The Choice: Will we give in to our patterns or break free?

Finding Freedom: How Death Row Broke and Opened my Heart (4/5)

Author

Shirisha Nagendran
November 22, 2024

In Season 6, Episode 5 of the Netflix Series The Crown, Prince Charles speaks to Camilla Parker-Bowles. He expresses his frustration about not being able to get through and connect with his older son, Prince Williams, who is having a hard time coping with the death of his mother, Lady Diana.

[Camilla]: So he needs your support.

[Charles]: I’m trying, but…he doesn’t make it easy. He’s so monosyllabic these days, he’s almost hostile.

[Camilla]: This isn’t about what you’re getting from him.

[Charles]: And it’s not as if I was given the best example to follow. The Duke of Edinburgh was hardly the most communicative or affectionate father to me. Hardly surprising given the delinquency of his own father’s parenting. I’m afraid we don’t do fathers and sons very well in this family.

[Camilla]: And you know my attitude to that.

[Charles]: It’s no excuse.

[Camilla]: It really isn’t.

There is a widespread notion that is an undercurrent to how we explain away certain things in life, like Prince (now King) Charles, is explaining why he is unable to get through to his son. That’s because his father didn’t do it with him, and that’s because his father did not receive it either.

Camilla refutes the conventional wisdom that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree by saying, “It’s no excuse.”

Camilla is indicating that Charles has a choice now. He can either perpetuate the pattern he’s familiar with or break it.

This is the underlying theme of “Finding Freedom: How Death Row Broke and Opened My Heart” by Jarvis Jay Masters, a death row inmate at San Quentin prison in North America.

Jarvis writes:

“Freedom can be found in any situation I may be confronted with. True freedom is not about where I am, but rather about the practice of cultivating peace within my heart and mind.

Still, I struggle with the question of what real freedom is. I sit with this question in my daily life. Whenever I hear one of my fellow prisoners say that he will never know true freedom until the day he is finally let out of prison, I wonder if embracing the teachings of the Buddha is just another way I have become institutionalized. Or, does choosing not to wait until I’m out of prison to experience freedom translate into “I’m not trying hard enough to get out of prison”?”

[…]

“Freedom is about goin’ wherever you please, whenever you want to…to the beach…the theatre…being around family and friends again…”

“In prison, we are left alone with the troubled turbulence of our minds. This agitation either becomes fuel for the prison’s towering furnace that belches out bitterness, hatred, and resentment or the mind levitates above our seemingly doomed existence and instead dwells on the real meaning of our lives and the meaning of all life.”

[…]

“I learned that Buddhist practice was about awakening to the idea that freedom is not obtained by hurrying to get out of prison. Most people aren’t in San Quentin, or on death row, and they still do not have the inner peace and freedom that they, like me desire. I began to recognize my own hurt and pain, and the suffering of all sentient beings. There was no better place to start this spiritual path than where I was. This did not mean, nor does it today, that I don’t aspire to get out of prison and not be here one minute longer than I have to.

What it does mean is starting where we are.

Whenever we start where we are, real freedom is in our practice. Whatever spiritual practice keeps us awake and close to the true nature of our hearts and minds is where freedom can be found.”

[…]

“What I tell myself, almost like a mantra, is that freedom arises out of practice.”

Be it a prince or a prisoner, everyone struggles with finding peace, harmony and freedom from within.

We have a choice of where we focus our attention and what we choose to plant the seeds for in our hearts through our behaviour, one moment at a time. Freedom is possible in a prison, palace and the grind of everyday existence.

And we finish this edition with a tiny story.

Going with the flow

A Taoist story tells of an old man who accidentally fell into the river rapids, leading to a dangerous waterfall. Onlookers feared for his life. Miraculously, he emerged alive and unharmed downstream at the bottom of the falls. People asked him how he had managed to survive.

“I accommodated myself to the water, not the water to me. Without thinking, I allowed myself to be shaped by it. Plunging into the swirl, I came out with the swirl. This is how I survived.”

💌 Siri