[Offbeat Graduation Speech Gets Standing Ovation: 2012's
Baccalaureate speaker at the University of Pennsylvania was an
unconventional choice for an Ivy League school. To address their
newly-minted graduates, aspiring to dazzling careers, they picked a man
who has never in his adult life, applied for a job. A man who hasn't
worked for pay in nearly a decade, and whose self-stated mission is
simply "to bring smiles to the world and stillness to my heart". This
off-the-radar speaker launched his address with a startling piece of
advice. Following up with four key insights gleaned from a radical 1000
km walking pilgrimage through the villages of India. As he closed his
one-of-a-kind Graduation Day speech, the sea of cap and gowned students
rose to their feet for a standing ovation. What follows is the full
transcript of the talk by Nipun Mehta. --DailyGood Editors]
Thank
you to my distinguished friends, President Amy Gutmann, Provost Vincent
Price and Rev. Charles Howard for inviting me to share a few
reflections on this joyous occasion. It is an honor and privilege to
congratulate you -- UPenn’s class of 2012.
Right
now each one of you is sitting on the runway of life primed for
takeoff. You are some of the world's most gifted, elite, and driven
college graduates – and you are undeniably ready to fly. So what I’m
about to say next may sound a bit crazy. I want to urge you, not to
fly, but to – walk. Four years ago, you walked into this
marvelous laboratory of higher learning. Today, heads held high, you
walk to receive your diplomas. Tomorrow, you will walk into a world of
infinite possibilities.
But
walking, in our high-speed world, has unfortunately fallen out of favor.
The word “pedestrian” itself is used to describe something ordinary
and commonplace. Yet, walking with intention has deep roots.
Australia's aboriginal youth go on walkabouts as a rite of passage;
Native American tribes conduct vision quests in the wilderness; in
Europe, for centuries, people have walked the Camino de Santiago, which
spans the breadth of Spain. Such pilgrims place one foot firmly in
front of the other, to fall in step with the rhythms of the universe and
the cadence of their own hearts.
Back
in 2005, six months into our marriage, my wife and I decided to “step
it up” ourselves and go on a walking pilgrimage. At the peak of our
efforts with
ServiceSpace, we
wondered if we had the capacity to put aside our worldly success and
seek higher truths. Have you ever thought of something and then just
known that it
had to happen? It was one of those things. So we
sold all our major belongings, and bought a one-way ticket to India.
Our plan was to head to Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram, since he had always
been an inspiration to us, and then walk South. Between the two of us,
we budgeted a dollar a day, mostly for incidentals -- which meant that
for our survival we had to depend utterly on the kindness of strangers.
We ate whatever food was offered and slept wherever place was offered.
Now, I do have to say, such ideas come with a warning: do not try this at home, because your partner might not exactly welcome this kind of honeymoon. :-)
For
us, this walk was a pilgrimage -- and our goal was simply to be in a
space larger than our egos, and to allow that compassion to guide us in
unscripted acts of service along the way. Stripped entirely of our
comfort zone and accustomed identities, could we still “keep it real”?
That was our challenge.
We ended up
walking 1000 kilometers over three months. In that period, we
encountered the very best and the very worst of human nature -- not just
in others, but also within
ourselves.
Soon
after we ended the pilgrimage, my uncle casually popped the million
dollar question at the dinner table: "So, Nipun, what did you learn from
this walk?" I didn't know where to begin. But quite spontaneously, an
acronym --
W-A-L-K -- came to mind, which encompassed the key
lessons
we had learned, and continue to relearn, even to this day. As you
start the next phase of your journey, I want to share those nuggets with
the hope that it might illuminate your path in some small way too.
The W in WALK stands for Witness. When
you walk, you quite literally see more. Your field of vision is nearly
180 degrees, compared to 40 degrees when you’re traveling at 62 mph.
Higher speeds smudge our peripheral vision, whereas walking actually
broadens your canvas and dramatically shifts the objects of your
attention. For instance, on our pilgrimage, we would notice the sunrise
everyday, and how, at sunset, the birds would congregate for a little
party of their own. Instead of adding Facebook friends online, we were
actually making friends in person, often over a cup of hot “chai”.
Life around us
came alive in a new way.
A
walking pace is the speed of community. Where high speeds facilitate
separation, a slower pace gifts us an opportunity to commune.
