• Barbara Rhodes, DSSN
  • Kwan Um Zen Teachings

• Zen Master Mark Houghton
  • Inka Speech

• K.C. Walpole, Senior Dharma Teacher
  • Dan Hauser's Execution - Reaction
  • Jijang Bosal
  • Jails and Barometers
  • A Mausoleum for the Secular State
  • Too Many Prisons
  • Working with Those at Risk
  • Group Practice
  • Politics of Capital Punishment
  • Prison and Jail Rape
  • Snapshots of an Execution
  • A Christmas Story
  • Theater of the Absurd
  • A Drive Into the Now
  • Get Tough on Crime
  • The Ecology of Cocaine
  • Schools, Drugs and Prisons
  • A Culture of Drugs
  • Being Educated About "Getting Tough on Crime"
  • Modern Volcanoes for Sacrificing Youth - Prisons
  • The Road from Prison to Felon Ghettos
  • Felons; an Economic Mainstay of Alachua County
  • Needless Loss of Life
  • Collateral Damage
  • Collateral Damage (Follow up)
  • Lending Integrity to an Abused System
  • Cronyism and Corruption
  • Building a Prison Empire
  • Why Should We Care About Recidivism? (Part II)
  • The Myth of the Responsible Recreational Drug User
  • A New Wave of Terrorism
  • Budgets are the Rosetta Stones of Political Doublespeak
  • Why is the violent crime rate up?
  • 20th Anniversary of Get Tough on Crime
  • Leaving Out the Children
  • Stop the Prison Pipeline
  • Exploitation and Subjugation
  • The Coming Police State
  • A New State Prison on 39th Avenue was DOA

About a year after the execution, a reporter from the Tampa Tribune asked me if I would put down some of my thoughts from the execution of Dan Hauser. This is what came out. Don't look for logic, factual corrections or the likes. This is what I felt and remember one year after the execution.

Jijang Bosal and Kwan Seum Bosal are among the more popular mantras used by the Kwan Um School of Zen.

Jijang Bosal - (Great Vow mantra) - I want to save all beings and also helps dead or suffering people.

Kwan Seum Bosal -(Great Love, Great Compassion mantra.) Takes away any kind of suffering.

Dan was not a stranger to either Kwan Seum Bosal or Jijang Bosal. He had worked with both for a long time.

Dan had been moved from one side of the deathwatch area to the final side that is just behind the execution chamber. I think there was a 10-minute warning for me to do what had to be done and then my time would be up. My last instructions to Dan were to "attain" Kwan Seum Bosal while he was on the gurney and then when he died to switch to "Jijang Bosal". He seemed to understand this very clearly.

At that time, I turned around to look over my shoulder and there was a sea of white shirts and shaved heads. I looked into the eyes and knew that I need not say anything. It was like a scene out of the movie "A Clockwork Orange". I had the feeling that everyone knew what was going to happen was wrong; they knew it and were going to do it anyway.

As I was leaving the deathwatch cells, I had the feeling I was climbing out of a submarine and moving into a submarine pen; not so sure my thinking was very clear. It seems that we went into the prison chapel to get my stuff and put in the truck. Then the prison chaplain took me to some kind of mess hall where I had to wait with 25 or more other people. Everyone was drinking coffee and making small talk; it seemed almost like a midmorning coffee break at an office.

Kwan Seum Bosal, Kwan Seum Bosal, Kwan Seum Bosal, Kwan Seum Bosal…

Somewhere along the line, someone had told me that the cause of death on the death certificate would read "legal homicide." The awesome power of the state and its elected officials started to sink in. The state could kill without retaliation. If they made a mistake it would be called a "regrettable error" or some kind of "bureaucratic mix-up", but in reality, no one would be held accountable.

Kwan Seum Bosal, Kwan Seum Bosal, Kwan Seum Bosal, Kwan Seum Bosal…

A vision appeared of President Clinton on TV lying to the American people, then Senator Ted Kennedy with a neck brace begging forgiveness for killing a campaign worker, and then the Governor of Arkansas (a convicted felon) signed the death warrant for Frankie Parker. For the life of me, I could not remember one elected member of our local, state, or national government that had the moral integrity to make the laws or carry out an execution.