Jenny Phillips, a cultural anthropologist, psychotherapist, and documentary filmmaker, interviewed the 36  prisoners (called “the dhamma brothers”) for her documentary of their participation in a 10-day Vipassana meditation course held at the Donaldson Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison  outside Birmingham, Alabama, USA.

As Buddhism inches toward the pop culture mainstream, practitioners are taking its tenets of mindfulness, acceptance and compassion to populations in need of spiritual guidance, namely prisons and centers for troubled youths.

Prisoners have been practicing meditation on their own through outreach programs for years. The Prison-Ashram Project began in 1973 and in 1989 the Prison Dharma Network was founded, an umbrella organization now encompassing over 100 prison volunteer groups from different Buddhist traditions.

To see a preview of the documentary, click here.

Read the entire story here [via DallasNews Religion]