In this new podcast episode, Vita Pires talks with Susan Shannon, a seasoned Buddhist practitioner and chaplain who shares her journey of transformative prison ministry, including her work as a Buddhist chaplain on death row at San Quentin. She discusses her adaptable teaching approach, focusing on universal Buddhist principles like the Four Noble Truths and dependent arising, which foster deep transformation among incarcerated individuals. Susan highlights the importance of inner work, understanding prison culture, and practicing humility as a facilitator. She advises aspiring volunteers, encouraging self-reflection, restorative justice work, and exploring alternative ways to serve.
Susan Shannon is an Interfaith Minister and Buddhist Chaplain. She’s been “married to the
Dharma” since the early ‘70s, beginning with studies in Chinese Buddhism and then discovering her forever home with Tibetan Buddhism. Her work is based on Restorative Justice and Emotional Literacy and has included at-risk youth, refugees, the unhoused, the differently abled, and the Incarcerated. For many years, she facilitated many rehabilitative groups in San Quentin, including Mindful Meditation, GRIP, VOEG, and Houses of Healing. She also served as the Buddhist chaplain to the mainline and Death Row men. After her return to Orcas Island in 2019, she founded Buddhist Prison Ministry, now serving tens of thousands of incarcerated people across the United States, and is a Clinical Pastoral Education supervisor (CPE) with the Center for Spiritual Care and Pastoral Formation (CSCPF,) a dharma teacher at Sukhasiddhi Foundation and The Chaplaincy Institute, and a steward to the sacred land she inhabits.
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Vita Pires: Hello, everyone! This is Vita Pires, and I'm happy to be here today with Susan Shannon. Susan, would you like to tell our listeners something about your background? And why you're on the prison mindfulness podcast?
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Susan Shannon: Sure. Okay, I'm a long, long-time practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism. Long time a longer-time student of Buddhism in general, approaching I think, over 50 years now, and I found my way into chaplaincy kind of late in life in 2008, and it appeared to be a very, very good fit and a good container of my life skills.
After attending teachings with His Holiness the Dalai Lama for many years, I finally heard what he was saying about the importance of interfaith education. So, I went to an interfaith seminary with the hope that I could benefit more sentient beings if I learned the language of awakening from different traditions. Plus, I had a pretty deep aversion to my own Christian upbringing.
Eventually, that seminary led me to get a master's in divinity, where in my last semester I needed one class on a particular morning, and that class was prison ministry, and I thought, well, that's pretty cool. I remember the very 1st astrologer. Whoever did a reading for me said, You will find your life work in prisons, monasteries, or hospitals, and I had spent a lot of time in hospitals, did not like hospitals, and had spent about 20 years working with various monasteries and loved monasteries, but as soon as I set foot in the prison I felt like the kind of prayer wheel of my inner being was spun, and that led to close to a decade of getting very entrenched in San Quentin State Prison, which included co-facilitating our weekly mindfulness group facilitating the GRIP program which I know you guys have had numerous encounters with various individuals from that program.
And even though I intended to be in the prison as more of an interfaith presence. More and more people began to know that I had a Buddhist background. So eventually I, quite quickly, became the Buddhist chaplain on death row which led to the Buddhist chaplain for the mainland mainline population as well. So I led study groups with the mainline. and I led weekly services with Death Row, starting with Jarvis Masters. Just he and I were doing one-on-ones for a couple of years, but we knew that the power of our teacher, our shared teacher Chugd Tulkor Rinpoche was going to eventually expand the Bodchitta work that we were doing, and in a short time my Sanga grew to 65. So I met with them weekly in various groupings and then over time left California as the prison began to lock down a lot more, and I wasn't. I wasn't. I could project into the future that with the frequent lockdowns, which meant I wasn't getting paid, it was going to get harder and harder to exist unless I took a job I didn't want.
What opened up for me was coming back to my soul home in the Pacific Northwest and intending to go to California four times a year. But then COVID hit, and I started the Buddhist Prison Ministry at the request of one of my death row groups. And now, as of today, in just four short years, that prison ministry has served over 33,000 incarcerated people across the United States. So I think that's enough enough about me.
Vita: Can you say something about your courses on the tablets?
