Authors: Damien Echols
Kathy, Grove, and Burk, along with the assistance of a fourth California angel named Lisa have donated their time and energy to maintaining a tremendous Web site on which the general public can now read every scrap of information
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that exists about the case. Seeing that justice is done has become the focus of their existence, but they also do what they can to make my life a little easier. They encourage people to write, just so I know I’ve not been forgotten. Another friend, Jené, maintains a “wish list” of books on the site, which hundreds of people have sent to me. Things have come a long way since the trial. I no longer feel like the most reviled creature on earth. Some days I can now make myself believe that the entire world doesn’t view me as a stain on the underwear of society. When the filmmakers released a second documentary things picked up even more. My record so far has been receiving 188 letters in a single day. Once you know what it means to be hated the way I have been, it teaches you to appreciate those tokens of love even more.
XXXII
I am a Sagittarius, a fire sign. Sagittarians are known for their need to keep moving, exploring, learning. Much like fire, it must be fed or it will die. What it must be fed is a constant stream of new experiences. There aren’t many journeys to be undertaken when locked in a cage. Outward motion comes to a complete standstill. You have two choices: turn inwards and start your journey there, or go insane.
One of the first things that both Ju San/Frankie and Gene told me was that you must turn your cell into a school and monastery. You will spend twenty-three hours a day in that cell, all alone. Most people can’t take being forced to come face to face with themselves, so they become loud and mean, like baboons looking for a shiny object to distract themselves. The number one distraction is television. Most people in prison grow fat and out of shape as they spend endless hours in front of the T.V. They’ll watch football, basketball, baseball, soap operas, the Jerry Springer show, Judge Judy, and anything else that crosses the screen. They watch it from the moment they get up in the morning until the moment they go back to bed. If I didn’t want to become a brain dead, shuffling, obese Neanderthal, then I had to nip it in the bud and not allow myself to fall into the pattern.
I moved from one area of study to another. In addition to the Theosophy texts from gene and the Buddhists texts from Ju San, I began practicing a kind of Christian Mysticism called
A Course in Miracles.
I was introduced to this school of thought by a gentleman named Mike.
I never could figure out if the guy was a genius or a psychopath. He wasn’t actually on death row, but he was what is known as a “porter.” He was doing a life without parole sentence, and his job was to keep death row clean. Sweep, mop, wash windows, scrub the showers, dust, etc. Those were his jobs. I awoke one morning at two AM because of a scritch-scritch-scritching noise. Getting up to see what it was, I saw Mike on his hands and knees scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush. When I asked him exactly what in the hell he was doing, he explained that he no longer needed sleep so he figured he might as well use his time constructively. That was a typical Mike answer. He said only the ego needs 137
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sleep. He was also prone to have visions. He once told me he was shown that if he fasted for a week, he could reward himself with an ice cream (If someone sends you money, the prison has a small list of things you can buy. Ice cream is one of them). Just when you were positive he was insane he did something to stop you dead in your tracks with wonder.
A Course in Miracles
is a book of practices that takes you a year to complete if you follow each lesson. Its aim is to completely change the way your mind has been programmed to think since birth. You come to experience reality in an entirely different manner, in which anything is possible. It’s based on quantum physics, but uses biblical terminology. It’s become rather popular in recent years, and there are now study groups devoted to
A Course in Miracles
all over the country.
Mike hung out in front of my cell every day, sitting on a five-gallon bucket.
Our only topic of conversation was
A Course in Miracles
and how it related to
The
Holy Kabbalah
, a book of Jewish mysticism. The
Kabbalah
is what we dedicated our time to learning about after finishing
Miracles
. Mike was learning from a guy in general population who was a Kabbalist, then he came and explained things to me. I was amazed at how many students of various forms of mysticism you find in prison. They’re usually determined to make the most of their time and to not repeat the same mistakes. These are men starving for a kind of knowledge not given in the mundane world, ready to learn and pass on what they already know.
I continued my study alone after Mike was sent to another part of the prison.
Next I went on to learn about the philosophy and practice of an organization known as “The Golden Dawn.” This was a group of people who practiced meta-physical rites of passage to mark the different stages in the evolution of consciousness. It was all about the constant learning and growth process that everyone goes through, and how to speed it up. The great poet W.B. Yeats was one of the more well-known students of this school of thought. I had my nose in these books morning, noon, and night.
Many people donated money to a college fund that was set up for Jason and I, so I began taking courses from a local college here in Arkansas. At first, I was interested mostly in psychology, but mixed a few other things in, such a sociology and reading German, for good measure. Psychology seemed infinitely interesting to me, with all of its experiments and nature versus nurture debates. Perhaps that’s because of the environment in which I live. The vast majority of the death row population is either mentally ill or mentally retarded, and I’ve always thought it good to know as much as possible about the world that surrounds you.
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I later realized psychology was not my love at all—it was history. I’ve grown to love history more than any other subject, and have come to believe you can understand far more about the world through history than you can through psychology, especially if it’s military history. At first I delved into every aspect and every era of history, but gradually my scope narrowed as I began to realize what I was more drawn to.
My love is Italian history, specifically the cities of Florence and Venice, from the time period between 1400 and 1800. My role model is Cosimo di Medici, though I also like Lorenzo the Magnificent. What I love about that period in time is the social structure and all the intrigue that accompanied it. Among aristocratic circles life was like a chess game. You had to weigh your every word, as the conversation was filled with subtlety. Social success or failure could hinge on whom you were seen making eye contact with. Not to mention the decadent styles and fashions that were all the rage. No one was wearing baggy jeans and backwards baseball caps. These days no one makes an effort. Fashion and style are things I pay a great deal of attention to now, probably because I haven’t been able to put on real clothes in eleven years. Sometimes I think I’d give anything to be able to wear a suit and tie. That’s all I want to wear. I drool over Brooks Brother’s ads. When I watch the World news I pay as much attention to what tie Peter Jennings is wearing as I do to the top stories. Snappy dresser, that guy. You’d never catch him in jeans and tennis shoes.
