"India is a vast land." "Intense and full of extremes." "Spectacular landscapes lie next to overflowing multitudes of humanity." "Richness and decay blend with astonishing wealth." "Side by side, one founds overwhelming noise and deep serenity, cruelty and kindness, dark ignorance and the highest wisdom." "India is a land of paradox where else can one witness the sight of a prisoner weeping like a child in the arms of his jailer." "But this is not just another Indian paradox this is an entirely different story." "I came to Tihar in 1988." "I get caught in the airport." "Indira Gandhi international airport." "with four kilo of heroin." "What am I doing in Indian jail?" "Time is what I'm doing in Indian jail no, I'm actually doing vipassana now." "We are all prisoners undergoing a life sentence." "Imprisoned by our own minds we are all seeking parole, being hostages of our anger, fear, desire." "Is there anyone who doesn't crave at one point or another to take something that is not his." "Is there anyone who doesn't wish, at least once to hurt the one who hurts him." "It's a thin line that separate us from these people." "Who stare at us from inside this cage." "The same things that do not go beyond the threshold of our thoughts have crossed, in their case, the threshold of action." "but still we are alike inside our heads we are all potential criminals." "This is Tihar jail one of the largest prisons in the world." "Ten thousand people are imprisoned here nine thousand of them are still awaiting their trials." "The wheel of justice whirl slowly and heavily in India like an overloaded truck." "A pickpocket may find himself waiting for six years in all to receive a one year sentence." "It could take another two weeks it could take another two years, three years, four years..." "They take their time." "Located in suburban New Delhi" "Tihar is India's best known high security prison." "Due to it's large population it´s divided into four separate jails." "For decades Tihar was notorious for it's inhuman conditions." "It was branded a veritable hell." "Violence, corruption and drug use are common problems in almost any prison but in Tihar they were magnified due to congestion and harsh conditions." "It was a horrible place." "There was a lot of extortion a lot of a beating." "a lot of gunfights..." "within inside the jail." "There were a lot of problems many problems." "The combination of one thousand convicts along with thousands to awaiting their trials, had created a hierarchy of power, and an explosive atmosphere." "There were massive more undertrials than there are convicts." "The few could control the many." "Take from the undertrials," "The convicts used extortion and beated a few people up occasionally, and... the many would come across the few" "The inmates, they are not being themselves" "I mean by this a macho image." "I mean tough, aggressive." "You know you got a few thousand macho people together, and you know that's a lot of aggression... and that's lot of controlling." "Because this is prison, that's a lot of controlling to do so I've understood when I was first came here myself there are sometimes that sticks had to be used... but you have a point, where you don't go beyond." "The jail staff was trained under the old tradition of pression, isolation and punishment." "They believed that if the prisoners were made to suffer they will not commit crimes after their release for fear of being sacked back to this hell but they were wrong in Tihar prisoners were specializing further in crime." "I'm here now about thirteen months." "I was taking some heroin from Katmandu to Toronto by head airport in New Delhi" "I was searched in New Delhi and I was brought here." "David is one of the foreign inmates kept in Tihar." "Everybody is a legal expert in Tihar jail everybody knows all the ins and outs of the Indian system this so happens some of them be here for six, seven years but... they will tell you how to get out." "With this record" "Tihar was hardly the place to expect a breakthrough in prison reform and yet this is exactly what happened." "In May 1993 a new inspector general of prisons was posted." "The new IG was Kiran Bedi a little woman with big reputation and an even bigger vision." "as India's first woman police officer" "Bedi has always attracted controversy using unconventional methods to achieve high goals." "Thank you." "You can dispose." "To me she is a magnificent woman, she got integrity, she got very high morals and she certainly has ambition" "She has been everything from tennis star to a notorious police woman who used to tow away dignitaries cars from poor way areas that's why they called the "Crane Bedi"." "Right from the start Bedi has told her staff that she is intended to turn Tihar prison into a place for personal development an Ashram." "I started to share my vision of a prison." "I held my meetings first of all told them:" "that you going to work as a team, work as a family." "Asking them are they aware of what their whole job priority is what are they are meant for are they here as watchman