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Susan: We offer courses on tablets and hard copy. We sent hard copies out for three years before we switched to tablets. and we continue to send hard copy out to people who don't have tablets or
or just requesting a hard copy.
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Vita: So, what kind of courses did you teach? What course of studies did you teach? And that was you felt were successful, or that really landed with the students.
Susan: Yeah, I had. Originally, I had created a 22-page outline of elements of Buddhism, that I knew were
common to all the schools of Buddhism, all the schools and traditions, and that became our guiding
kind of syllabus for 3 years. It took 3 years to get through it because I was seeing different yards on death row and different groupings. I was seeing them on about a 6 7 week rotation. So that became a very solid scaffold that immediately dispelled the kind of arguments kind of almost like a pissing contest between the men who are showing up saying, well, Zen says this, and Theravandan says this, and Pema Chodron says this, and Tibetan says this, and I just put my foot down. And I said, You guys, stop! Stop! Stop! We're not going to be discussing all the differences here. We're going to be discussing what is common to the teachings and also with the end goal of creating a kinder, warmer heart and more patience and understanding. So.
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Vita: What were some of the specific teachings that you found that you know, could land and not cause that kind of argumentation?
Susan: Well. All of the outlines landed well. All of the outlines landed well, and the outline started kind of chronologically, with a little bit of the history of the Buddha, dubious as it is, according to scholars and
talked about. Then we went right into the turnings, especially the four noble truths. We got a lot of traction on the four noble truths. In fact. there we were, tucked away in the very far corner of Death Row, which was an old shower kind of shower room that had become the chapel, and as we talked about suffering as it's presented in the four Noble Truths and the other three truths. It was amazing to hear how the entire cell block of 720 men would just quiet down. and so we immediately began to see that we were having an effect energetically. and from there we spent a lot of time on this 6 on the eightfold path, the 6 perfections, the Brahmaviharas and dependent arising. Emptiness was a bit challengingas always, but the guys got it, and I always brought it back to Bodhicitta. I always brought it back to cultivating the awakening mind, and the men loved that they ate it up. They really responded to the fact that Buddhism is not a condemning tradition and that they can start. you know, wherever they start is where they start and has the potential of great transformation. So we actually saw a lot of incredible transformation there on Death Row with the men.
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Vita: You've written some workbooks and correspondence courses that you send out. And it's the same sort of curriculum in an introduction to Buddhism and working with reactivity?
Susan: It started to be the same in. When was it? I guess it was probably November of 2019. I began to craft the workbook based on that outline. And then Covid hit. And I thought to myself, You know, and Covid, I don't know if you know Covid hit especially hard in Death row. There were 28 deaths, and I thought, you know, they're already on the razor's edge of impermanence there just being on the row.
And now with Covid, it's important to present. not just to the men on death row, but to anybody who is going to be taking up the study and practice of Buddhism. Right now, it's important to distill this outline into what is transformational right now. So I tossed the outline, and I recreated it based on that lens.
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Vita: You facilitated many groups. What were some of the challenges you had in group facilitation?
how do you work with resistance, or people challenging you, etc.
Susan: Challenges. So the biggest challenge was always the institution itself. with the various reasons for lockdowns and disruptions in the in the programs. But the the residents. I'll call them residents. They seem to want to be called residents now, residents, not inmates. They rolled with it, and so I learned to roll with it
Challenges. My challenges were mediated almost immediately by the fact that I had a incredibly blessed and gifted group of inmate interns who really schooled me. They gave me game. They gave me information that was not visible to me, such as in one of my small groups. It wasn't GRIP It was victim, offender, education group vogue, 12 group, 12 men, and there was some kind of elephant in the room. And then later, I found out that two of the men were former cellies who didn't get along and, in fact, had fights, and you begin to learn over time to trace the body language, to feel the resistance and to feel into. Is it shame? Is it a lack of confidence in speaking out? Is it something having to do with another person in the group opposing former gang members or knowing somebody's victim of that kind of thing? And so it wasn't so much. I can't say, really, in all honesty, that I felt particularly challenged.
I just realized that as I sunk into the culture there was so much that exists within the prison culture that is completely invisible to people who haven't been incarcerated. and one of my mentors, the Catholic chaplain there, told me often he had 28 years or something in prison work, he said. You know. working with this population is like going to another country on another planet because things happen here
that you could never predict.
