President Nicolas, Dean Bernazzani, faculty members, religious directors,
graduating students, families, friends,
and trustees. It's a great honor for me to be speaking just now. In the next few minutes, I want
to share with you just seven little steps that you could take to embark on the most heroic story.
That you can imagine for yourself. Step one, become the best listener in the world. There's
a conversation going on right now in the world and this is a scary conversation. War, terrorism,
eco-destruction, the extinction of species, poison in our food chain, and climate change.
That's part of the conversation. But there's also another story alongside with that.
Are we going to allow extinction the sixth extinction to take place? Or can we together
create a story for a more peaceful, just sustainable, healthier, and joyful world?
Because, as Mahatma Gandhi said, if we can't be the change that we want to see in the world,
then we'll end up being angry, active angry, peace advocates, peace activists who are angry,
and that's a contradiction in itself. So listen, listen to the zeitgeist of the moment.
Create a vision for yourself. Get together with people who want to share your vision,
bond with them, emotionally complement their strengths with your strengths. There's nothing
that cannot be accomplished when we share a vision together when we mind emotionally when
we compliment each other's strengths. And I know my son is sitting there in the
audience, and he's got a series called Religion of Sport. I'll tell you any sports team that
wins has those characteristics, shared vision, emotional bonding, and complementing strengths.
We have to do that together. It is your journey now that is going to help us go in that direction.
Even more important, be authentic. Have integrity, be responsible for your health and the health and
joy of others. Recognize
that the most valuable things, even though this is a great university and you're going to get a great
degree. But the most valuable things in life don't come with degrees. They don't come with
credentials. The most valuable things in life come with your ability to create relationships.
Your ability to nurture love. Your ability to have empathy and compassion and equanimity and
joy. Your desire to evolve in the direction of truth, goodness, harmony, beauty, peace,
and joy. Without that, it is a futile experience. Not, academia is great because it brings us
knowledge, but unless you self-reflect, unless you ask yourself, Who am I?
What do I want? What is my purpose? What am I grateful for? What kind of world do
I want to live in? What kind of world do I want future generations to live in? What am I doing
to manifest that dream? Does my daily activity in some
way reflect the dream that I have? If we don't ask ourselves those questions, then our life will not
have been fruitful. Reflecting back, no, you know, 50 years ago or more. I graduated,
and it seems to have gone by like a dream. The German philosopher Wittgenstein said
'We are asleep. Our Life is a dream.' We are asleep. Our life is a dream.
But once in a while, we wake up enough to know that we are dreaming. So what do we wake up to?
We wake up to the awareness in which all experience happens.
This is an experience right now. But, you know, the first part of this evening is already over.
It's a dream. Five minutes ago is already over. It's a dream.
A minute ago is already over by the time I get to the end of my sentence. The first part is over.
You can't grasp the bust, you can't grasp the future
and the present is over. As soon as it is born.
So we must wake up. We wake up to the presence in which this is all happening, experiences and time.
But the awareness in which experience happens is not in time. So I just like
you to try something right now as you're listening to me right now.
Just turn your attention to that, which is having this experience. Be aware of that
in which this experience is happening.
That awareness is the only real thing about you. Everything else arises and subsides
in every moment of time. Hold on to that. Hold on to the presence
in which experience happens and recognize that experiences in time. But you,
that which has the experience is not in time. The same awareness when you were a baby,
the same awareness when you were a teenager now, and because it's not in time, we are told by the
great luminaries of all time. The sages of the Upanishads that this awareness that you are
is not subject to birth or death. Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita says 'Water cannot wet it.
Wind cannot dry it, weapons cannot shatter it. Fire cannot burn it.' You are that.
All this is that. When that alone is. So without that self-awareness, life could go by as a dream.
But to wake up to it is the goal of our life. Waking up to presence, waking up to spirit,
waking up to our soul cannot be done through a system of thought, be it religion or philosophy
or theology or science, because reality is not a system of thought. Reality is that
which gives rise to thought, and as we trace thought back to its source,
we realize it is also the source of perception. It is also the source of the feeling. It is also
the source of everything that happens in our life. Our personal relationships, our social
interactions that which we call the world the universe it arises in subsides
in our own being. And that is the highest intelligence. Being is the highest intelligence,
feeling comes after that. Feeling that we call love, compassion, joy, equanimity, and then
thinking, but not dogmatic thinking, but living the questions, and if we live, the questions
and life moves us into the answers. And finally, the last is doing. We're living
in a society today where everybody is doing, doing, doing bundles of conditioned reflexes
and nerves, constantly being triggered by people and circumstances into predictable outcomes. We're
algorithms. We are biological robots because we have not woken up to that in which all
experience happens. So I shall close now. Wish you good luck. Godspeed. But don't forget,
don't forget that God's language is silence, and everything else
is poor translation. Thank you.