The Buddha on Death Row: Notes of a Prison Chaplain

This book consists of 52 sketches—stories and lessons collected by the author over six years of work as a prison chaplain. Kyoung Li shares his understanding of prisoners’ psychology, which will be interesting to any person regardless of whether they’ve been to a traditional prison.

The author is the first Buddhist monk in a Dutch special regime prison… Every person has distorted and limiting ideas about themselves and their actions… The essence of each story, through the lens of the teachings “in the Kyoung-Li-yunggowsky way,” is that freedom manifests only in choosing one’s own dependence, including their “monstrous” ontogenetic etiology that shapes it… a mature person can prove themselves and become who they are only through the ability to show their personal will, make a choice about the form of life activity and worldview…