As
we traversed rural India at the speed of a couple of miles per hour, it
became clear how much we could learn simply by bearing witness to the
villagers' way of life. Their entire mental model is different -- the
multiplication of wants is replaced by the basic fulfillment of human
needs.When you are no longer preoccupied with asking for more and more
stuff; then you just take what is given and give what is taken. Life is
simple again. A farmer explained it to us this way: "You cannot make
the clouds rain more, you cannot make the sun shine less. They are just
nature's gifts -- take it or leave it."
When the things around you are seen as gifts, they are no longer a means to an end; they are the means
and
the end. And thus, a cow-herder will tend to his animals with the
compassion of a father, a village woman will wait 3 hours for a delayed
bus without a trace of anger, a child will spend countless hours
fascinated by stars in the galaxy, and finding his place in the vast
cosmos.
So with today's modernized tools at your ready disposal, don’t
let yourself zoom obliviously from point A to point B on the highways
of life; try walking the backroads of the world, where you will witness a
profoundly inextricable connection with all living things.
The A in WALK stands for Accept.
When walking in this way, you place yourself in the palm of the
universe, and face its realities head on. We walked at the peak of
summer, in merciless temperatures hovering above 120 degrees. Sometimes
we were hungry, exhausted and even frustrated. Our bodies ached for
just that extra drink of water, a few more moments in the shade, or just
that little spark of human kindness. Many times we received that extra
bit, and our hearts would overflow with gratitude. But sometimes we
were abruptly refused, and we had to cultivate the capacity to accept
the gifts hidden in even the most challenging of moments.
I
remember one such day, when we approached a rest house along a barren
highway. As heavy trucks whizzed past, we saw a sign, announcing that
guests were hosted at no charge. “Ah, our lucky day,” we thought in
delight. I stepped inside eagerly. The man behind the desk looked up
and asked sharply, “Are you here to see the temple?” A simple yes from
my lips would have instantly granted us a full meal and a room for the
night. But it wouldn’t have been the truth. So instead, I said, “Well,
technically, no sir. We’re on a walking pilgrimage to become better
people. But we would be glad to visit the temple.” Rather abruptly, he
retorted: “Um, sorry, we can’t host you.” Something about his curt
arrogance triggered a slew of negative emotions. I wanted to make a
snide remark in return and slam the door on my way out. Instead, I held
my raging ego in check. In that state of physical and mental
exhaustion, it felt like a Herculean task-- but through the inner
turmoil a voice surfaced within, telling me to accept the reality of
this moment.
There was a quiet
metamorphosis in me. I humbly let go of my defenses, accepted my fate
that day, and turned to leave without a murmur. Perhaps the man behind
the counter sensed this shift in me, because he yelled out just then,
“So what exactly are you doing again?” After my brief explanation he
said, “Look, I can’t feed you or host you, because rules are rules. But
there are restrooms out in the back. You could sleep outside the male
restroom and your wife can sleep outside the female restroom.” Though
he was being kind, his offer felt like salt in my wounds. We had no
choice but to accept.
That
day we fasted and that night, we slept by the bathrooms. A small lie
could’ve bought us an upgrade, but that would’ve been no pilgrimage. As
I went to sleep with a wall separating me from my wife, I had this
beautiful, unbidden vision of a couple climbing to the top of a mountain
from two different sides. Midway through this difficult ascent, as the
man contemplated giving up, a small sparrow flew by with this counsel,
“Don’t quit now, friend. Your wife is eager to see you at the top.” He
kept climbing. A few days later, when the wife found herself on the
brink of quitting, the little sparrow showed up with the same message.
Step by step, their love sustained their journey all the way to the
mountaintop. Visited by the timely grace of this vision, I shed a few
grateful tears -- and this story became a touchstone not only in our
relationship, but many other noble friendships as well.
So
I encourage you to cultivate equanimity and accept whatever life tosses
into your laps -- when you do that, you will be blessed with the
insight of an inner transformation that is yours to keep for all of
time.
The L in WALK stands for Love.
The more we learned from nature, and built a kind of inner resilience
to external circumstances, the more we fell into our natural state --
which was to be loving. In our dominant paradigm, Hollywood has
insidiously co-opted the word, but the love I’m talking about here is
the kind of love that only knows one thing -- to give with no strings
attached. Purely. Selflessly.
Most
of us believe that to give, we first need to have something to give.
The trouble with that is, that when we are taking stock of what we
have, we almost always make accounting errors. Oscar Wilde once
quipped, “Now-a-days, people know the price of everything, but the value
of nothing.” We have forgotten how to value things without a price
tag. Hence, when we get to our most abundant gifts -- like attention,
insight, compassion -- we confuse their worth because they’re, well,
priceless.
