Nearly 30 years ago, Acharya Fleet Maull dove deep into his Buddhist training while incarcerated at a federal prison in Springfield, Missouri. Facing 30 years on a drug smuggling conviction, Maull viewed prison as his “monastery time,” devoting himself to practice and serving others.
Maull ended up spending 14 years behind bars, establishing the Prison Dharma Network and the National Prison Hospice Association along the way. Since he was released in 1999, Fleet has founded a number of additional initiatives that support prisoners and others in the criminal justice system.
In this two-part Tricycle Talks episode, Tricycle’s web editor, Wendy Joan Biddlecombe, speaks with Maull at the Engaged Mindfulness Institute in Deerfield, Massachusetts, about his work, and why he’s moving beyond prisons to train the next generation of mindfulness teachers.