or are they here for larger job." "Ever since she took office she did a lot of a transformation." "She's a person who solves problem." "If you cannot solve a problem than you are a part of the problem yourself." "We kept using a lot of love and care actually giving them love and care." "I alowed books, cantina facilities, veteran medical care, clothing, regular outside visitors." "Before Bedi got it here as a..." "I don't know really what to..." "is beyond description..." "She showed us that we are human beings therefore we deserve to be treated as human beings." "I've talked to them" "I've shared with them" "I've read with them" "I've laughed to them" "I've sung with them" "I've even dance with them" "Is to make feel them as noble as they should be feeling..." "Why?" "Because after all they are going out they have to go into normal society." "So how can I keep them bottled up here, and expect them to be normal when they are going out?" "I must release them as normal human beings or if possible even better human beings." "The atmosphere in Tihar had improved but Bedi knew that all material solutions are always partial solutions." "She was seeking a deeper change." "Human mind needs its own food" "Human mind needs positivity." "Human mind needs some higher thinking." "So this was all I knew because that was what my mind needs." "They have no skills to handle the problems." "How do I give them skills to handle with themselves." "What do I do?" "I was absolutely like a fish out of water." "We'd been going for a magic." "Who will come to this prison to consult." "Who will provide the psychological food?" "I was just looking for an answer and I got an answer." "The answer came, unexpectedly, from inside the prison." "One morning Bedi was doing her daily rounds a young jail officer approached her, and told her of an age old teaching called vipassana." "I was walking the prison and one officer Rajinder Kumar came to me said:" "Madam you are looking for an answer?" "I have the answer." "And what is the answer?" "He's:" "I was a very angry man." "I would be horrible as a person but I've in for vipassana" "Madam if you don't believe me ask my family ask my colleagues." "So he gave me the address of Mr. Ram Singh" "I wrote a letter to Mr. Ram Singh saying:" "Could I have you visit my prison?" "exactly still not knowing what vipassana stands for." "What Kiran Bedi also did not know was that this technique had previously been tried in Indian prisons." "Vipassana is a journey of discovery, taken with closed eyes." "The goal is not simply to satisfy the traveler's curiosity, but to get transformed by the journey and start living a better life." "Vipassana means insight to see things as they really are, and their true nature." "It is an ancient meditation technique discovered twenty five centuries ago in India by man named Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha." "The records from the Buddha's time tell remarkable stories of serial killers who changed into saints and of cruel tyrants who became moral rulers by practicing this technique." "With the passing of time civilizations rose and fell, but vipassana was carefully preserved and passed on from generation to generation in South Asia" "Today it is taught by S.N. Goenka, an indian who was born and grow up in Burma" "Mr. Goenka learned vipassana from his Burmese teacher Sayagyi U Ba Khin." "In 1969 Mr. Goenka arrived in India and started teaching vipassana" "A few years later he was given a challenge by the renowned Indian leader... the noble Bhave to teach vipassana to youngsters and to hardened criminals." "I said:" "I am I here to serve." "If you could arrange" "I will teach the hard criminals in the jail, I´ll teach the students," "He arranjed in the school, I got very successful but it could not arrange in the prison, because the rules of prison, manual of prison is such... that a... a teacher cannot go and stay there honest, or stay outside" "and that was not acceptable to me." "When a course is given I must be there with my students." "It could not materialize, but later on was good enough to relax the rules and a vipassana course was given there, in the Jairpur jail." "In 1975 in Jaipur prisoners learn vipassana for the first time." "Mr. Goenka insisted again in some conditions and the prison authorities were trying hard to meet his demands." "Fortunately no shot had to be fired." "The Jairpur jail course concluded peacefully." "It´s success led to more courses in other prisons." "One of them was Baroda jail." "The superintendent Mr. Wora was impressed by the effect of vipassana on his prisoners and decided to take a course himself." "After that he arranged 5 more courses in Baroda jail." "Babu Bhaya was notorious for killing three people in five minutes during a gang fight." "After taking a course he contacted the family of his victims, seeking for forgiveness." "A vipassana course is 10 days long." "Students live in complete silence meditating from early morning till night." "For ten days they follow a basic code of moral conduct." "They abstain from