David Sheff - The Buddhist on Death Row

This book shows vividly how, even in the face of the greatest adversity, compassion and a warm-hearted concern for others bring peace and inner strength. The Buddhist on Death Row is a true source of joy.

HIS HOLINESS THE DALAI LAMA

Im a friend of Jarvis Masters, so I know the truth of this book, but I want to hail its power. I believe it will encourage many people to examine their own lives and their unrealized potential for awareness, generosity, commitment, and courage.

REBECCA SOLNIT, author of Men Explain Things to Me

This book celebrates a liberation not gained by guns and gangs, prison breaks and murder, but by sitting with ones breath and believing in the perfection of the universe and all who strive and suffer within it. The Buddhist on Death Row is a deeply useful reminder that we can all be free regardless of where we are placed.

ALICE WALKER, author of The Color Purple

This profound, gorgeous book displays the miraculous human capacity to find redemption, and even joy, no matter who or where we are. Jarvis Masterss story proves that we are all united by our suffering and by our potential to help others who suffer.

HELEN PREJEAN, author of Dead Man Walking

Im grateful to be Jarvis Masterss teacher in part because he has taught me so much. I have rarely encountered anyone who expresses the essence of Buddhism in a clearer, more moving way than he does, and I deeply admire how David Sheff has captured that hard-won wisdom in this book.

PEMA CHDRN, Buddhist teacher and author of When Things Fall Apart

This is a beautiful, profoundly spiritual book, and a page turner. Jarvis Jay Masters transformation from an unloved child of violence and poverty to Buddhist teacher on Death Row, is thrilling. Reading it changed me, threw the lights on, opened and gentled my heart. Im going to give it to everyone I know.

ANNE LAMOTT

An inspiring book about how meaning can be found even inperhaps especially inadversity. Its a study of Buddhism, of criminal justice, of the ways people connect with each other, and its written with deep feeling and verve.

ANDREW SOLOMON

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First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2020

Copyright David Sheff 2020

David Sheff asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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Ebook Edition August 2020 ISBN: 9780008395452

Version 2020-07-13

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For Pamela Krasney, who inspired us with her moral courage as she fought
for criminal justice reform and an end to the death penalty. Pamela made
the world a better place for her family, friends, and countless others.

Cage an eagle and it will bite at the
wires, be they of iron or of gold.

HENRIK IBSEN

S ome of the names and details in this book have been changed at the request of participants concerned about their privacy or, in some cases, their safety.

I sit in a molded plastic chair on one side of a small table opposite a man named Jarvis Jay Masters. I tell him Im considering writing a book about him and ask what he thinks of the idea. I emphasize that if I go forward, Ill report what I find, both the good and the bad.

I cant be painted worse than Ive been painted, Masters says, and I guess thats true for someone convicted of murder.

I mean, he adds, look where we are.

Where we are is in a closet-sized cage among a dozen similar cages in a visitation hall reserved for the condemned at San Quentin State Prison.

I follow Masterss gaze as it sweeps the other cages in which convicted killers sit with family members or attorneys. Ramn Bojrquez Salcido, convicted of murdering seven people, including his wife and daughters, sits with his lawyer in a cage opposite ours. Nearby, Richard Allen Davis, who raped and killed a twelve-year-old girl, munches Doritos. In the cage on the end, near a bookshelf lined with board games and Bibles, Scott Peterson, convicted of murdering his eight-months-pregnant wife and their unborn child, sits with his sister.

Peterson looks relaxed and fit, but some prisoners appear tense, agitated, or sullen. And then there are guysdiminutive, bespectacled, innocuouswho look like tellers or, in one case, John Oliver. Their looks deceive, Masters says. Over the years, hes been surprised when hes learned about the crimes committed by the meekest and politest of his death row neighbors. Some of them have perfect manners, place their napkins on their laps, but half of Iowa is missing.

In 2006, my friend Pamela Krasney, an activist devoted to prison reform and other social justice causes, told me about a death row inmate who, she claimed, had been wrongly convicted of murder. He was unlike anyone shed ever knownmore conscious, wise, and empathetic in spite of his past. She corrected herself. Because of his past.

Introduced by Masterss friend, the famed Buddhist nun Pema Chdrn, Pamela had been visiting Masters regularly for years. She belonged to a group of supporters devoted to proving his innocence. They called themselves Jarvistas.

Pamela told me that Masters had written a book, numerous articles, and a poem for which hed won a PEN award. Hed converted to Buddhism and studied with an eminent Tibetan lama, Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche, who proclaimed him a bodhisattva, one who works to end suffering in a place drowning in suffering. Indeed, Pamela claimed that Masters had become a force for good in San Quentin, teaching Buddhism to inmates and even thwarting violence.

Encouraged by Pamela, I arranged a visit to death row, arriving at the former Bay of Skulls on a fogless morning, a steel wind blowing in through the Golden Gate. White sailboats floated like lotus petals on the bay. Tugboats pushed barges, hydrofoil ferries glided by, and the RichmondSan Rafael Bridge glistened. After my identity was verified, I passed through a metal detector and, as instructed, followed a painted yellow line along a rocky embankment. Overhead, armed guards watched from a tower that looked like a lighthouse.

Masters was housed in the ominously named Adjustment Center, the solitary-housing unitthe holeonce described by a San Quentin administrator as a contained, enclosed unit for the vicious, violent, insanemen society doesnt want to exist. Hed been in the AC for two decades.