In
his address to the 2016 class at DRBU, ServiceSpace founder Nipun Mehta makes a
case for the power of stilling the mind, deepening awareness and practicing what
he calls the 3 S's: small, service, and surrender. Framed in the context of a
rapidly changing world that privileges money, fame and power, his talk is
riddled with inspiring counter examples. Drawing on insights from revolutionary
Do-Nothing farmer Masanobu Fukuoka, Sufi parables, stories from the White House,
a bowing monk and more, Mehta's words serve as a clarion call back to humanity's
universal values. Below
is the transcript.
Thank
you, all. Thank you, President Susan Rounds, Bhikshuni Heng Chih and
distinguished faculty and board of DRBU. And Ven. Hsuan Hua, who had the
incredible foresight to create such an incubator of wisdom. Many years ago, I
remember being moved to tears when I first read the
journals of two Buddhist monks who undertook a bowing
pilgrimage -- three-steps, one-bow for 800 miles. With a mission to bring peace
in their hearts and the world, they were destined for a place called
City of Ten
Thousand Buddhas. Reading the descriptions of this city, it sounded like an
almost mythical realm. To be standing here today, and that too in the presence
of those very same bowing monks -- Rev. Heng Sure and Marty Verhoeven -- is just
a tremendous honor for me. Well, technically, Rev. Heng Sure isn't here but I'm
sure he's live-streaming from Australia, so we can count that.
And what a joy and
privilege it is to be able to congratulate you, the DRBU class of 2016, on your
commencement day. I know we try to practice detachment, but I think it's safe to
make an exception today and celebrate all of your hard work. Congratulations!
You made it to the finish line.
Over
these past years, all of you have been immersed in the study of virtue, in its
many forms, across many different traditions. From Plato to Confucius, Nagarjuna
to Darwin, Kant to Lao Tsu, your academic studies have spanned the Great Books
from the West and timeless classics from the East.
Today,
on your commencement day, I want to say the world needs you, students of virtue,
more than ever. Your formal education may have ended, but the lifelong work of
applying these insights is just about to start. Today's society has no shortage
of information for the head, but what we lack sorely is application of our hands
and cultivation of our hearts. What the world needs today is a
resurgence of virtue. In the glitz and glam of our endless desires, we have
forgotten the hands-head-heart embodiment of these values.
To
put it another way -- the world needs your help to make virtue go viral.
If
you look up news of the most promising innovations of the day, it won't be long
before you run into the latest buzzword: artificial intelligence. In 15 years,
our fastest computer will perform more operations per second than all the
neurons in all the brains of all the people who are alive in the world. Imagine
that! Already, we have driverless cars on the road, machines churning out
award-nominated novels, and robots managing entire hotels. Elon Musk, has
ominously described AI’s development as “summoning the demon” -- and he’s one of
the pioneers of the field! Esteemed scientist Stephen Hawking warns us that it
could “spell the end of the human race”. The problem, of course, isn't
inherently technology. It is that we have reduced the vast scope of human
ingenuity to what sells in the marketplace. We have taken the multidimensional
gift of human connection and reduced it to a bunch of self maximizing
transactions.
It’s
not that we have forgotten about our true values, but rather that we are
fumbling in the wrong places to find them.
There
is a famous Sufi story of Mulla Nasruddin, who lost his keys one night. As he’s
searching for them on the side of the road, a few neighbors join in to help.
After a fruitless search, one of them asks, “Mulla, where exactly did you drop
the keys?” “Oh, inside my house.” The shocked neighbor responds, “Then why in
the world are we searching for them under this lamp post?” Not missing a beat,
Mulla replies -- “Oh, because there’s more light here.”
That,
in a nutshell, is our problem too. Today’s society wants us to inherit the value
system of the marketplace. Fall in line, and we’ll be rewarded with fancy titles
on business cards, alphabets after our name, and dollars in our bank account.
The shiny carrots of money, fame and prestige may grab our attention but we’re
not going to find our keys under those glittering lights. Because that is not
where we lost them. The keys to deep-rooted and sustainable happiness -- have,
and always will lie, within ourselves.
In
our mad rush for artificial intelligence, we are forgetting about plain, human
intelligence -- let alone wisdom. We've forgotten that we are creatures capable
of generosity, compassion, forgiveness and a vast array of other virtues.
Outer
engineering won't get us there. It will have to be inner transformation.
