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[ Background Music ]
>> Stanford University.
[ Music ]
[ Bell Ringing ]
[ Silence ]
>> Please be seated.
[ Pause ]
>> Welcome to the 2010 Stanford University Baccalaureate.
I'm Scotty McLennan the Dean for Religious Life.
The baccalaureate has a long history
in American universities the same word that refers
to the college degree also means a religious service
for graduating students according
to Webster's Dictionary.
Here at Stanford in recent years,
a baccalaureate has been a multi-faith experience
celebrating the magnificent pluralism
that this university has come to embody.
Our two speakers today are
from different traditions within Islam.
We began as you heard with the Buddhists "Call to Prayer"
and soon we'll join in a Native American invocation.
You also hear readings from Christian,
Sufi and Jewish perspectives.
Talisman will sing a spiritual song in Zulu as well
as a classic hymn from the black church in America.
Taiko's drumming blessing has Japanese roots.
Menlo brass quintet's music is
from the Western European Cannon.
This should feel like a festival of and for the world.
The theme for this year's service is transformation both
of the social order and of individual consciousness.
We're deeply honored to have Eboo Patel here today
to deliver the baccalaureate address.
He's an Illinois native who went to Oxford on a road scholarship
where he earned a Doctorate in the Sociology of Religion.
He's no stranger to Stanford
where he has been the Heyns lecture
and received the Muslim-American contribution award.
Our student reflection will be given by Zaid Adhami who grew
up near Los Angeles, today he'll be receiving both his
undergraduate degree in philosophy and religious studies
and also his master's degree in Sociology.
Next year he'll be going to Duke to start his PhD in religion.
Congratulations to each of you who will graduate tomorrow.
Congratulations to your family members and friends.
And you should also note
that there are three former Stanford students listed
in your program notes who are no longer with us as you graduate.
One entered with the undergraduate class of 2010
but died-- but died before reaching this day.
And the other two were advance degree candidates
who died during the last year.
The flowers here on the dais are in their memory.
Life is so precious and in many ways so fragile.
In the midst of our celebration today,
we do well to honor Mahroof Azhar, Roanak Valmik Desai
and Alexander Tzu-Jay Tung as well
as another graduate student,
Barry Chai who was pursuing his master degree
in computer science and just died on Tuesday.
We give thanks for each of their unique contribution
to the world during their short but full lives
and please join me now in the moment of silence
so that we can reflect on their time
with us and on their passing.
[ Pause ]
>> Amen.
>> Please join me now in the invocation.
We know that in all creation,
only the human family has strayed from the sacred way.
We know that we are the ones who are divided and we are the ones
who must come back together to walk in the sacred way.
Sacred one teach us love compassion and honor
that we may heal the earth and heal each other.
[ Pause ]
>> Reading from the Christian tradition.
Patient, trust above all, trusts in a slow work of God,
we are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages,
we are impatient of being on the way to something unknown,
something new and yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through some stages
of instability and that it may take a very long time.
And so I think it is with you, your ideas mature gradually.
Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undo haste.
Don't try to force them
on as though you could be today what time that is to say grace
and circumstances acting on your own goodwill will make
you tomorrow.
Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming
within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you and accepts the anxiety
of feeling yourself and suspense and incomplete.
Here ends the reading.
[ Pause ]
>> Sufi reading.
I have learned so much by Hafiz of Shiraz.
I have learned so much from God
that I can no longer call myself a Christian, a Hindu,
a Muslim, a Buddhists, a Jew.
The truth had shared so much of itself with me
that I can no longer call myself a man, a woman,
an angle or even pure soul.
Love has befriend Hafiz so completely, it has turned to ash
and freed me of every concept
and image my mind has ever known.
[ Pause ]
[ Singing ]
[ Applause ]
>> About six months after I graduated from college,
a time when I was fully consumed by my career, God saw fit to put
on my path one Brother Wayne Teasdale.
I met him at the piano recital of a high school friend.
Brother Wayne a slight man with gray hair
and the kindest eyes I'd ever seen turned to me
and the reception and said, "Music is our gateway
into the inter-spiritual age."
This was not how I was a custom to conversations beginning.
"I can tell you, understand what I'm saying,"
Brother Wayne told me as he peered
and [inaudible] into my eyes.
I'm a professor of religion.
Why don't you come see me?
Brother Wayne lived in a small apartment
in the high park neighborhood of Chicago.
Books on catholic theology, pictures of Hindu deities,
CDs of Indie and classical music were strum about everywhere.
Soon after I arrived, Brother Wayne decided it was time
to meditate.
A ticking clock bothered him.
I heard him get up to put it away.
When we're done meditating,
I saw him retrieve it from the freezer.
"Time for a walk," he said.
We pulled out our sweaters
and headed south down Cornell Avenue.
We passed a dog.
Brother Wayne bent down and rubbed the dog's head.
The dog wagged its tail and barked.
"That is a very spiritual dog," Brother Wayne told me.
