Lojong/tonglen

I've been leading a Lojong practice and study group at Oregon's only maximum-security prison for about 9 months. We have between 10 and 20 men attending 2-hour evening sessions twice a month.

We are moving slowly. It took us about 6 months to go through the first slogan ( "First, train in the preliminaries"), and another couple of months to go through the two broad post-meditation slogans ("Three objects, three poisons..." and "In all activities..."). We're just now embarking on the two tonglen slogans ("Begin the sequence..." and "Sending and taking should be practiced alternately..."). I expect it will take us at least a couple of months to go through them thoroughly.

I'd be interested to discussing with others their experience with Lojong slogan study and tonglen practice in prison settings.

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Permalink Reply by Terry Conrad on October 7, 2009 at 9:36pm
Hi Randy, we offer a correspondence course to inmates on the Lojong. I put together a small study guide that seems to work pretty well. You can download it at the following site
Let me know if you find it useful.
Terry Conrad, Director, Project Clear Light
Permalink Reply by michal from israel on October 8, 2009 at 4:56am
hi terry and randy,

I will be happy to hear more about your work in prison. we are volunteers in 11 Israeli prisons, and we have 14 groups. we have more 4 groups to prisoners that lives in hostels outside the prison before they can come back to their home. we will start in 2 weeks 2 groups for prison guards officers.
the dharma that we teach is a secular dharma, means, that we are not speaking about the Buddha or mention that the teaching comes from Buddhist teaching. so i do not know if the way you teach the lojong can be usefull for us, but i will be very happy to hear from you. and terry, how can i get to your site to see your program.

michal
Permalink Reply by michal from israel on October 8, 2009 at 4:58am
o.k. terry i found the site
Permalink Reply by Terry Conrad on October 8, 2009 at 8:49am
The Foundation for Active Compassion site, foundationforactivecompassion.org has a link, "FAC in Community" to download the Lojong booklet I put together for the correspondence course plus more detail about the programs we offer in Texas. I have attempted to attach it here as well.
We sponsor a Discovering Ethics Class, based on the book "Ethics for the New Millennium" by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. This is an inmate facilitated class that includes an "Inmates Study Guide" that is available on the FAC site and The Dalai Lama Foundation site, dlfound.net. We are currently producing a Facilitators Training Guide to train inmate facilitators for this class that will be available by Spring 2010.
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Permalink Reply by michal from israel on October 10, 2009 at 1:03pm
thanks terry to answer me.
are you working with prison guards as well?
i will be happy to hear about your program, and to know if you work in different ways or emphasise different subjects than to the prisoners?

thanks again
michal

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