So, having those guys be my interns and giving me information, not in a snitch way, just in a hey, Suze, you gotta know that. You know this guy's trying to be all sincere, and he's going back up on the tears and shooting junk, or this guy is used to be in a beef with this guy, or you know this kind of thing. Those kinds of things were very revelatory, and they helped me to get beyond the mental conjectures that my mind was coming up with and just breathe into the situation. My work is based on restorative justice and emotional literacy. and to just breathe into the intention that these men are here for the purpose of healing.
And I would always lead us in a grounding meditation that included the aspiration of May. Whatever is to be healed in these next few hours, arise and be supported by all the causes and conditions that we create. Very, very often, almost every single day, somebody would come forward and drop some resistance verbally and find support of the rest of the group. So it was a. It was a very give-and-take.
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Vita: It seems like what you were saying earlier about the causes, all the causes and conditions tie in really well with the dependent arising teaching.
Susan: Yep, absolutely.
Vita: Yeah, we were doing Zoom calls during Covid in a South Carolina prison and I, and it was really difficult because of the sound. It was mostly the sound that was the challenge. They're all in this noisy place,, you know. So we bought them a microphone and everything. But I don't know where we're going to go with this at one point because of the technology challenge. And I said, I'm just going to talk about dependent origination today. and the co-facilitator who was with me said, “Oh, my you can't talk about that. It's too advanced!”. So I just explained it simply. And after I spoke, I remember this one guy who said.
“Man, if I had been told that when I was a teenager, I wouldn't even be sitting here.”
Susan: You know, it's so true. And in the parole board hearings What is so important for people to get released is to realize the difference between blame and causative factors. And causative factor to me is parole board language, but it's directly related to dependent arising and causes and conditions. So, when one realizes the causative factors of the choices that that led to the kind of choices they made. It allows for the finger that wants to point out to somebody to blame, be it mom. Who was, you know, using crack and prostituting herself or her father, who was never there?
It allows that finger to move towards oneself, and to do the self-inquiry that is so important to show to the parole board commissioners that the person under the person in the hearing has developed insight into why they made those choices and why isn't about who it's about. Why.
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Vita: So, what do you think? The importance of inner work is as a facilitator, I mean, of course, meditating. But what other types of inner work should people engage in? If they're going to go into this world, you're talking about.
Susan Shannon: It is so important. It is so important to find where you're where the sparks fly in your spiritual practice. If you're going to go into prison because the people in the prison have usually hit a bottom that most of us free people, so-called free people, have not hit. and their motivation is so motivated
to make amends to their victims, to get out of prison and positively serve their community, to be reunited with family, etc. Etc. It's so easy for volunteers to get infatuated with what they witness
in terms of the transformation and the deep application that inmates put towards this transformative work, and that infatuation can be very heady. It can be very dizzying and addicting, and, in fact, I even heard people say, oh, I got to go in on Sunday night and get my fix you know this kind of thing.
I remember saying this at a retreat for volunteers. One time, I spoke about the importance of doing your work, and this one man who had just been brought on as a facilitator looked at me and went, "What do you mean?" And I looked at him kind of quizzically, and he goes. “I just go in. And I love watching the guys do what they do.” And I was aghast. You know that he even made it through the screening process of becoming a facilitator because people know the incarcerated population, generally speaking, are very savvy. They know who's real and who's not. They know who has gravitas, regardless of your color or your age. And so it's so important that we do our work related to our spiritual practice. But I would say for myself, just to be revealing. Here, I worked in a men's prison. It was really important for me to look at my projections my and transference, and the positive transference that I received, and positive projection. And to question continually where was my need for approval in this? Where was my need for attention?