"I know most of the dogs on the neighborhood,"
he said as we continued walking.
We came to a man wearing a heavy winter coat
and carrying a black garbage with aluminum cans.
"Hey Wayne," he said.
"Ralph it's so nice to meet you again."
Ralph and Brother Wayne caught up.
Brother Wayne took a 20 out of his wallet and handed it over.
"Ralph is a very spiritual man," I was told.
"I know most of the homeless people
in the neighborhood," Brother Wayne said.
As we continued walking, Brother Wayne told me about his work
with International Interfaith Organizations.
His hope that more young people would get involved,
his aspiration that we would live into God's dream
of interfaith cooperation, then he turn to me and said,
"I think you can play a leading role
in the global interfaith youth movement.
I can tell you are a very spiritual person."
"Sure," I said.
I mean he had shown such good judgment with the dogs.
[Laughter] Brother Wayne is part of a tradition of people
who live at a slight angle to the universe, who see the world
through Kaleidoscope eyes.
Others in this tradition include historical figures
from Saint Francis of Assisi to Shams of Tabrizi,
literary characters from Zorba the Greek to Don Quijote.
And as I was thinking of what I might say to you this morning,
my mind wondered back through this lineage.
College graduates hear other people's hopes
for them seemingly ad infinitum.
Let me share in these important hopes.
Hope that you and your families take great pride in this day
that each of you has much wordly and material success
that you discover ways to serve
that both bring your heart great gladness
and meet the worlds great need, that you find
and keep true love, that you cultivate your inner capacities
of faith and reflexion.
But I wish for you something else, that you have
at least one person in your life who is a little bit crazy,
who thinks that wind mills could be giants
who cannot pass a flock of birds without stopping
to preach the gospel, someone willing to take on the big nurse
so that the loony bin can watch the world series.
Someone who insists on lighting out for the territory ahead
of the rest, 'cause he can't stand the Aunt Sally's
of civilization.
I wish for each of you your own Brother Wayne.
Someone who is Ani DiFranco says has eyes
like neon signs flashing open, open, open all the time.
At the very least, that Brother Wayne would add a new dimension
to your life.
He might even transform it completely, consider the story
of the great Muslim figure Rumi.
Rumi trained as a scholar of Islamic law,
was famous for his careful analysis and stern lectures.
One day, while Rumi was preparing
to teach his university class, a man in rags appeared pointed
to Rumi's scholarly books and asked, what are these?
"You wouldn't understand," said the scholars scornfully.
With the wave of his hands the man
in rags set the books of light.
Shocked, Rumi asked, "What was that?"
You wouldn't understand so the man
in rags turned and disappear.
In that flash of magic Rumi found a moment of clarity
in which she recognized a deeper purpose.
The man in rags would Shams of Tabrizi, he became Rumi's mentor
and the path of Muslim mysticism, the path of Sufism.
Their friendship inspired Rumi
to write poetry some have called the Koran
and the Persian tongue, poems loved all
over the world even till today.
Well, Brother Wayne never set me books
on fire although he did singe the curtains once while lighting
a meditation candle.
He did transform my life.
That transformation took placed most fully and most sharply
on this campus in June of 1998.
Brother Wayne sent me to an interfaith conference here
at Stanford 12 years ago and he said to me, "There are lots
of very spiritual people who are going to be at his conference.
They will be drafting documents.
They will be curating ceremonies.
They will be preparing for the next conference."
In that soft, subtle way,
Brother Wayne expressed his sense of urgency of why
in interfaith youth movement.
If religion-- If religious extremism continues
to be a movement of young people taking action
and interfaith cooperation continues to be a movement
of senior theologians drafting documents, we lose.
Something about being Brother Wayne's emissary,
something about this piece of earth
that has nurtured American dreamers from Steinbeck
to Google created in me a kyros.
I woke up one morning during that conference
and I realized something very clear and very simple.
The prophets of every tradition brought commands
of their adherence to serve.
Our world cries out for service.
Young people yearn to serve others.
Indeed services common ground
where diversity becomes community.
So why not a movement of young people who are Muslims and Jews,
who are Christians and Buddhists, who are Hindus
and humanist, who are Native Americans and Janes,
and Sikhs coming together to follow the commands
of their different prophets and teachers
in the common calling of serving others.
We called it the Interfaith Youth Core.
Brother Wayne whooped like a child when he heard.
"Don't be shy about that spiritual vision," he said.
>> And we weren't.
We spread it far and wide
and it was remarkable how people responded.
From South Africa to Spain, from India to the United Kingdom,
we were asked to come run interfaith youth
service projects.
The Dalai Lama heard about it and invited us
to Dharamsala for an audience.
Bill Clinton heard about it and asks us to come present
at the Clinton Global Initiative.
Queen Rania of Jordan heard about it and asks
as to start interfaith youth service exchanges
with the Middle East.
President Obama heard about it and has made it as part
of his administration.
