“Prison treatment programs typically address superficial changes in thought and behavior, helping prisoners adapt better to their environment. Vipassana begins where cognitive-behavioral treatment leaves off, accessing a deep level of awareness and emotion.”
– Dr. Ron Cavanaugh, the Director of Treatment for the Alabama DOC

Jenny Phillips, Producer/Director/Writer

I had been teaching meditation in prisons for several years when I heard from Robin Casarjian, the director of The Lionheart Foundation, that a large and growing number of prisoners were learning to meditate inside a maximum-security prison outside Birmingham, Alabama. When the prison psychologist, Dr. Ron Cavanaugh, invited me to visit and to interview some of the meditating prisoners, I packed my tape recorder and flew down.

That visit and the stories that I heard while there set my course over the next ten years. Soon after that first trip to Alabama, I became aware of a meditation practice, Vipassana, which is taught in centers around the world and contains the elements that I had always thought were most needed in an effective prison program: the opportunity and techniques for significant introspection in a safe and supported environment. With collaboration among Ron Cavanaugh, the Alabama Department of Corrections, The Lionheart Foundation, and the Vipassana center in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, a Vipassana program was first brought into this Alabama prison in 2002.

After witnessing the powerful convergence of an overcrowded, understaffed, maximum-security prison and an ancient, intensive meditation practice, I realized that this story needed to be documented, and could only be fully told through film. Since its theatrical release in 2008, The Dhamma Brothers has galvanized audiences, won awards, and received positive reviews.

Suffering is universal. The men at Donaldson are learning to become free within even while their bodies are imprisoned. In a larger sense, The Dhamma Brothers suggests the possibility of freedom from that which imprisons us all. The Dhamma Brothers are leading the way.