killing, stealing, lying, sexual activity, and the use of toxicants." "Without the base of morality, the mind will remain too agitated to investigate the reality within." "Any physical or vocal action which is unwholesome, which go against morality, which is immoral starts with an impure mind, a negative mind." "So you kill somebody, you can't kill somebody without generating tremendous amount of anger of hate within you" "You steal something you can't steal something without generating tremendous amount of craving , of greed." "And every time ones generates negativity in their mind one becomes miserable." "When you do something wrong you instantly punished." "Why?" "Because you are now guilty." "You've told a lie, and you now telling hundred lies to justify one lie." "You've stolen?" "Now you are suspicious that you might be caught." "The very fact that you are under the agony of getting caught is the pay you getting out of the laws of nature." "Back in Tihar Kiran Behdi is preparing the ground for a vipassana course." "Your search should be more effective." "Kiran Behdi was not afraid to experiment with new ideas." "She sent some of the most aggressive members of her staff to a vipassana course held outside of the jail." "When these men returned colleagues and inmates alike, found them to be much calmer and positive." "Everything you do you have to pay for, one way or another." "In my life it's instant if I do something wrong, it is: pow..." "My family still don't know umm... exactly where I am." "My mother thinks I'm in India, but I don´t want to worry her, to say were I was so I thought I just tell that I'm doing vipassana, and I am!" "The first vipassana course in Tihar jail was hold in November 1993." "Over one hundred prisoners and jail staff participated." "She was not forcing people." "Just go and see yourself." "If you like it, well and good, If you dont like it, well and good, just go and see yourself." "They were asking people interested in vipassana and meditating." "The school came around in one of the wards." "so I went" "At first, all one is asked to do is to focus on one's own natural breath to feel it coming in and out of the nostrils, and to maintain this awareness for as long as it possible." "Sounds simple but it's not." "When one sits down to be still an endless stream of thoughts dwells up in the mind memories, hopes, fears, start flooding in." "After a 3 day struggle, the mind quiets down." "Thoughts become faint, faded like passing clouds." "By focusing for so long in a small patch of skin bellow the nostrils the mind becomes so sensitive that you can feel the softest flow of breath." "A new realm of sensations unfolds on this area itching, tingling, heat, pressure." "Natural physical sensations never before experienced so vividly." "Only then one is prepared to learn vipassana." "The whole idea of vipassana is to go inside and when you go inside and everything is quiet and your thoughts is quiet then you can take yourself, you can come inside yourself and you can feel your sensations." "Continuous awareness of physical sensations without reacting is the core of the vipassana practice." "Every sound, vision, taste, smell, everything that contacs the body instantly produces some sensations." "The technique focuses on natural physical sensations as the crucial link between mind and body the key to understanding human behavior." "Through vipassana one realizes that one's own attitudes and addictions, suffering and happiness, are not caused by the outside world." "It is the reactions to pleasant or unpleasant sensations the world evokes within the body that dictates one's actions and conditions the mind." "On the fourth day of the course vipassana is taught." "Students learn how to observe objectively all the sensations in their bodies, whatever they may be, without reacting to them." "They watch emotions come and go they watch pain come and go" "they watch pleasure come and go and they realize, not intellectually but through their own experience that nothing is permanent." "Hatred, passion, greed, are not abstract anymore." "By watching the physical sensations accompanying these emotions and by understanding their impermanent nature one can actually start changing the habit of blind reaction." "Between the two poles of expression and suppression lyes a third option: mere observation." "I see things as the way it is." "It's you who can make yourself into the right pot, and It's you who can leap to a misery." "There is a happiness in there." "You know?" "After the course it was no looking back." "Even for us it was saying:" "Thanks God, we found a remedy." "We found an alternative." "We found a way to dictam to." "Then there was no looking back." "The first vipassana course in Tihar jail was followed by five more and Kiran Bedi, once again, was thinking ahead." "We became greedier." "We were impatient." "Why only fifty-sixty when I have ten thousand people with me." "So why can't we reach at least a large percentage with a massive course other than going into small trickles to have a massive