Sure,
innovations like AI may augment our labor, and even our creative activity, but
no robot will ever be responsible for the resurgence of virtue. Making virtue go
viral is an unassailable human responsibility. It will always be an inside
job.
By
taking on these challenges, make no mistake, you will be swimming against
society’s current. But you’ll also be in flow with the deepest laws of
nature.
Now
I know commencement speakers are typically supposed to inspire you to make a
splash in the world, be
somebody, do something big and important. But this isn't a typical
university, and you’re not a typical class. So I’m trusting I won’t get in
trouble for this next piece of advice.
Learn
the art of doing nothing.
Doing
nothing gets a bad rap in our world today. We equate it with laziness and
inactivity. Think lounging on your couch with a bag of chips watching TV. That’s
not what we are talking about here, because that’s just physical inertia. The
question we need to start asking is -- what is our mind doing in each moment? If
it’s endlessly running on the hamster wheel of unconscious habits and thought
patterns, then doing something can be just as, if not more, useless as lazing on
your couch. In fact, this itch to act can often be detrimental to our individual
and collective well-being. Martin Luther King Jr. himself warned us about this
when he said, “Be careful not to mistake activity for progress.” We know the
truth of this from experience -- think about how we fill the void in
conversation with empty chatter, or how we fill a blank space in our schedule
with refreshing our Facebook feeds (150 times per day, researchers say!). I
remember a friend once asking me, "Nipun, information overload is killing me.
Can you suggest a meditation app?" My immediate thought was, "Yes, it's called
the off button." It’s hard to resist doing something.
If
doing something is like the lines in a drawing, doing nothing is white space on
the page. If doing something is like singing a remarkable song, doing nothing is
the silence in between the notes. If doing something is people holding hands in
a circle, then doing nothing is the empty space that is held in the center.
If
we do something without understanding what it means to do nothing, then what we
create is chaos, not harmony.
Perhaps
no one knew this better than a small-scale Japanese farmer named
Masanobu Fukuoka.
Around
the time of WW2, he was sitting under a tree one day when, in a flash, he had a
realization that everything produced by the mind is inherently false. Inspired,
he went around trying to share this insight with others -- and failed miserably.
No one understood. Instead of giving up, this young man did something that at
first glance seemed bizarre, but turned out to be brilliant. He turned his hand
to farming. In doing so, he was choosing to manifest his insights in a way that
everyday people could relate to.
So
Fukuoka took over his father's barren farm, and started experimenting with a
technique he called "Do Nothing farming". By this, he meant that he would strive
to minimize his physical footprint on the farm. "Let nature grow the plants," he
said. And his job was to get out of the way, as much as possible. In his farming
context, Fukuoka specified precisely what ‘do nothing’ meant -- no weeding, no
tilling, no fertilizers, and no pesticides. This didn’t mean he just sat around
all day. Far from it. He often joked that ‘doing nothing’ was really hard
work.
Getting
out of the way, figuring out the minimal intervention, is an extremely difficult
task. One has to first become aware of all the relationships in the ecosystem,
and then use that information alongside insight and intuition, to tune into the
perfect acupuncture points that can trigger massive ripple effects.
Ultimately,
the proof is in the pudding. For a farmer, this means yields must be high, and
the produce better be good. And for Fukuoka it surely was. People flew across
the world just to taste his apples. And no surprise, since his were no ordinary,
mono-cropped apples. In fact, Fukuoka's farm didn't look like a farm at all; it
looked more like a jungle, unorganized and wild. In “doing nothing”, Fukuoka was
simply holding space for all the complex parts of the ecosystem to connect
organically and find a natural equilibrium. In every bite of a Fukuoka apple,
what you were tasting wasn’t just the richness of that one apple, or even that
one apple tree, but the immense contributions of the entire ecosystem, that were
all invisibly connected below the surface.
I
personally didn't know about Fukuoka's example until much later in my journey,
but I found immediate parallels with the way in which ServiceSpace tended to the
“
social field”. In
place of plants and trees, we had people. In the place of the soil, we had our
minds. In place of fruits, what grew were acts of service.
While
we have applied the do-nothing principles in the work of
ServiceSpace, there is no reason why we
can't design our relationships, our technologies, our institutions, and our
communities -- and perhaps even our own enlightenment -- in this way. These
principles are timeless and universal, and create virtuous cycles wherever they
are found. In working this way, we've learned that an ecosystem is always
greater than the sum of its parts.
