Just for a moment, you could even close your eyes if you want to, and this one is not a requirement, just for a moment; think about some challenge in your life at this point. Maybe you’re about to start a new job or a new school or a new program or everyone, you know, it‘s not just for graduates. I think our life, my life is a continuing series of new challenges, new things to do, and among them always something that seems perhaps a little difficult, and I’d like you to be aware of the fact that when the mind is alert and expansive, presentas it is in this moment, something that seems like a challenge seems workable. My mind is helpful. It says, well, this seems like a hard thing to do, but I can do it, I‘ll do that. Well, this is a difficult time in my life but it’ll pass. I‘ll do that. When my mind is buoyant, it can carry the challenges of my life in a more hopeful, inspired way.
One last meditation. I’d like you to think for a moment, in this expansive and I hope hopeful and joyful moment, about the world and its difficulties. It‘s a very complicated world. It needs a lot of help. In the moments when my mind is inspired, I think about the readings from Abraham Heschel, the readings from Father Merton, and I think yes, yes, that’s right, that is the potential of human beings. We can in fact arise above our personal, trivial needs. We can, as Dr. Heschel said, really make a new world. We can, as Father Merton said, really find that our basic nature is kindness and we can live in the awareness of that, and we can express that in the way we are with people. Imagine a world where we met everyone as sisters and brothers.
In moments when my mind is blank, like this one, I think to myself, I know that‘s true, yes, yes. And I can be a part of it. I’m inspired to make a difference. When I realize that every moment is the result of every single thing that‘s ever happened, I can even think about the world and its difficulties now and think about it in this way. I can say the world is full of difficulties but they didn’t get there by accident. The way the world is the result of all the actions of everybody up to now, but the actions of me and everybody else now will make a different world. Everything is always the lawful consequence of causes and conditions, and I and all of you are always for all of our life part of the causes and conditions of the emerging world. That‘s so exciting for me.
So here are the three practices that I know, that help my mind, picked itself up and remember, there’s a world out there and I could make a difference in it, and the difference making would make me happy.
The first practice is a practice of mindfulness. It‘s a practice of the Buddha, but it is not a parochial practice. It has no dogma. It’s the practice of paying attention, really paying attention. It‘s a fancy word for paying attention. The point of paying attention, which means in every moment of my life trying to make myself aware of how do I feel? What’s going on inside of me? What‘s going on outside, but what’s going on inside? And, from that, getting to see what‘s always true. The point of it is wisdom. This is the wisdom that we’re meant to see.
There are three wisdoms. The first is that everything passes. This moment, like every other moment, passes. It‘s a great piece of wisdom to have in mind when my life is difficult, it’s wonderful to remember that it won‘t be that way forever. I had a very difficult time come up in my family recently. Some incident happened and I was so upset about it, and one of my daughters came by me and said, ““Mom, get a grip, its 12 minutes out of a whole life.”That was a really important wisdom transmission. It’s just this time out of a whole life.
The second thing that‘s important to know is that things are the way they are because of so many causes. Some of the things I can change in my life, and some of them I can’t, but the wisest way I can respond to my life is by accommodating it and responding to it and not fighting and struggling with it, that are the things that I can change and I‘d like the courage to change them. There are things that I can’t change. I‘d like the serenity to accept them. I’d like to keep the wisdom to know the difference.
And the third thing, again, is the recognition that no one does anything alone, that is, all causes and conditions. It relieves me personally of worrying too much about praise or blame. If I do something good, I think to myself, well, great, this is my teacher‘s and my parents’ and my whole life speaking through me at this moment and acting through me, and I am very, very gratefulfor all of my teachers and all the people that make me who I am today, and I figure I share the merit with them. They‘re part of it. And when I don’t do so well, when I don‘t do as well as I wish, I can also distribute the dismay and say this is not my fault. All of my committee did not show up in exactly the right proportions today, but they will another time, so thank you, committee, and we carry on. I don’t have to carry the whole burden myself. I‘m part of the committee but I’m not the whole committee. That‘s a great piece of awareness. That’s what‘s supposed to happen from paying attention. That’s my first practice.