On our walking
pilgrimage, we noticed that those who had the least were most readily
equipped to honor the priceless. In urban cities, the people we
encountered began with an unspoken wariness: “Why are you doing this?
What do you want from me?” In the
countryside,
on the other hand, villagers almost always met us with an open-hearted
curiosity launching straight in with: “Hey buddy, you don’t look local.
What’s your story?”
In the
villages, your worth wasn’t assessed by your business card, professional
network or your salary. That innate simplicity allowed them to love
life and cherish all its connections.
Extremely poor villagers, who couldn’t even afford their own meals, would often
borrow food
from their neighbors to feed us. When we tried to refuse, they would
simply explain: “To us, the guest is God. This is our offering to the
divine in you that connects us to each other.” Now, how could one
refuse that? Street
vendors
often gifted us vegetables; in a very touching moment, an armless
fruit-seller once insisted on giving us a slice of watermelon.
Everyone, no matter how old, would be overjoyed to give us directions,
even when they weren’t fully sure of them. :) And I still remember the
woman who generously gave us water when we were extremely thirsty --
only to later discover that she had to walk 10 kilometers at 4AM to get
that one bucket of water. These people knew how to give, not because
they had a lot, but because they knew how to love life. They didn’t
need any credit or assurance that you would ever return to pay them
back. Rather, they just trusted in the pay-it-forward circle of giving.
When you come alive in this way, you'll realize that true generosity doesn’t start when you have some thing
to give, but rather when there’s nothing in you that’s trying to take.
So I hope that you will make all your precious moments an expression of
loving life.
And lastly, the K in WALK stands for Know Thyself.
Sages
have long informed us that when we serve others unconditionally, we
shift from the me-to-the-we and connect more deeply with the other.
That matrix of inter-connections allows for a profound quality of
mental quietude. Like a still lake undisturbed by waves or ripples, we
are then able to see clearly into who we are and how we can live in deep
harmony with the environment around us.
When one foot walks, the other rests. Doing and being have to be in balance.
Our
rational mind wants to rightfully ensure progress, but our intuitive
mind also needs space for the emergent, unknown and unplanned to arise.
Doing is certainly important, but when we aren't aware of our internal
ecosystem, we get so vested in our plans and actions, that we don't
notice the buildup of mental residue. Over time, that unconscious
internal noise starts polluting our motivations, our ethics and our
spirit. And so, it is critical to still the mind. A melody, after all,
can only be created with the silence in between the notes.
As we walked -- witnessed, accepted, loved -- our vision of the world indeed grew clearer. That clarity, paradoxically enough,
blurred
our previous distinctions between me versus we, inner transformation
versus external impact, and selfishness versus selflessness. They were
inextricably connected. When a poor farmer gave me a tomato as a parting
gift, with tears rolling down his eyes, was I receiving or giving?
When sat for hours in silent meditation, was the benefit solely mine or
would it ripple out into the world? When I
lifted the haystack off an old man's head and carried it for a kilometer, was I serving him or serving myself?
Which
is to say, don't just go through life -- grow through life. It will be
easy and tempting for you to arrive at reflexive answers -- but make it a
point, instead, to acknowledge mystery and welcome rich
questions ... questions that nudge you towards a greater understanding of this world and your place in it.
That’s
W-A-L-K. And today, at this momentous milestone of your life, you came
in walking and you will go out walking. As you walk on into a world
that is increasingly aiming to move beyond the speed of thought, I hope
you will each remember the importance of traveling at the speed of
thoughtfulness. I hope that you will take time to witness our
magnificent interconnections. That you will accept the beautiful gifts
of life even when they aren’t pretty, that you will practice loving
selflessly and strive to know your deepest nature.
I
want to close with a story about my great grandfather. He was a man of
little wealth who still managed to give every single day of his life.
Each morning, he had a ritual of going on a walk -- and as he walked,
he diligently fed the ant hills along his path with small pinches of
wheat flour. Now that is an act of micro generosity so small that it
might seem utterly negligible, in the grand scheme of the universe. How
does it matter? It matters in that it changed him inside. And my
great grandfather's goodness shaped the worldview of my grandparents who
in turn influenced that of their children -- my parents. Today those
ants and the ant hills are gone, but my great grandpa’s spirit is very
much embedded in all my actions and their future ripples. It is
precisely these small, often invisible, acts of inner transformation
that mold the stuff of our being, and bend the arc of our shared
destiny.
On your walk, today and always, I wish you the eyes to see the anthills and the heart to feed them with joy.
May you be blessed. Change yourself -- change the world.
