Finding Freedom How Death Row Broke and Opened My Heart

by Masters, Jarvis; Chodron, Pema; Chavis, Melody Ermachild

• ISBN13: 9781611809114
• ISBN10: 1611809118
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2020-07-14
• Publisher: Shambhala

Summary

There are many forms of liberation—some that exist at the mercy of circumstance and others that can never be taken away. In this stirring and timely collection of stories, essays, poems, and letters, Jarvis Jay Masters explores the meaning of true freedom on his road to inner peace through Buddhist practice. He reveals his life as a young African American man surrounded by violence, his entanglement in the criminal justice system, and—following an encounter with Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche—an unfolding commitment to nonviolence and peacemaking. At turns joyful, heartbreaking, frightening, and soaring with profound insight, Masters’s story offers a vision of hope and the possibility of freedom in even the darkest of times.

Author Biography

Jarvis Jay Masters is an inmate on death row at San Quentin prison after being convicted of conspiracy in the murder of a prison guard in 1990. The author of That Bird Has My Wings: The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row as well as numerous articles, he won a PEN Award in 1992 for his poem "Recipe for Prison Pruno." There is a large-scale campaign to advocate his innocence and work within the legal system to free him.