MONCTON, N.B.
-- Sister Elaine MacInnes still remembers the haunting fear as she walked toward Bago Bantay prison in Quezon City, the Philippines.
There was reason to be afraid, but not because of the prisoners.
It was the early 1980s, and other visitors to the institution just north of Manila had simply vanished, victims of Ferdinand Marcos's regime of paranoia and terror.
But the Canadian missionary's work was more important than her own terror. Sister Elaine was there to see a political prisoner, Horacio (Boy) Morales, a former star of the Marcos government who had become an enemy of the state when he joined the underground.
Mr. Morales had heard about Sister Elaine -- a Catholic nun turned Zen Buddhist -- and sent word through the prison underground that he wanted to see her. He hoped that she would help him find peace and contentment -- not through God but through the silence of Zen meditation.
On the day of her visit, Sister Elaine had friends drive her to a nearby church. Inside, she prayed and lingered, so anyone watching would be unable to guess the real reason for her trip to the area. When she felt her path was safe, she left through a back door, walking the rest of the way.
The clandestine journey became her routine every Friday for four years, and gave Sister Elaine a new goal in life: to bring the serenity of Zen meditation practice to prisoners around the world.
She doesn't remember much about her first prison visit, although she recalls that the walls of the ramshackle institution oozed a green slime, the air inside was thick and dour, and its prisoners ripped and haunted by torture.
And she remembers that when she met Mr. Morales, his body trembled violently every five minutes. For 10 days straight, he had been relentlessly tortured -- hooked up to electrodes and repeatedly shocked.
But by practising Zen, she says, he was able to return to normal within just a few months. The new discipline freed his soul: "I don't get obstructed by prison walls any more," he wrote in his diary. "Through my prison windows, I can see oneness pervades the whole universe and I am in my perfect place, moving along the way."
After Mr. Morales's transformation, Sister Elaine took on 11 other Bago Bantay disciples, who made equally remarkable progress.
"The group itself, it was very angry," she said during a recent visit to Moncton, where she grew up. "Prisoners are always angry, you know. They couldn't hear anything -- they were inundated totally.
"Gradually, all that melted -- as it does in Zen. It's very therapeutic. They just became the human beings they were before."
Since then, Sister Elaine, 79, has focused her energies on making prisons a place of hope and healing through Zen. Her decades-long mission has brought her face to face with some of the world's most hardened criminals and earned her an Order of Canada and international acclaim -- including words of praise from Academy Award-winning actor Jeremy Irons. Ironically, however, in her native country, prison doors have been harder to open.
Sister Elaine returned to Canada after 40 years abroad with hopes of introducing prisoners in her homeland to the wonders of Zen. Planning her pitch, she thought there was no better opportunity than Dec. 4, 2001 -- the day she was scheduled to receive her Order of Canada.
She had planned to visit Correctional Service of Canada commissioner Lucie McClung after the ceremony in Ottawa, but Ms. McClung was too busy to see her. Instead, she was sent to the chaplain's office, where she was told that "there is no room for you in the prison service," she says.
The response was discouraging, but Sister Elaine, who now lives in Toronto, has found ways to enter the prison system through the back door. She has taught yoga instructors who are now teaching meditation in a handful of provincial and federal prisons in B.C. and has also managed to talk her way into individual institutions. About two years ago, she led workshops at two prisons in Nova Scotia, and this fall, hopes to make inroads in Ontario facilities.
"Always, always," she says, "a door opens."
Canada's prison service may not be officially welcoming her mission -- yet -- but her belief in the powers of Zen has left people clamouring for her advice. Her mailbag overflows with thank-you notes, requests for instruction and comments on her books. (Her latest title, Zen Contemplation: A Bridge of Living Water, a mix of Zen teachings and autobiography, was released in Canada in 2001 and has just been published in the United States under the title Zen Contemplation for Christians.)
Sister Elaine is a curiosity: a Zen master and Catholic nun. If there is contradiction in that, she doesn't see it. Instead, she sees the two as complementary. Every day, she prays and every day she sits in "silence" -- deep Zen meditation.
"I still believe in vocal prayer and mental prayer," she says, "but I was very, very much drawn to silent prayer and I found that in Buddhism.
"The silence I am talking about is the silence of the body and silence of the mind -- no thinking, no feeling, no remembering, no imagination."
She confesses that she has always been something other than a typical nun and she expected trouble from the church when she first began seeking solace in Buddhist meditation. But the trouble, she says, has never materialized.
"People came to me -- well-educated priests, even bishops, and sisters and lay people -- who understood that this was something that was beyond religion. It fit religion, but had to do with the spiritual. Spiritual is the goal of all religions, no matter what."
It was a spiritual quest of sorts that led Elaine Rita MacInnes to a convent outside Ottawa in 1953. She was 29 -- old, relatively speaking, to be signing up for a life of devotion to God. But she wanted something that would give meaning to her life.
She grew up in Moncton immersed in the world of music. Her mother had two music degrees, and all four children in the family were expected to practise and appreciate. Elaine took up the violin, studied music at Mount Allison University in nearby Sackville, N.B., then moved to New York and the famed Juilliard School of Music.
But there was something simmering inside her -- an "inner angst" that left her unfulfilled.
