Doing Time, Doing Vipassana

The only thing more unexpected than the sight of hundreds of hardened inmates peacefully meditating in a prison yard is how effectively such behavior has improved conditions in one of the planet's largest and most notorious prisons. Located in a suburb of New Delhi, India, Tihar prison is a sprawling, overcrowded institution housing some 10,000 inmates, only 1000 of whom have actually been convicted of a crime. The other 9000 are simply "under trials," accused of everything from hashish possession to murder and awaiting trial — an event that could take place in a month or in several years, depending on the vagaries of India's notoriously slow-moving justice syst...