(Pasqueflowers blooming in the Hewlett Burn (CO); April, 2014)
Invocation for Naropa University Commencement
Today, we invoke the presence of Wisdom to rest upon us and energize us. Wisdom, You are a living
presence – the feminine Prajnaparamita in Tibetan Buddhism; Sophia in the
Western tradition, the spiritual core animating the study of all true “philosophia.”
You are the One who blesses us with your enlivening energy, your aha! insights,
your ability to bring us into the heart of Ultimate Reality. Wisdom, you are - as
the ancient Jewish Hellenistic Book of Wisdom reminds us – the One who “walks about,
looking for those who are worthy of you, graciously showing yourself to us as
we go, in every inspired thought of ours
coming to meet us.”
Today, we invoke the presence of love, which is itself an intellect that gives us knowledge of our
Source, of the Earth, and of one another.” As the Dalai Lama said during his Boulder
address in 1997, “Naropa should be able
to impart to the students the glory and power of the dimension of heart, a good
heart, and altruistic aspiration.” May all of us here at Naropa continue to realize
that love truly is the means by which
we perceive wisdom.
Today, we invoke the presence of joy, which, like a whirling dervish, spins into One the presence of
Wisdom and her seeker. May the heat of
our enthusiasm for learning dissolve us into that which we learn, enabling us
to become embodiments of Wisdom for a joy-starved world.
Today, we invoke the presence of awe and wonder. As poet Mary
Oliver says, each of us is “a bride married to amazement.” May we – through our studies - become the
means by which the Universe knows and feels wonder in Its own beauty and
majesty .
Today, let us invoke the
power and beauty of the Rocky Mountain
landscape that surrounds us – embodied in our magnificent Flatirons
descending right down into town – a landscape which has continually sustained us
all on our academic journeys, even when we weren’t paying attention to its presence.
And so, today, we invoke the spaciousness of mountain,
sky and prairie. May their vast open expanses
reside inside us like an echochamber,
allowing us to stand in wonder as each nugget of wisdom we’ve acquired during
our time here at Naropa arises -
mysteriously - like an echo of an unspoken Sacred Word, resounding in the vast inner
sky of awareness, reverberating like distant raven calls within the canyon present
at the very core of our being.
Today, we invoke the spirit of the alpenglow light that clothes our Boulder mountains in pink and
lavender before sunrise each clear morning – even though the sun is still
hidden below the eastern horizon. May we
too – in humility - lavish the light of appreciation on each other’s spiritual traditions, while our own tradition disappears
from the need for any recognition in return.
Today, we invoke the spirit of the high country lakes – glistening in turquoise, emerald and azure. May they teach us to view every being, along
with every individual, race and culture, as a shimmering sunlight diamond of
wisdom arising on the vast lake of being, all equally sacred, equally
beautiful, equally luminescent.
Today, we invoke the spirit of the rivers, flowing through our blood even now. Like them, may we
remain ever fluid and adaptable. May we
practice the watercourse way, the way of the Tao, and may we ourselves become
“rivers of living water.” In the words of waterfall lover John Muir – my boyhood hero – may we remember that “We all flow from one fountain Soul. All of us
are expressions of one Love. Our Source does not appear, and flow out,
only from narrow chinks and round bored wells here and there in favored races
and places, but It flows in grand undivided currents, shoreless and boundless
over creeds and forms and all kinds of civilizations and peoples and animals,
saturating and fountainizing all.”
Today, we invoke the wildness and spontaneity of the wind. Whenever we feel tempted to grasp ahold of
whatever we think we know, as though we could possess it and make it ours, may
we heed the words of the one who exclaimed: “The wind blows wherever it
pleases. You hear its sound, but you
cannot tell where it comes from, or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
Today, we invoke the rich silence of the wilderness, a silence filled with a listening
Presence that humbly mirrors back to us our own creative insights. May we too listen one another into being. May
we, like this listening Silence, always learn from one another, realizing that even
the very Source of our lives – the Reality dwelling within us - never fails to learn
and grow from the unique experiences of each one of us.
Today, we invoke the presence of the Web of Life, the vast Net of Indra. May we understand that each individual, race,
culture, religion, species and landscape is a jewel that is capable of
mirroring every other jewel tied within that vast net of being. May we
understand that we all – together - form a vast mountain meadow in which each
of us is a different wildflower species, all equally backlit by a single sacred
Sun. May we heed the words of Naropa’s
founder, Trungpa Rinpoche, who stated
at Naropa’s founding, “The basic point is that all of us, and all of the
various traditions, could work together, that we could relate together on the
basis of trust – which seems to be lacking enormously in the Western
educational system.”
Today, we invoke the spirit of the nighttime sky. When we cannot figure out how to solve the
differences that inevitably arise during our journey here on earth as finite
human beings, may we allow ourselves to be embraced by Mystery, by the intimate
darkness of our vast, starry, nighttime skies and landscapes. May the moonlight Presence which empties
Itself into these dark spaces soften our boundaries and begin to blend us all
together, as the 16th century Spanish mystic so aptly put it, into “that
Dark Night which alone is able to unite lover and Beloved.”
Today, we invoke the spirit of our recent forest fires. We recall how all of you
graduates have labored and suffered in the fires of learning, always with too
much to read, too much to write, too much to absorb during a mere 16-week
semester. And so, may the thousands of
acres of fire-blackened trees and meadows spread out to the west of us - vast
burns that are filled even now with thousands of purple crocus-like pasqueflowers
arising out of the ash [have you seen
them?] - teach us that each moment is both a death and a rebirth. May we understand that it is only through the
fire of challenge that the light of insight can spring forth.
Finally, speaking quite personally, I want to invoke the spirit of gratefulness that I feel toward
Naropa University. I want to speak as a
practitioner of Christian Contemplation, teaching in a Buddhist-inspired
university. I am aware that all of us live
in a culture that is saturated in Christian ideas and teachings. I want to
invoke the spirit of a book by a Christian professor of theology named Paul
Knitter. The title of the book is this:
“Without Buddha, I Could Not Be a
Christian.” Like Knitter, I have
become a deeper Christian through the mirror that Buddhist traditions –
especially the Vajrayana Buddhist tradition of Naropa - has held up before me, a mirror that has
enabled me to rediscover the neglected gems of my own tradition. Through this Buddhist mirror, I have come to
appreciate a profoundly self-emptying God, and a Christ whose self is a
transparent web composed of all other selves instead of being a single isolated
self. It is through the mirror of
Buddhist tradition that I have come to experience a vast and spacious awareness
that was spoken of by Christian mystics throughout the ages, but which has been
largely ignored. I am sure that my
colleagues of other faiths can add similar stories of gratefulness. Most
importantly, I have now come to understand that I – like many of us present
here today - am profoundly interspiritual, and that every spiritual tradition
interpenetrates every other spiritual tradition within the vast net of pratitya
samutpada – of inter-dependent co-origination, which in my tradition is called
“the Body of Christ.” For this awareness, I am extremely grateful.
So be it. Amen.
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