He had an empty building and an unripened blueberry patch, and no idea how to make fuel out of used vegetable oil or sell it to a public still addicted to petroleum. He also had no money to operate it.

details For more information of Bo Lozoff's new CD and his concert to finance the biodiesel refinery, go to http://www.humankindness.org/

Not that this stopped Bo Lozoff. He wanted to create a meaningful company, and he had this gut feeling that Carolina Biodiesel Inc. was somehow going to work out. He had spent half of his life listening to his instincts, and they always took him somewhere good.

He grew from a deadened young recluse to a respected spiritual teacher admired by the Dalai Lama and the late Fred Rogers. He wrote books, recorded albums, protested wars, marched in the civil rights movement. He built houses, farmed and taught yoga and meditation to prisoners. For the past 30 years, he and his wife, Sita, have run ashrams where parolees can get job training and spiritual healing.

So, from his perspective, an empty 10,000-square-foot building only had promise. He spent the past year studying biodiesel texts, assembling a board of directors and filing incorporation papers and permits. Managers of the N.C. State Fair said they could pay him to pick up gallons of yellow grease left over from the annual frying of thousands of funnel cakes, candy bars and Twinkies.

Lozoff envisioned a refinery where the parolees working through his Orange County-based nonprofit, the Human Kindness Foundation, could learn to make a fuel that could reduce air pollution and the country's reliance on foreign oil. He considered the poetic irony of ex-cons turning spent oil into a valuable commodity. And he knew: It was a crazy idea, sure, but one that felt right.

All Carolina BioDiesel Inc. needs is $1 million. Lozoff has a plan: Sell copies of his folksy new CD, "Bo Lozoff and Friends: Whatever It Takes" and tickets to a May 15 concert at the ArtsCenter in Carrboro.

"I don't think of things as possible or impossible," says the 57-year-old Lozofff. "I like following my life. I'm not making anything happen. I believe I am just doing my part."

Reviving a soul

The yogi did not always feel this way. He used to ignore his life. He used to hate himself

He also felt disconnected from God, even though he went to synagogue with his parents. He became a loner in high school, then enrolled in college He was kicked out after he and his girlfriend took dozens of sleeping pills to kill themselves. A few months later, he fell asleep while driving and collided with a tractor-trailer. He almost died. He lost his spleen, fractured his skull and knees, ruined his back, and damaged his face badly enough to require reconstruction. He was 18.

He recuperated for 11 months in the hospital. His body was damaged -- and still is today -- but his soul started to heal. He examined himself thoroughly and brutally and realized he loathed himself He realized the best way to stop hating himself was to start thinking about the rest of the world.

Then, at 19, he met beautiful and adventurous Sita. He moved in after their first date and married her a few months later. They became activists, revolutionaries, outlaws, hippies and the crew of a small ship called "The Restless Wind." They had a son, Josh.

The family lived on a yoga ashram in North Carolina, where Bo and Sita practiced meditation and yoga and worked long hours on the farm. They visited Sita's brother, who was in prison for selling marijuana, and realized the prisoners lived the same austere life -- early mornings and hard work -- as those living voluntarily, and happily, on the ashram.

And so Bo Lozoff listened to his life and heard an idea. How about teaching meditation and yoga in federal prisons? Sure, it was a little crazy. Who would trust a thin young hippie to teach spiritual healing to a bunch of tough guys? But the warden at the federal prison in Butner and the bureaucrats in Washington did. Even better, so did the tough guys in the prisons.

Soon, he was teaching workshops and classes at prisons all over. In 1987, he and Sita started the Human Kindness Foundation, a nonprofit devoted to this work. Seven years later they opened Kindness House, on a 70-acre farm in rural Orange County where paroled prisoners -- about six a year -- could live, pray and train for jobs.

Scores of ex-convicts have lived there with the Lozoffs and Human Kindness staff in the last decade. Only two have not lasted. Lozoff considers the rest, who have quietly resumed life on the outside, successes.

"This is not an easy program, and we want to make it clear to anyone who is in prison and applying here that you need a degree of maturity to be here," he says'

The foundation now has an annual budget of nearly $300,000, assets of nearly $900,000, and several hundred donors.

One of them used to be Fred Rogers -- or Mister Rogers. He gave money every year and gave speeches naming Lozoff as one of his heroes. (Gandhi was also on the list). When Rogers died in February 2003, he left the Human Kindness Foundation $50,000.

Idea dawns

The yogi wanted to do something special witer Rogers' money In spring 2003, the opportunity came in northwest Orange County.

The owner of The Wizard's Cauldron, which makes organic foods for Whole Foods and the Atkins Diet, was selling his old building and moving to Yanceyville. John Troy offered to sell his old refinery to the Human Kindness Foundation for about $150,000 -- only what he owed the bank and about half the property's tax value. Lozoff accepted. With the building, the Human Kindness Foundation also got an organic blueberry patch that bloomed some of the most famously sweet fruit in the Triangle.

The idea to manufacture and sell biodiesel came from an acquaintance, who touted it as environmentally friendly and morally sound. Rudolf Diesel created the first diesel engines in the 1890s with the idea that they would run on many fuels, including peanut oil.

Today, biodiesel fuel is made primarily from pure vegetable oil or the spent "yellow grease" that remains after cooking, with a small amount of alcohol added. Engines do not need to be modified to use biodiesel. It can be poured directly into the fuel tank of any diesel vehicle. Government and private diesel vehicles in Wake, Durham and Orange counties already use it.

If the hype proves true, biodiesel could cut emissions and stop dependence on a dwindling supply of fossil fuels. It could be made from soybeans or rapeseed -- something that family farmers could grow. As a product in a factory run by yogis and ex-cons looking for purpose, it sounded perfect.

Lozoff read everything he could. He talked with experts, including a T-shirt designer in Burlington who brewed his own biodiesel. He flew to Palm Springs, Calif., for the National Biodiesel Conference. He recruited local business leaders, biofuel experts and environmentalists for his board.

He and his staff at the Human Kindness Foundation decided to call the new nonprofit Carolina Biodiesel Inc. They planned to have three permanent employees, including an Alabama native and a Kindness House graduate who lives in a trailer on the land. The rest of the work would come from recently paroled prisoners who wanted some job training. Lozoff wants to see as many as 15 trainees in the six- to 12-month program at the plant.

All that's left is the money -- $1 million. Lozoff calculates that at $10 a CD, he needs to sell 100,000 to make the goal.

Seeking a new life

Two weeks before the concert, the afternoon flashed more rain than sun on Orange County. The air was cool and humid and scented by fresh water. The broccoli had begun to sprout, and the root cellar was full of jars of sweet apple preservers.

Inside a small house built by people like him, Kevin Dessert sat on his bed and petted a calico named Trudy. Dessert, a tall and broad-shouldered Providence, R.I., native, spent more than 16 of his 43 years in prison for burglaries. He has lived at Kindness House for the past 14 months. Like everyone who lives here, he rises early every morning and prays and spends the rest of the day working on the farm. In the evenings, he calls his 13-year-old son, Ryan. He wants Ryan to be proud of him, and he feels himself changing in a good way.

"This place isn't run by Bo," he said, as Trudy purred into his pillow. "It's run by God."

Nearby, Bo and Sita Lozoff relaxed in their own cabin. The afternoon darkened, and rain lashed the windows, sparkling against the stained glass that Sita made.

Bo strummed his guitar and sang. Sita closed her eyes and listened.

By July, the blueberries behind the empty factory would ripen. By then, so could another of the yogi's crazy ideas.

Staff writer Joanna Kakissis can be reached at 829-4622 or mailto:jkakissi@newsobserver.com