The best young people
in the country Annan Venkat Krishkan [phonetic],
Ansef Karim [phonetic] and others have done
with on this campus where we can never have imagined.
Their work interfaith leadership would be a model
for undergraduates at Universities
for a decade or more to come.
Brother Wayne passed on a few years ago but I glimpsed him
when my 3-year-old son finds magic in the local park
and I know he is there when I passed a dog in the neighborhood
and the dog stops and sniffs and wags his tail.
It's a very spiritual dog and I feel him
when I iterate on craziness.
Here's my recent iteration, just as young people
in previous eras made civil rights a social norm,
made human rights a social norm,
made environmentalism a social norm, why can't young people
in this generation made interfaith cooperation a
social norm.
So you see Brother Wayne is not quite gone.
He's in my blood and my bones, in my dreams and my [inaudible].
He's coxing me to be a little bit crazier.
He's comforting me when things don't go quite right.
He's whispering in my ear that cosmic line
from Rumi start a huge foolish project like Noah.
Stanford graduating class of 2010,
I wish you for you nothing more
than your very own Brother Wayne.
[ Applause ]
[ Singing ]
[ Applause ]
[ Pause ]
[ Chanting ]
>> I just said in the Qur'an the most sacred of texts
in my religious tradition.
As the author swears by the human soul saying "And
by the soul and what has fashioned it
and how it is imbued with moral failings
as well as righteousness.
Indeed the one who purifies it has truly succeeded and the one
who corrupts it has truly failed."
So the [inaudible].
For me, these few simple verses defined the spiritual journey
of humanity not only for my own tradition
but for all religious tradition and all philosophies
for we all recognized the innate capacity that exist
within our soles for both tremendous goodness
as well as great wickedness.
Our journey in life therefore as moral beings is one
in which we must struggle tirelessly to cleanse
that inner self of its darkness
and to cultivate the profound beauty and goodness
that we harbor within us.
We talked a lot at Stanford
about public service and social change.
About our commitment to utilizing our skills, knowledge,
connections and positions to positively impact the world
into "make a difference".
>> Given the enormous opportunities and privileges
that we have all been blessed with.
Most of us, I hope most
of us recognize the amends obligation upon us to give back
to society and to the world and
yet while this commitment as noble.
My experiences at Stanford have made me question whether
or not we are actually nurturing
within our inner selves a true disposition towards service.
We talked about living a life of service as if that is easy,
as if it is simply a given
that that commitment will remain constant throughout our lives.
Despite the challenges and adversities
that we will inevitably face outside
of the comfortable Stanford bubble.
I know for myself however, that a commitment
to serving others has at times been illusive,
has at times been overcome by selfishness and greed, egotism,
self centeredness, and arrogance.
Too many times in my years here, I have promoted and worked
for social progress and equality and justice and upliftment,
yet at the same time have found that the inner dispositions
of my own soul do not reflect such goodness, that I, myself,
do not actually embody those principles
and ideals in my daily life.
Through this journey at Stanford,
I have increasingly come to appreciate that intellectualism
and rationality alone are not sufficient
for producing actual goodness.
We can theorize endless about public service
and social justice yet that alone does not lead
to a firm commitment to serving others.
Ultimately, we must develop
within our selves a moral disposition
for goodness and excellence.
We must purify our selves of ego centeredness
so that we may cultivate other centeredness
and we must recognize that this self development is not
at all an easy or a simple process, it is rather a long
and arduous struggle requiring cultivation
and training and self exertion.
Each of us therefore, must find our own unique way of nurturing
that inner self whether there is too a particular religious
tradition or any form of spirituality
in the broader sense of the word.
Regardless of the means, we adapt towards this end.
Whether we are called religious or not, as we graduate
from Stanford and move on in our lives,
it is absolutely imperative that each
of us affirms the profound significance of our moral
and spiritual lives and that we commit our selves whole
heartedly to the purification of our souls.
Class of 2010, I congratulate you all on your accomplishments
and your achievements and I pray for myself first and for all
of us that we find the strength and the conviction
to continue striving for goodness throughout our lives.
Thank you so much for your time
and may you have a blessed journey ahead of you.
[ Applause ]
>> Please rise for the benediction.
[ Pause ]
>> There is a divine dream which the prophets
and the rabbis have cherished and which fills our prayers
and permeates the acts of true piety.
>> It is a dream of a world rid of evil.
By the grace of God as well as by the efforts of people
who are dedicated to the task
of establishing the oneness of God in the world.
>> The eternal has not created the universe
so that we might have opportunities
to satisfy greed, envy, and ambition.
>> We should not spend our lives hunting
for trivial satisfactions while God is waiting
for our efforts and devotion.
>> We have not survived so that we might waste our years
in vulgar vanities.
[ Simultaneous Talking ]
>> God is waiting for us to redeem the world.
>> Please be seated.
[ Pause ]
[ Drum Beats ]
[ Applause ]
[ Trumpet Sound ]
>> For more, please visit us at Stanford.edu.