"I didn't particularly want to become a nun, but I think for a Catholic at that time, in the late '40s and early '50s, to say you wanted to do something really worthwhile in life was to become religious," she says. "I loved to travel, so it was going to be a missionary-religious. I didn't doubt that there was something waiting for me in that."
She entered Our Lady's Missionaries convent in Alexandria, about 100 kilometres east of Ottawa, on Dec. 7, 1953. She was out of her element though. The stories of the saints bored her. Then someone handed her the tales of Saint Francis Xavier.
She was entranced by the writing of the lively Jesuit missionary's adventures in the Orient. His accounts of Buddhist monks in the mountains of Japan drew her in, particularly his story about reaching the peaks of Mount Hiei to meet with the monks and being refused an audience. She vowed that if the saint got her there, she would make the trek for him. In 1961, a week after receiving final vows, she was handed her first overseas assignment: Japan.
For the next two years, as she walked to her daily language classes in Kyoto, she looked up at the mountain and thought of her vow. When a friend asked one day if she would like to climb Mount Hiei, her quest was under way. After walking up the mountain clad in the traditional long habit, they reached a spectacular temple, where she met a monk named Horisawa Somon. After introductions and some green tea, the monk asked her how she prayed.
She said what she did with her body during prayer didn't matter. He said it did. Her lessons in Zen had begun.
At first, it was a cultural experience that offered a better understanding of the Japanese people. But within Zen, Sister Elaine felt a wondrous peace, love and contentment. She eagerly studied the ancient art of meditation, and for a time lived with Buddhist nuns, rising each day by 3 a.m. for chanting and meditation. At least 10 hours of the day were devoted to meditation -- or "sitting," as it is called in Zen.
After meals and chores, there were three hours left for sleep.
After 15 years in Japan, she was transferred to the Philippines, where she continued practising. By 1980, she was made a Zen roshi, or master -- one of only two Roman Catholics to be given the distinction at the time, and the first Canadian.
In 1993, she became the director of the Prison Phoenix Trust in England. Under her leadership, the organization trained and recruited yoga teachers to introduce relaxation and meditation techniques in nearly 90 prisons.
Sandy Chubb, who assumed the position after Sister Elaine retired in 1999, calls her predecessor an inspiration. "She is not a young woman any longer, but because of this knowledge that she has -- this spiritual depth, this absolute authority of spiritual experience -- she absolutely will not waste one second of her life if she can awaken a person to what is inside them. It is wonderful."
During her six years with the British organization, Sister Elaine became friends with Mr. Irons, a patron of Prison Phoenix Trust and a student in one of her Zen classes. When he learned that she was being given one of this country's highest honours, he told a Toronto newspaper that a better way for Canada to show its appreciation would be to open its prisons to her.
Ask why her approach is so helpful to the incarcerated, and Sister Elaine gives an answer that is a little Zen-like itself: "Why, I have no idea," she says. "All I know is from personal experience, it does. . . . Some of our garbage simply melts and you don't have to go to a psychiatrist at all for some of this.
"It absolutely melts."
How to escape your own cell
The following introduction to shikantaza ("mindfulness meditation" in Zen Buddhism), written by Sister Elaine MacInnes, is excerpted from the Web site http://www.freeingspirit.com.
When to meditate: The best time for sitting is early in the day, after yoga practice. Beginners start with about 10 minutes and then gradually increase a few minutes each day until the maximum 25 minutes is reached.
Needs: Loose baggy clothing (sorry, no tight jeans), the yoga mat or folded blanket (or just use your bed mattress), and a cushion (not too soft).
Body position: There are several positions that are good for meditation, but if this is the first time . . . use what we call the Burmese position.
Sit on the front half of the cushion with your legs out in front. Bend your knees and allow your legs to lie parallel. Keep your back straight, with the top of your head pointed to the ceiling, chest bone held high, and shoulders dropped as low as possible. Keep your hands open, resting wrists on thighs, and your left hand placed in your right with your middle knuckles touching. Allow your thumb tips to meet and pull them towards your body to form an oval. Keep your mouth closed, and don't clench your teeth. Rest your tongue behind your upper teeth. . . . Lower your eyes to a spot about one metre in front of your nose.
Breathing: Breathe naturally through your nose, watch both inhalations and exhalations. Count each in-breath and each out-breath up to 10. The first in-breath is one, the first out-breath is two, the second in-breath is three, and so on. Once you have reached 10, go back to one . . .
Gradually, you will realize you are one with your breathing, and that is your goal. Just sit and be the breathing.
To "be the breath" is the goal of sitting, but since it is so subtle, it is very difficult to maintain. Even long-time experienced sitters need to return to the counting now and then. Eventually as you become more adept, instead of counting to 10, we can reduce the number to three, exhalations only.
And then the day will come when you can dispense altogether with counting, and just sit being your breath.
Try an eight-week program of meditation like this:
Weeks 1 and 2: Count each in-breath and each out-breath as above.
Weeks 3 and 4: Just count the in-breaths and watch the out-breaths.
Weeks 5 and 6: Watch the in-breaths and count the out-breaths up to 10.
Weeks 7 and 8: Don't count. Become one with each in-breath and out-breath. This is difficult, but give it a try.
David Stonehouse is a freelance writer based in New Brunswick.
