Jarvis Jay Masters, now 58, was a rage-filled 19-year-old when he arrived at San Quentin State Prison.
After years of effort, Masters eventually found meaning, strength and hope within his prison walls.
When his mind was free, Sheff notes, he was free.
Jarvis heard car horns and guards cheering.
Through the mesh-covered windows he saw COs giving one another the thumbs-up.
They were celebrating his death sentence.
Jarvis was led from the van to his cell.
Late that night he heard footsteps and then pounding.
Jarvis thought they were there to kill him.
Shielding his eyes with his hands, trembling, he rose and stumbled forward.
“We have to read this, a guard snapped.
You have to sign it.
Jarvis signed the piece of paper that condemned him to die.
Also as usual, the mail was delivered in the evening.
Read it, she said.
See if it speaks to you.”
Jarvis picked the book up and was instantly transfixed.
Then the author wrote, This is a nice theory until one is dying.
Then experience and theory differ.
He continued, Then one is powerless and everything familiar is lost.
One is overwhelmed by a great turbulence of fear, disorientation, and confusion.
Jarvis closed the book and breathed deeply.
A familiar, choking emotion welled up in him: anguish.
But he read on.
He didn’t mention the gas chamber.
Another approach was called meditative contemplations.
Jarvis read through them quickly until he got to one that made him shudder.
Have I been of benefit or have I caused harm?
Jarvis needed no time to ponder his answer.
He knew that he’d benefited no one and he’d caused immeasurable harm.
He read all night.
Dawn was breaking as he turned the final page, but he was wide awake.
He told them he had been trying to get his mind around the sentence.
He admitted that he was afraid.
The thought appalled Jarvis.
Being on death row was no gift.
The lama wrote that all people have been sentenced to death in that way, Jarvis wasn’t unique.
That idea angered Jarvis, too.
I live in prison.
You may have a key, but the keys to my cell are hanging off my jailers belts.
Fear is in your mind.
Regret is in your mind.
The key, the teacher said, was practice.
Jarvis should meditate at least twice a day, even when it was difficult.
He said he should allow himself to feel doubt, confusion, anger and fear.
It’s normal for you to feel that way.
Finally, the lama said, If you need help we’re here for you.
You are like family now.
When Jarvis read that word, the last remnants of his anger melted away.
Jarvis tried to follow the lama’s instructions, but his despair only worsened over the following months.
His friends and lawyers visited and tried to bolster him.
Kelly Hayden, a legal assistant who’d become a friend, visited and commiserated with him.
She believed that his conviction and sentence were racist, and she said so.
She said, Don’t take it personally.
They exchanged horrified looks and burst out laughing.
It was a brief moment of levity.
Apparently, his mother didn’t know how not to have them.
Those words affirmed his worst feelings about himself, a message reinforced since he was a child.
The judge had seen into his soul.
He had been born useless.
Those who saw him as evil were right.
Carlette [his sister] came, but there was little either of them could say.
She sobbed and left.
He tried to rereadLife in Relation to Death, but he couldn’t bear it.
The lama had said that he and Lisa were there for him if he needed help.
Jarvis needed help badly now, and he asked for it.
In her response, Lisa suggested that they talk in person, and he readily agreed.
A month later, when her app was approved, she came to San Quentin.
She wasn’t a cold and detached Buddhist scholar; she was open and kind and funny.
Yes, it’s hard, but it can save you.
But it’s the only way out of our misery.
Just take the step.
“I would, Jarvis said.
I live with rapists and killers.
Everyone talks about enlightenment, living in the light.
But I live in hell.
Her son died, and she was overcome with grief.
Carrying his lifeless body, she set off in search of the Buddha.
After many days, she found him and pled with him to bring her child back to life.
He sent Kisa Gotami to find some.
She went from village to village and house to house, knocking on door after door.
She went to more villages and visited more homes, but none had escaped suffering.
She was desperate when she reached the thousandth door.
She knocked, and a woman answered.
Once again she begged for mustard seeds.
The woman had some, but then Kisa Gotami asked if she’d experienced suffering in her life.
The woman looked up at her.
Her life had been filled with suffering.
She wasn’t crying for herself but for everyone she’d met.
She had experienced what she needed to to get past her grief.
She felt compassion for others.
She understood that her son had joined the vast pool of souls who have lived and died.
She understood that in her suffering she was like all humans.
She accepted her son’s death, and she was freed from her pain.
She became awakened and attained the state of enlightenment as a person who grasped the true nature of existence.
He’d heard and read other Buddhist stories, but this one touched him differently for some reason.
A moment later, a guard rapped on the door, ending the visit.
He inhaled as deeply as he ever had.
In a dreamlike state, he saw a man sitting in meditation, his body engulfed in flames.
He focused on the meditator and recognized him.
The man was himself.
Somehow he saw inside the other cells, each containing a man who was also on fire.
He zoomed out more and saw San Quentin from the sky.
From that vantage, he saw several thousand burning bodies.
Still higher, from the clouds, he saw houses across the Bay Area burning.
Then he saw California, which was also engulfed in flames.
Then the continent, and then the Western Hemisphere.
Next he was watching from space.
From that height he saw the whole planet floating in blackness.
The water was blue.
The landmasses were brown and green.
On those expanses, wherever there were humans, fires burned.
Jarvis returned to the prison, to the thousands of men in cages unfit for animals.
He thought of Kisa Gotami and realized that suffering was all around him everywhere humans were.
When he opened his eyes, he was shaking, and tears were streaming down his cheeks.
Copyright 2020 by David Sheff.
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