I’m gonna have to call hooey on the tobacco story. In US prisons at least, death row is not set up in such way that prisoners can trade things between their cells. It’s more secure. Besides, that the non-smoking meditation convict had a cigarette carton’s worth of loose tobacco laying around to pass a 128 page book to someone in another cell seems impossible. The guards were cool with this? Because they certainly would have seen it. Besides, not just passing the whole bindle of tobacco over seems like a dick move, since the meditator wasn’t going to use it. Was he torturing the guy, and making him beg for a smoke? Being on death row, had he tortured others, or did he just murder them?

It’s a clever story if you’re trying to sell something though.