impact!" "Would you be able to arrange a course over thousand?" "I said yes!" " immediately." "Are you sure?" " I said yes." "It was one of the most ambitious projects in the history of indian prisons" "It was also the largest vipassana course conducted in long times." "In just a few weeks a special area was prepared inside the prison." "Accommodating in one place a thousand inmates as well as Mr. Goenka and his assistants, was a tremendous undertaking." "He pretends to be no saint." "He is like a simple, humble teacher he is not expecting anything in return." "The way he's done for the prisoners for ten days..." "He's lived in the prison for eleven days he and his wife together." "And it was not a confortable stay..." "One thousand prisoners gathered in the huge tent on the evening of April 4th." "They reflected the wide range of human experience:" "Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs from different nations and social backgrounds." "In the early hours of the next day a fierce rainstorm, extremely unusual for that dry season suddenly descended." "The tent collapsed." "All the rugs and meditation cushions were completely soaked." "An emergency meeting was called at 3:30 AM to consider cancelling the course." "Instead, measures were quickly put into action allowing it to continue." "When the weather cleared a massive salvage operation is launched" "Meanwhile the course continued as prisoners meditated in their barracks." "By evening the tent was ready again for the students to assemble, and the course went on as planned." "Nine days later it was apparent that something unique had been accomplished." "It actually changed people." "It made my prisoners weep." "It made them cry." "They had realized what life actually could be." "They had looked within and within themselves they had seen the feeling of revenge." "They had seen anger." "They saw the disrespecting hurt they caused to parents and society and they wept and they wanted to be different." "I felt guilty." "Whatever I did a wrong thing." "I have done a wrong thing." "What I have done is something wich I can come out of it, and correct it" "That realization was the greatest magic." "That's exactly what we were looking for." "How do I realize them?" "Make them realize that they've actually hurt society." "They just all the time saying:" "we are innocent, we are innocent" "We never hurt society, society hurt us." "How do I convince them?" "That you did hurt society at some stage of your life..." "Therefore, law make its course and you got here today." "So they learned it in vipassana, I didnt have to say anything." "They went on that up and said:" "we hurt society but we seek forgiveness." "That was the greatest magic." "When the course ended twelve hundred participants and international guests witnessed the inauguration of the first vipassana center to be stablished in a prison." "Within three weeks it begins to offer vipassana course twice a month" "Vipassana courses are alike everywhere in the world." "The same rules, same time-table, same instructions." "The workers who serve the students during the course are volunteers who have already taken a course themselves." "A teacher appointed by Mr. Goenka stays in the course site for ten days and conducts the course voluntarily." "Nothing is by accident you know." "I came, I caught, and I'm here all for a reason." "I don't have to be caught going to Canada, I could gone to Canada and then gone back, and my life ..." "This was all for a reason." "After taken a few vipassana courses," "David asked to be transferred to the vipassana ward and work there as a volunteer." "When I first came I thought why is vipassana here?" "Of course when I said that it answers itself because this is where it's needed most." "This is history in a making you know this is the first chance where vipassana where it's been used in a prison- system to possible reform people and if this does show results then this could reform the whole prison-system in the entire planet." "And it happens here." "By scratch his belly should be the technique." "See all I can really do is to try to set an example for other people in doing this than maybe they will try a little bit harder for themselves." "David!" "Yeah you are 26 morning jail 4 and 27 morning I'm bringing jail 1 2 and 3 together." "So tell him we will need him at a quarter to nine o' clock please tell the teacher." "I cannot do, anything vipassana was, for anybody." "They have to do it themselves." "The bottom line is you can't help somebody unless they want to be helped and the vipassana if you can get through to them is for themselves." "To get inside themselves to help." "Twice a month prisoners from different sections of Tihar arrive at a vipassana ward to take the course." "Some of them have done this for a number of times." "Each time they follow the same program what differs is the personal experience." "I call them "bhikkus" when they come here which is monk because this is... in fact what they are." "For ten days they become a monk." "A lot of people are around of the impression