were swept up by that. Is so much easier to wait for this entity to fix your life that many end up saying, “Oh well, it must be God’s will that I suffer. When I began studying this philosophy in 1988 at the age of 34 I stopped doing street drugs. I didn’t want to do them anymore. Life was beginning to make sense. I lost the desire.
But you were right, too. Heaven and hell exist every day and we flip through life conditions all day from one extreme to the other. It’s important to be able to find the state of heaven in the midst of hell. How we react to our environment is important. It creates a cause that gets an effect. But how do you keep your life condition high? It’s easy when you know how, but since we’re human we definitely aren’t perfect at anything. Each time you fail, you learn.
This Buddhism did not get me off drugs. It didn’t give me the strength to stop. I had never tried to stop. I didn’t try and fail. I never tried. I didn’t look like a druggie. I looked like a piano teacher, a musician, a pool hustler, a stripper, a costume designer and mother of two. I was all these things- at the same time. Then came Buddhism and what I learned made me feel better than any drug I ever did. It gave me control of my life. It taught me about the power inside that few utilise. Your friend had it right, although there are a few things he didn’t learn he would have gotten a kick out of knowing.Today, I teach this philosophy to anyone who will let me. The best thing for me was learning it before the hep c killed me. I should have died. The drs said I came as close to death as possible without dying, but I knew I wouldn’t. I had too much to do. The neg effects from the causes I made doing drugs keep trying to put me down, but I won’t let it. I’m not done yet.
Some people don’t have the good fortune to learn whatI learned. Let them believe there is a God. It’s not their time. Every single solitary thing happens for a reason – and me crossing paths with you is one of those things. The rest is up to you with what you do about that. Have a great day!
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