When it comes to education and life lessons, the two things I’ve learned the most from are my wife and my Zen training. What wife is that, you ask? Well, first things first, eager reader. It’s easier to explain things one step at a time.
I’ve lost count of how many executions have taken place during my time here.
Somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, I believe. Some of those men I knew well and was close to. Others, I couldn’t stand the sight of. Still, I wasn’t happy to see any of them go the way they did. It’s a fate I’d wish on no one.
Many people rallied to Ju San’s cause, begging the state to spare his life, but in the end it did no good. He had committed such a heinous crime. Frankie Parker had been a brutal heroin addict who held a police station hostage. Over the years he had become Ju San—an ordained Rinzai Zen Buddhist priest with many friends and supporters. On the night of his execution, shortly after he was pro-nounced dead, his teacher and spiritual advisor was allowed to walk down death row and greet the inmates.
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I was watching the news coverage of Ju San’s death when someone stepped in front of my door. I turned to see a little old bald man in a black robe and sandals, clutching a strand of prayer beads. He had wild white eyebrows that were so out of control they looked like small horns. He practically had handlebar mustaches above his eyes. He seemed intense and concentrated as he introduced himself. A lot of Protestant preachers come through death row, but they all seemed to think themselves better than us. You could tell it by the way most of them didn’t even bother to shake hands. Kobutsu (that was his name) wasn’t like that at all. He made direct, unwavering eye contact and seemed to be genuinely pleased to be meeting me. It had been his personal mission to do everything he could to help Ju San, and was pretty torn up over the execution. Before he left he said I should feel free to write to him at any time. I took him up on that offer. That was quite a few years ago, though I still hear from him from time to time. He’s not doing so well health-wise these days.
He and I began corresponding, and I eventually made a formal request of him that he become my teacher. He accepted. Kobutsu is an incredibly odd character.
Imagine a Zen monk who chain smokes, tells jokes that could be described as pornographic, and always has an appreciative leer for the female anatomy—then you begin to see the paradox that is Kobutsu. Holy man, carnival barker, anar-chist, artist, friend, and asshole all rolled up in one robe. He is totally unpredict-able; you never know what outrageous bullshit would come from his mouth next.
I immediately took a shine to him.
He sent me books about the old Zen masters, different Buddhist practices, and small cards to make shrines out of. He retuned not long after Ju San’s execution to perform a Refuge ceremony for another death row inmate, and I was allowed to participate in the ceremony. Refuge is the Buddhist equivalent of baptism. It’s like declaring your intention to follow this path, so that the world witnesses it. It was a beautiful ceremony that stirred something in my heart. I was glad to have been a part of it.
I turned to Zen out of desperation. I had been through hell, traumatized, and sent to death row for a crime I did not commit. There’s a lot of anger that comes with experiences like that. In fact my anger and outrage were eating me alive.
Hatred was growing in my heart because of the way I was being treated on a daily basis.
In the movies it was always the other prisoners you had to watch out for. In real life it was the guards and the administration. They went out of their way to make my life harder and more stressful than it already was, as if being on death row in itself were not enough. They could take a man sent to prison for writing
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bad checks and torment him until he becomes a violent offender. I didn’t want these people to be able to change me, to touch me inside and turn me as rotten and stagnant as them. I turned to Zen for help.
Under Kobutsu’s tutelage I began sitting zazen mediation on a daily basis. At first it was agony to have to sit still and stare at the floor for fifteen minutes. Over time I became more accustomed to it, and managed to increase my sitting time to twenty minutes a day. I put away all reading material except for Zen texts and meditation manuals. I’d read nothing else for the next three years.
About six months after the other prisoner’s ceremony, Kobutsu returned to perform it for me. I can’t describe the magick this ritual held for me. It increased my determination to practice tenfold. I was walking on air, happy for weeks afterwards. I started every day with a smile on my face and not even the guards got to me. I think it was a little unsettling to them to strip search a man who smiles at you through the whole ordeal.
Kobutsu and I continued to correspond through letters and also talked on the phone. His conversations were a mixture of encouragement, instruction, nasty jokes, and bizarre tales of his latest adventures. I began to seriously contemplate the possibility that he may very well be insane, but you can’t argue with results.
Through constant daily practice, my life was definitely improving. I even constructed a small shrine of paper Buddhas in my cell to give me inspiration. I was now sitting zazen meditation for two hours a day and still pushing myself. I’d not yet had that elusive enlightenment experience that I’d heard so much about, and I desperately wanted it.
One year after I had taken Refuge, Kobutsu decided it was time for my Jukai ceremony. Jukai is lay ordination, where one begins to take vows. It’s also where you are renamed, to symbolize taking on a new life and shedding the old one.
Only the teacher decides when you are ready to receive Jukai.
My ceremony was going to be extra special, as Kobutsu himself would not be performing it. Instead it was performed by Shodo Harada-Xoshi, one of the greatest living Zen Masters on earth. He was the abbot of a beautiful temple in Japan, and flew to Arkansas for this occasion. I anticipated the event for weeks beforehand, so much that I had trouble sleeping at night. The morning of the big event I was up before dawn, shaving my head and preparing to meet the master.
All morning I jerked to attention and crane my neck to get a better look every time the door to our barracks opened, thinking perhaps my guests had arrived.
When they walked in just before lunch it created a stir among the inmates. A low buzz of conversation erupted, people asking each other “Who’s that? What’s going on?”