these ten days they come over here is... is so easy." "It's not!" "Next to the silent bubble of the course, on the other side of the wall, prison life flows along." "In Tihar jail prisoners can have yoga lessons, counseling sessions, and other educational programs" "but the vipassana course is quite different from these activities." "and prisoners are not always aware of this fact." "We are in jail." "And jail has jail rules." "This is vipassana, vipassana has vipassana rules and it happens to be that vipassana rules are more strict... than what the jail is." "This is some of them understand, some of them dont understand." "See in jail they have the rules but the game is to bend the rules as much as they can to take control themselves." "And they bring that same attitude in here." "You still bathing, boy?" "and I say no, this is not jail." "That's jail you want to go back to jail but this is vipassana." "We do have a little bit of people who became jealous maybe envious because here people seem to get a little bit more than what other people do." "They don't realize that the guys who come here are puting more into themselves" "If somebody have had some sort of experience or self discipline then they seem to be falling into it much easier." "Let's understand the 10 days is basic... you know" "I mean this is the least amount of time necessary to get some sort of a spark to the candle and sometimes that spark doesn't ignite maybe you need another spark, but after a couple delights it dash the flicker, it grows and then the candle is lit." "Change does not come easy way." "Change takes a time." "And as I told you earlier that this revenge" "which I had, an anger, quick temperament is still subsiding." "I'm not telling exactly it went off, completely one time" "Bamm." "I did a vipassana, I sit down and it just went out like that." "It's still subsiding... subsiding, subsiding..." "Know I did it happen that I'm here." "What happened to me it's what I've done to myself and that's why I'm here." "I don't trust people as I used to do sometimes I meet them and and they treat me not good and..." "I think if I'll have a bolt" "I would just pull the pin and let the whole thing explode, and start all over again" "Vipassana keeps try to bring me back away from this... distrustfull people." "I'm here now doing vipassana and..." "Is your way of life you... you... the way you talk to people the way you think the way you act?" "The way you do things for people or don't do things for people?" "The art of living, they call this." "On the morning of the 10th day silence ends." "On this special day it becomes clear how long the journey have been" "Students make the transition back to a more extroverted way of life" "For the first time in 10 days they can actually talk and share experiences." "It was a great opportunity for me, being here." "Before, I used to regret." "Now I don't regret any." "There is no any regret within me." "That yes it happened and I did this mistake" "So here now I look in future ahead." "Actually I came from a very orthodox Muslim family and my parents were used to pray." "I used to always..." "I was a very curious child that..." "You are praying and this person whom we are begging always." "Where is he?" "Is he upstairs where nobody sees him?" "Why is he prejudice?" "I was looking for something which have a universal appear something which doesn't condemn." "Other religions say that this religion is bad, ours is good" "Actually I've found what I was looking for for all this years the thing which has been bugging me" "I found the answer here." "It's sure it has came a long way earlier prisons were not being open for this course some were, some were not." "but now government of India sent out a circular to all the prisons in India to encourage vipassana courses" "Because the prisons were capable of receiving this." "Staff was expecting this." "The community outside was expecting this to happen." "You know there was a positivity of a belief that this can happen in the prisoners." "People who will be released from the prisons will not coming back anymore." "Outside, people had started to see the change in their thinking and behavior." "So there is been no looking back." "When a vipassana course is ends in Baroda jail a special event takes place." "In the presence of social workers and guests supporting the vipassana program the superintendent - a vipassana student himself - greets the inmates coming out of the meditation hall" "In this country physical contact between people from such different backgrounds is unthinkable but on this day barriers are broken." "There was one question one time I asked Kiran Bedi, ask about..." "I said:" "Madam!" "How many people?" "In this world." "You think." "That they are doing... they are just here in this world... they believe they are here in this world just to do good?" "What's the percentage?" "She looked at me and there was a maybe 20-30 people sitting there she says: you are the percentage..." "It's you people... and It's you who can make it... this world a better place..."