Bo Lozoff
Decades ago, while visiting a prison, Bo Lozoff had an epiphany. Through a series of remarkable events, Bo and his wife Sita embarked on a life-long journey of working with hundreds of prisons -- inspiring and encouraging prisoners and prison staff to recognize their depth as human beings and to behave accordingly -- writing many books, recording music albums, setting up the "Human Kindness Foundation", serving thousands of people and connecting with a deeper part of themselves through their work.
On Sunday April 9th, we'll have the incredible privilege of hosting Bo Lozoff for an afternoon of meditation, stories and inspiration! Everyone is invited. This event is hosted in our home and there is no cost to attend; please RSVP for more details (unfortunately, we can only accommodate the first 85 RSVP's).
'Eternally Grateful'
With no degree or credentials, Bo figured he'd try to get in by working as a guard at a new federal prison being built near the ashram. The assistant warden doing the interview, sensing that something was afoot, kept pressing him to explain why someone like him would want to work in corrections. Bo, realizing he had no chance at the guard job, leveled with him: "I looked into his eyes and told him that actually I was a 'Karma Yogi,' that my spiritual path was one of service to mankind, and I thought that being a prison guard would be a good opportunity for doing service."
Well, Bo not only got the job but "prison doors throughout the world suddenly flew open." Using his streetwise "spiritual common sense", Bo has worked with hundreds of thousands of prisoners in over 600 prisons. Due to his extended letter correspondence with the inmates, he started a newsletter that now has over 40,000 subscribers. He compiled a lot of those letters in a best-selling book, "We're All Doing Time" that is now in its 13th publishing with a foreword by the Dalai Lama. That book is mailed out to prisons, to this day, without any cost.
About his own life-work, Bo says, "How many other people have something that really calls to them? I never dreamed I'd even be alive in my forties, let alone doing good to the extent that somebody says 'he changed my life.' I am eternally grateful. I don't feel like I'm doing that much."
Scores of prisoners would disagree.
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Bo has lectured and led workshops in hundreds of prisons, universities and spiritual centers since 1973. He focuses on what he calls the threefold "spiritual common sense" of all genuine wisdom traditions: To live simply, devote one's life to serving others, and take time for daily prayer and meditation. Bo teaches that, "The cause of all our personal problems and nearly all the problems of the world can be summed up in a single sentence: Human life is very deep, and our modern dominant lifestyle is not."