By Nathaniel Tishman

Jarvis Jay Masters rises around 4:30 each morning. and places his blanket on the cold floor. He sits cross-legged, closes his eyes and begins his Buddhist meditation, a silence often lasting more than an hour. Snap. The flick of the overhead lights and the crash of iron gates jolts him out of his practice, as the food cart laden with waffles, pancakes, and hard-boiled eggs squeaks its way down the hallway, and the cry goes out: "Chow time, gentlemen! If you want to eat, turn on your lights and stand by your bars."

The sounds of 17 men on the tier of San Quentin's death row gradually stirring to life echo along- teeth being brushed, a dozen toilets flushing, keys jangling, and the smell of cigarette smoke wafting through the adjacent cells.

Death row is hardly an ideal place to begin a Buddhist practice, but Masters has done just that. His time in San Quentin will end in one of two ways–winning his freedom, or being strapped down in the execution chamber as a cocktail of lethal chemicals anesthetizes him, paralyzes his lungs and stops his heart. Pressure like this would break most people, but not Jarvis Masters. His solution for dealing with the fear of death, the pain of his past and the suffering in prison is meditation and study.

Jailhouse conversions aren't especially unusual. In his book, Finding Freedom, Writings from Death Row, Masters reflects on this, saying:

"In prison, no one believes that conversion to religion is real. Most prisoners think that anyone who suddenly catches religion is playing a game, or trying to con their way out of the system. Inmates distance themselves from religious prisoners, believing religion will make them weak."

Most people are familiar with the tales of convicts finding religion while in prison, be it Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. Within the past 15 years, however, a new movement has begun to take shape, the spread of Buddhism among a small portion of America's inmates. People in prison do not usually want to be in prison, and the time behind bars gives some inmates time to contemplate things they might never have considered before, like spirituality, human kindness, and what it means to do the right thing. A community of volunteers has sprung up to support these men and women behind bars, and do whatever they can. Some visit the institutions, some put books in the mail, and others send a simple letter every now and again to remind those inside that there is still something to live for.

The question is this: in an environment as brutal as prison, how have some inmates managed to embrace Buddhism, a faith that preaches nonviolence, tolerance, and meditation in search of nirvana, or enlightenment. What does it do for them, and how do they use it to help put their lives back together?

Buddhism isn't necessarily the right path for everyone though. Masters recognizes this.

"If you're going to catch religion while you're in prison, especially on death row, it's probably not a good idea to find Buddhism," Masters says with a smile, "since it's all about dying. In Buddhism from the moment you're born, your first breath, you're waiting to die, more or less."

Masters and I exchanged letters for several months before I was finally approved for visiting privileges in early January. His letters usually arrive in the mail prominently stamped 'SAN QUENTIN STATE PRISON.' in red or black. Were it not for this, it would be hard to see from the outside that the messages have come from behind the walls of one of the most notorious prisons in California, and indeed, the world.

Each of his letters has come with a personalized address label in the left-hand corner of a desert scene- a tall thin cactus, blue sky, and sand. One recent letter was marked with a 37-cent stamp of deceased Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall; the stamp on the one before was a picture of a grayish-green Reticulate Collared Lizard. The letters have the strong scent of nag champa incense, with the handwriting an odd, almost calligraphic style. They all end with the simple phrase, "In peace." Small underlines and smiley-faces punctuate the sentences, with an occasional spot of ink. This, I'm told, is because Masters is allowed only to use the inside of a plastic ballpoint pen. The prison authorities view the external casing of an ordinary Bic as a potential weapon.

" One time a guard let me use a real pen, and I didn't know what to do with it. It was so big," he remembers, smiling.

The static-filled payphone-style receivers of the closed-circuit telephone make his voice seem slightly higher-pitched than most people’s stereotype of a thick-necked convicted felon, but warm and friendly nonetheless. His bright brown eyes and broad smile are visible even through the scratched-up glass and concrete.

In person, Masters does not appear to be the hardened criminal the state of California would have people believe. He wears a prison-issued bright blue denim button down shirt with white stitching, a grey thermal long-sleeved undershirt, and a pair of somewhat frayed blue jeans. His shaved hair is millimeters long and appears to have receded slightly, while his dark skin has a somewhat washed-out tone, perhaps the natural result of spending more than 20 hours per day in a cell. The thick, short moustache he has is flecked with gray.

So, who is Jarvis Jay Masters? If he didn't kill anyone, why is he in line for execution today?
The author of Finding Freedom, Writings from Death Row, Masters was born in 1962, in Long Beach, CA, one of seven children. His abusive stepfather, Otis, and his mother, Cynthia, were addicted to heroin, and neglected Masters and his three sisters, leading to their placement into a multiple foster homes. He became a ward, in the custody of the state at age 12, and almost immediately began to get into trouble.

After being sent to the California Youth Authority, the state's juvenile justice system, Masters was released at 17. Angry and disillusioned, he went on a crime spree, holding up banks and restaurants. A private investigator who worked on his defense during his death penalty trial, Melody Ermachild Chavis, remembers reading about him.

"He never shot anyone, but the big stack of reports that I read about his crimes was scary," she writes in the forward to his book. "As I told him, I'm glad I wasn't in Taco Bell when he came through."

At 19, Masters was arrested, and convicted of armed robbery. In 1981, he entered the gates of San Quentin State Prison for the first time, where he has been since. Like many new prisoners, he became part of the gang system, something that would play a prominent role during his next trial.

The prison gangs were not the first time Masters had been in trouble with others. Just below his left eye it is still possible to see, even through the scratched glass of a visiting booth window, a homemade tattoo reading '255.' A similar tattoo appears on his wrist. Masters says that during his time on the run from the Youth Authority he stayed with a friend who ran a tattoo shop and, being bored, he and a few others decided to make their own tattoos one day. The '255' was the street where Masters grew up, with a couple of other friends making up the remainder of the gang; laughing about it today, he says it was probably one of the stupidest things he has ever done. In retrospect, another gang would get him into trouble, far more than the 255. .

Continued