When
I
graduated from college, I didn't know I could opt-out
of all the typical do-something questions. I didn't know that when someone asks,
"What do you do?", it's okay to be undefined. I still don't know what to write
on that customs form where they have a fill-in-the-blank for profession. But
what I do know is that to the question of "How much are you worth?" it's okay to
include non-financial forms of capital -- like gratitude -- in your answer. To
the question of what is your ten year plan, it's okay to say I don't know. As
the Zen master Shunryu Suzuki once remarked, it is only when you don't know that
you are open to infinite possibilities. And remember, the value of your human
life will always be more than the sum of your resume.
Today,
as you navigate the nuances of your own journey, I want to leave you with three
S's of do-nothing design that have served as guides in my life.
SMALL
is the first S. Focusing on small
invites us to let go of outcomes and fully inhabit the present. When we orient
ourselves towards small acts and small effects, we learn to ride the ripple
effect.
Few
years ago, I remember my aunt telling me a story of an accident she was in, on
highway 101. The car spun around 180 degrees, slammed against the center
divider, her windshield was broken, and her 1 year old daughter in a car seat
was screaming. As she tried to gather herself, a gentleman in another car
stopped and came by her window: "M'aam are you okay?" "I've just called 911, but
it would be great if you could if you help find my glasses, so I can see more
clearly." Her glasses had flown and he did help her find them. In between, he
got a phone call -- "Honey, I can't talk right now," he said and continued
helping. Then he got another phone call, "Honey, I'll call you back." By this
time, the cops were on the way, and things had settled a bit. When he got a
third phone call, and he said, "Honey, I'll be there soon", my aunt said, "Looks
like you really need to be somewhere. Why don't you go ahead? We’ll be okay
now." And that man replies, "Well, it's my daughter's sixth birthday, and
they're waiting for me to cut the cake. But you know, m'aam, if that was my
daughter in the back, I'd hope that someone would stop to take care of you till
you're okay." He stayed till the cops came.
It
was a beautiful act, but if you were to ask my aunt, it's most powerful effect
wasn't on her or her daughter. It was on on someone who wasn't even on the scene
-- my uncle. My uncle can never, ever pass a stranded vehicle without thinking
of how a stranger stopped to help his family, once. And all those he helps will
help others, and the chain will continue.
Today's
dominant paradigm wires us to think big, control life, get noticed. But don't
weigh yourself down with thinking big. Small is beautiful, because small
connects. What you give up in the impact and scale of the action, you will gain
in awareness and understanding of interconnections. That awareness, combined
with skillfulness, will allow you to tap into the power of the ripple
effect.
In
ServiceSpace, we define this as a shift from leadership to
laddership. A good ladder supports others
in reaching greater heights of their potential. Boddhisattvas are perfect
ladders. They race to the bottom of the pyramid instead of the top, they focus
on the edges instead of the center. They work behind-the-scenes, not in the
spotlight. If a ladder does his job right, no one will know to thank them,
because it’s almost impossible, sometimes even for the ladders themselves, to
point to any single “special” thing that they’ve done. Their gift lies in being
completely natural. Their many, small, natural acts work in concert with a
greater emergence, and ripple out into incredible results. Results that are
always aligned on the side of virtue.
SERVICE
is the second S. With a heart of
service, we can activate dormant connections and regenerate the field.
It
is obvious that every act creates a relationship. But the quality of that
relationship is predicated on the kind of intention behind it. If we act in the
spirit of transaction or, worse, exploitation, that limits the scope of that
connection. The relationship eventually crashes or fizzles out. But when a small
act is selfless, it unleashes a regenerative effect that can build all the way
into eternity.
Last
year, I was asked to join President Obama’s advisory
council for addressing poverty and inequality. Quite
an honor, and I was happy to serve. At our first White House meeting, we did an
introductory circle around the question -- What gives you hope? Before I could
think up something smart to say, it was already my turn to speak. And this is
what spontaneously came to my mind, "Well, what gives me hope is love. What
gives me hope is reading the NY Times
story of how one person paid for coffee for the
person behind her in line, and 226 people followed suit. Two hundred and twenty
six people were voluntarily moved to pay it forward. What gives me hope is that
life unfailingly responds to the advances of love."
