ISKCON prison ministries ki jai! What a light in the nation’s darkest holes! I know it for a fact. My name is Bhakta Chris Matthews, and I am the director of the ISKCON Atlanta prison ministries, a project Bhaktin Ginger Burnette and I have been working on. In a very short time the mercy of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu has shined on us tremendously, and I am positive that Srila Prabhupada is smiling on this endeavor.

First, let me say thank you to Chandra Sekhara Prabhu of the main ISKCON prison ministry. Thank you for your selfless service and compassion in reaching out to the nation’s incarcerated, for I was one of those that your compassion reached, and it has inspired in me to do the same in spreading Krishna consciousness into the world's prisons.

I was first introduced to Krishna in 1985 as a youth of 15. I was very fortunate in having the association of some very sincere disciples of Srila Prabhupada from the Matchless Gifts days. They inspired in me a deep desire to practice Krishna consciousness. I wanted to run off and become a brahmachari and devote my life to Krishna.

But other desires outweighed this longing. In 1986 I was introduced to morphine. This started an intoxication that took me to the darkest depths of addiction. In 1992 I started burglarizing drugstores to keep from the dreaded withdrawals that were a fact of everyday life.

In one drugstore I actually was so sick I couldn’t wait. I overdosed and died flatlining for 10 minutes, saved only by Krishna’s mercy to do the work I am doing today. I came to in intensive care, cursing the doctors who had saved this life. I didn’t want to go on in this living hell, and death seemed the only way out. All my attempts at cleaning up always ended in failure.

In my moments of clarity, I couldn't believe that I had fallen to such a low level, once having had the taste of Krishna's name and the association of such good devotees, having had the knowledge that I was not this body but a living spirit, an eternal servant of Krishna. How had I lost this and completely sunk into maya and bodily identification? It had robbed me of my aspirations for a life devoted to Krishna. I remember thinking these things as I awaited sentencing in 1994.

Still heavily addicted and now with a child on the way, I lamented that I couldn’t properly teach my child of Krishna. How could I help my child when I was so far gone? I resolved that I would never again plague my mind with thoughts of God. I would deny his existence.

It is never so easy. Krishna never leaves one who has had even a small desire for devotion. He sits patiently in the heart and waits.

In 1994 I was sentenced to eight years in the Tennessee Department of Correction. I started my sentence with hopelessness and despair. I felt great grief when my daughter was born 10 days later. I never once thought, in those first years, that I would live to see the outside world again.

Prison. The whole world is a prison, Srila Prabhupada says, and we must try to escape. Only with the mercy of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and his gift of the sankirtana movement, the chanting of the Mahamantra, and the desire, no matter how small, to serve Krishna can we escape.

A little into the first two years, I decided I would break free— not a physical escape but a spiritual one. By trying to live a spiritual life and practice in prison, with meditation, I thought I would retain some sanity.

I read and studied everything I could. I practiced a handful of different meditation and astral-projection techniques. I studied Buddhism, Cabala, Advaita-Vedanta, Sufism, Islam, Christianity— any and all things that were available through the various prison ministries.

The prisons are flooded with Buddhist and Mayavadi books, and there are meditation groups sponsored by well organized and funded prison ministries such as the Barre Buddhist Center and Wisdom Publications. Incarcerated men and women feel such a huge amount of suffering in their lives that they will keep looking and trying to alleviate it. By not having Srila Prabhupada’s books available on a large scale in these institutions, we are doing a great disservice as Vaishnavas and in spreading Lord Chaitanya’s sankirtana movement.

By 1999 I had spent two years in a solitary-confinement unit. This was a great opportunity to turn my cell into an ashram. I had spent countless hours meditating but to no avail. Meditating on an impersonal concept, trying to still the mind, is just what Arjuna says it is: "O Madhusudana, the system of yoga which you have summarized appears impractical and unendurable to me, for the mind is restless and unsteady."

After years of trying the techniques that Krishna describes in Chapter 6 of Bhagavad-gita as It Is, I threw my hands up. After all my studies and practices, I was still miserable, so they basically amounted to nothing. For the first time in years, I said a simple prayer to Bhagavan Krishna: "Lord, I am lost. I remember You. Please do something to help me."

A few days later I was transferred and released into the general prison population. I started attending the various programs offered through the chaplain. One was a Protestant study group. We studied the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Calvinistic Institutes of the Christian religion. I’m not sure how it happened, but I came in contact with Chandra Sekhara's address and I wrote him. And he did the kindest thing he could have done: he replied.

About a month later, I received Bhagavad-gita as It Is, Beyond Birth and Death, and The Science of Self Realization. I devoured Sri Krishna’s words and Srila Prabhupada’s purports. They were like new life. I owned three different Bhagavad-gitas by various mayavadi Shankaracharya schools of thought, but receiving Prabhupada’s was like greeting an old friend. I was able to understand it much better now with age than at 15. It was so liberating to find out again my position to Krishna as servant. How much nonsense it was to meditate on aham brahmasmi or "I am brahman" and be told I was God, you were God, we all were God, while I was incarcerated! How does God become incarcerated?

