Who is Fleet Maull?

The Self Knowledge Symposium will be hosting Fleet Maull, a Buddhist priest who served time in federal prison for drug smuggling, and who went on to found the Prison Dharma Network and the National Prison Hospice Association. It's going to be unusual because we are showing a documentary film that some SKS students produced about Fleet, The Prison Sutras, and then do a videoconference with Fleet to answer questions from the audience. It's our first big experiment with distance learning, and I'm really excited about the possibilities it could open up for us.

So I was trying to tune up our verbiage for him for the marketing:

For years, Fleet Maull lived a double life. Half of the time, he was a Buddhist meditator, attending intensive retreats and seeking enlightenment. The other half of the year he was a drug smuggler, moving cocaine from South America into the U.S. When he was caught and sentenced to 25 years in federal prison, his spiritual practices of mindfulness and compassion was galvanized by witnessing the suffering of his fellow prisoners. Fleet went on to found the National Prison Hospice Association, to provide dignity to those dying alone in prison, and the Prison Dharma Network, to provide Buddhist mediation instruction and support to
inmates.

Come see The Prison Sutras, a documentary film produced by two SKS students about Fleet's life and work, and talk with Fleet Maull himself via videoconference after the showing.