Gautama
Buddha's attendant, Ananda, once asked him, "On this very long path, it seems
like noble friends are half of the path." The Buddha replied: "No, Ananda, it is
not half the path. It is the full path." Not 60 percent, not three quarters, not
90 percent. One hundred percent. In the tiniest act of service, we build an
affinity -- and a field of these noble affinities, according to Buddha, is all
we really need.
In
today's networked world, you are all well aware of the quantity of connections
-- but remember also to keep track of the
quality of
connections. Researchers inform us that in a room full of just 50 people,
more than 100 million trillion unique connections are possible. A hundred
million trillion, with just 50 people. Typically, that potential is never
realized, because self-interest and agendas impose artificial constraints on the
field. Imagine holding a space of compassion for all the living beings in your
sphere of influence. Now imagine the potential of all living beings doing the
same for each other.
SURRENDER
is the third S. With small acts, we
plant seeds; with a heart of service, we cultivate the field. But before the
harvest is ready, there is one significant step: surrender.
In
2005, at what felt like the peak of our service work, my wife and I sold
everything we had and embarked on a
walking
pilgrimage in India. Our intention
was to cultivate renunciation. We arrived at the Gandhi Ashram, and walked South
-- ended up being for thousand kilometers. We would eat whatever food was
offered, sleep wherever place was offered. Now, this is India in the summer
months, sometimes with heat as high as 115 degrees. We might've just walked 30
miles the previous day, we might be hungry, we may not have slept in a
comfortable place. Maybe someone was mean to us. Gazillion things could be
wrong, but the thing that was the hardest was insecurity -- I could be eating
the most nourishing meal, given with deepest love, but my mind would be racing
ahead to security for tomorrow.
In
so many profound ways, that pilgrimage was about surrender. People often think
of surrender as a trust in "what goes around comes around." But feedback loops
of karma are far more nuanced. Simply because you do an act of kindness doesn't
mean you will be seeing an act of kindness the next day. The invitation is more
about surrendering to the flow of life. Do we have the equanimity to receive all
that life gives us -- the good, the bad, the ugly? Do we have the trust that any
personal pain or pleasure is simply an offset for the larger equilibrium? Do we
have a heart that is big enough to contain reward for someone else's toil and
the consequences of someone else's mistake? These aren't questions that have
answers. They are questions to be held with vigor, even in the most
uncomfortable moments of life. And in the wake of that kind of surrender, T. S.
Eliot's words come alive, “Wait, but wait without hope. Because hope could be
hope for the wrong thing.”
Our
modern society is great at creating vertical solutions. A fitness movement to
tackle obesity, a mindfulness movement to tackle stress, a green movement to
tackle environmental degradation. But amidst these vertical solutions, I hope
you will also bring to life the integrated power of emergence. A power that is
born of surrender. Of learning to serve and then waiting with equanimity and
trust. As we practice enough small acts of service, each resulting affinity
helps weave a resilient fabric. Stronger than a trampoline. No matter what the
setback, it is natural to bounce right back.
So,
as you chart a path of virtue in the world, I hope that the power of three S's
-- small, service and surrender -- stays with you.
I
want to close with a small story. When I was about your age, about to make a big
decision in my life, I remember running into
Rev. Heng Sure in the hallways of the Berkeley monastery.
We had a very casual and brief conversation, but he shared a line that has
stayed with me since.
He
said, "I have never regretted
choosing a path that is hardest on my ego."
I've
returned to that line many times, and today, I invite you, students of virtue,
to not just take the road less traveled, but take it one step further. Take the
road that is the least traveled, the road that is almost never taken, the road
that is hardest on the ego.
All
of you, the class of 2016, are bound to do great things in the world. Along the
way, may your small acts of good unleash an unending ripple effect. May your
heart of service be cradled in a cocoon of noble friendships. May your surrender
make you an instrument of a greater emergence. And above all, may each of you
build a field of virtue that will transform your life and light up our
world.
This
is a transcript of a commencement address delivered on May 27, 2016, at DRBU, a small private school dedicated to
liberal education in the broad Buddhist tradition -- a tradition characterized
by knowledge in the arts and sciences, self-cultivation, and the pursuit of
wisdom. Nipun
Mehta is the founder of ServiceSpace.org, a
nonprofit that works at the intersection of gift-economy, technology and
volunteerism. You can also view his other talks online.