I immediately started chanting and became a vegetarian although the only meal for those years was beans and macaroni-and-cheese. I made a set of japa-mala out of a piece of cloth by tying 108 knots in it and tying both ends together. I set up an altar in my cell, using pictures from the books. I learned to offer my job assignments to Krishna, working in a spirit of non-attachment. Most inmates are so bitter about having to work for the state that it was a good chance to preach when I was asked why it didn’t bother me and to tell them it was because I was working for Krishna, not the guards.

I became so free inside the razor wire that I felt I had never been so free outside. It was all Krishna’s mercy to a fallen devotee. The thought of Srila Prabhupada’s gift, how he brought Krishna consciousness to the West to help us regain our lost relationship with the Lord of creation, Bhagavan Sri Krishna, brought tears to my eyes while I chanted.

I was a hardened career criminal, registered as such with the state of Tennessee. I had witnessed many acts of brutality in prison and not so much as blinked, and here I was crying over the mercy and compassion shown to us by the gift of the Mahamantra.

By the chanting of
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna
Krishna Krishna Hare Hare
Hare Rama Hare Rama
Rama Rama Hare Hare,
even the hardest of hearts will melt like butter, and then Krishna comes in and steals it.

I was released a free man in more ways than one in July 2000.

Last year for Gaura Purnima, a friend and I went to the Atlanta temple. I hadn’t been in a temple in 17 years. What bliss it was to have the association of devotees and be in the transcendental vibrations of the Mahamantra in front of the Deities! This was the stimulus that made me decide to do what my life is meant for— to serve Krishna— although I didn’t know how then. It took a few more months.

About two months ago, I had a strong desire to start a prison ministry. I thought of how nice it would have been to have the association of devotees while incarcerated, how nice it would have been if they had come into the prisons the same way the Catholics and Buddhists and mayavadis and wiccans and others do, how nice it would have been if they had held kirtana and class and distributed prasadam.

My heart felt great compassion for those souls who sat and walked where I once did in the world's prisons. I thought of how in all the institutions I had been in, the libraries were full of nonsense and there wasn’t one of Srila Prabhupada’s books available. I thought of how no devotees were going into the prisons, and I wondered, What would Srila Prabhupada think of this? a ripe field with no one to cultivate it for Krishna but a small handful?

Didn’t Lord Chaitanya command that the sankirtana movement and the holy name be spread to every town and village? Couldn’t prisons be compared to towns and jails to villages? They are both growing at alarming rates.

But I wasn’t qualified to do this because I’m most fallen, not the class of devotee I would like to be. But then, hadn’t Srila Prabhupada brought Lord Chaitanya’s mercy to me and didn’t I owe him something?

How could the prisoners serving life sentences or awaiting death ever hear of Krishna? They will never leave those dark places, but Krishna is already there. He was born in Kamsa’s prison house. If someone saves only himself from a burning house, can this be called compassion or victory? No. And if a Vaishnava saves only himself without laboring to save others, can he be called a Vaishnava. No was the answer I gave myself.

So I started buying all of Prabhupada books I could at used bookstores, saving them to send to someone. I started printing ads on the Internet, contacting each and every state asking permission to send books and correspondence classes I didn’t even have to the inmates’ libraries and chaplains’ libraries. I didn’t have them, but I had a strong conviction and faith that I was serving Krishna and they would come from his mercy

We’ve gotten the okay from 76 different institutions to send in books, beads, and correspondence classes— all of it in four short weeks. And we’ve also gotten the materials to do it with.

Now it’s not enough to send in books. We need devotees who have compassion and will go into the prisons and hold classes, correspond, hold kirtana, and distribute whatever prasadam with Srila Prabhupada’s compassion that we can. We follow his example.

Chandra Sekhara has struggled selflessly with this ministry for 16 years, distributing books, corresponding with tens of thousands of inmates, and being a bright light in carrying out Lord Chaitanya’s edict. His compassion has reached me and many others.

There are still many, many others who need our help and absolutely must have the opportunity to change and practice Krishna consciousness. As Vaishnavas, we should strive to help these suffering men and women. Krishna is friend to everyone, not just to people outside with money to purchase books and beads.

We have set some pretty high goals for the ISKCON Atlanta prison ministries, and we are confident that by working side by side with Chandra Sekhara and the ISKCON prison ministries, we will get the mercy of Lord Chaitanya and we will achieve these goals.

The greatest gift I’ve received through Chandra’s ministry is being able to sit with my daughter, who is now seven, and my fiancee's twins, also seven, and chant japa in front of our Deities, six rounds. We do it all together, the children with their beads and bags. My heart soars as I realize that now I can teach my daughter about Krishna. This is our highest perfection as parents.

All glories to Srila Prabhupada!
All glories to Sri Sri Gaura-Nitai!
All glories to the compassionate Vaishnavas everywhere!

Your servant,
Bhakta Chris Matthews
980 South Old Sevierville Pk
Seymour TN 37865
865 577 0785

© dipika.org December 5, 2002