And all this? Where was my need, you know? Luckily, I had a background of working with monks, so I felt pretty confident in being able to present myself in an uncharged non-sexual way. And I dressed, you know; accordingly, nothing ever revealing or anything like that. But still, I saw volunteers fall by the wayside because of their They had forgotten their work. They had gotten involved with interpersonal drama that had to do with their favoring one inmate over the next, or their need for approval, or they had become blind to where they worked. That, you know, the prisons are. I always used still say prisons are a place of
where impermanence lives in mercury retrograde trains and it's also a place where both it's the land of both, and it's the land of seeing people show up in your groups with their best faces on and thinking that that's all there is to the picture, and being impervious to the depth of trauma that is actually in the room. When you sit in a group of inmates, the depth of trauma. So, not only is doing your own work on an interpersonal level important, spiritual level important. It's also important to employ really really, really good, energetic protection that allows you to continue to go in and do your good work? Without taking on the negativity of the environment. I'll just not kind of cap it at that. But that could be a whole hour. Conversation.
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Vita: And also not to go in as thinking that we're going to rescue people and save them.
Susan: Yeah, exactly.
Oh, man, you know my work now is in tribute to what I learned from the incarcerated population because they gave me so much. So I learned, and they'd always come up and say, Oh, Susan. you are such an angel to us! You are blah blah, and I would receive it because it's important to receive. But I would let them know that this is like two pedals on the bike you guys are giving me in terms of recognizing the human condition, recognizing the truth of suffering, and recognizing the truth of interconnection.
You know, because we did create a culture of awakening there at San Quentin before Covid and it involved a lot of people's really good intentions and high-quality skill sets.
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Vita: Wow! Beautiful. So, what tips would you give? Somebody who's listening to this thinks, oh, I really, that sounds interesting. I'd like to go there like you said, “Oh, prison ministry! That sounds interesting.”
Susan: Yeah, yeah, I get this question a lot. I also teach prison ministry to chaplains. And they get very inspired. And they want to, you know, do this this or that? Well, one thing to know is that post covid
Many institutions changed their policies, having to do with volunteers going in in person. I think institutions again, generally speaking, saw a great opportunity like. Finally, we can shut down our volunteers.
You know. Because volunteers, no matter good or bad, or what, or you know, whatever they do take staff time, and so the whole movement of mail scanning and tablets has got some good in it, but it also has decreased the human contact. So there's not as many opportunities. It was a golden age for me to go in and have the buy-in of all the staff and the chaplains to let me do the work I was doing. So the one thing is that go identify where you might want to go in, identify the community partners, person, and community relations. CRM, usually community relations manager, I guess, or something like that, and ask that person what, if any, programs exist. And know that if you're if the closest prison to you is 3 hours away. You might well spend: 4 out of 7 visits, going to the prison and then being turned away because of some silly thing.
: and the other thing is to look into county, jails, and county jails. They, I don't think again, generally speaking, have shut down the volunteer possibilities as much as prisons have, and from there, if I would look into reentry programs.
And from there this is a favorite thing of mine to tell people if you want to do prison work, but it's not opening up for you. Go to the other end of the river work with kids work with kids in restorative justice and emotional literacy. Look into groups like youth. What is it? Youth. youth, promoting justice used to be the Marin County restorative justice, Youth Court. See if you can replicate a program like a restorative justice Youth court in your community because working with kids and letting them know they're part of the bigger, bigger community. and letting them know what restorative justice is, and it can prevent the can stop, or at least halt the school to prison. Pipeline.
A good program to start with. If you have gotten your foot in the door is Houses of Healing, which I love, I facilitated in for 9 years, and they provide a lot of material for new facilitators as well. So those are some of my. you know. Another thing that's important for all of us, I think, is to feel the call to serve and where it lives in you and analyze why that call is. why are you called to serve the incarcerated? Why are you called to serve the unhomed and look into that? Do your own work around that and know that there are some places that no matter the call. no matter how resourced you are, it might not be your place to serve.
You know, like as a chaplain, I love; I mean, I hate to use the words love and death row in the same sentence, but I felt very blessed to go into Death row. I could never be a chaplain in a Nicu, for example.
You know an infant care facility in the hospital. I wouldn't want to do that job, and yet I have people all the time saying I don't know how you did it going in in a bulletproof vest, teaching Dharma. Well, that was
easy for me to say yes to. So what is, you know? Really? Look at the call. The world needs so much help right now.
Vita: There's still work to a lot of work to be done there in this realm. Yeah, yep.
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Vita: Thank you so much for doing everything that you do. It's inspiring. It's been great talking with you, Susan. Thank you so much.
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