TEXT FOR A MATRICULATION ADDRESS—
TO BE REPEATED AT COMMENCEMENT

When you graduate from a four-year program of liberal education, you will possess a wider range of significant knowledge gathered from many fields of academic inquiry, and clearer understanding of how those various disciplines comprehend their subject matter and their methodologies—most especially in your major field(s).
 
You will be more confident and disposed to continue pursuits of inquiry auto-didactically, employing those skills of study and research you have practiced as a collegian, and with an appetite for learning whetted by the challenges you have previously met.

Having now learned better how to learn, you will have developed an appetite for life-long learning that you’re prepared and eager to pursue, whether in conjunction with your work career or as fruitful leisure activity.

Your wider interest in and comprehension of the world should sharpen your concern for its well-being, for the thriving of its species and the viability of its ecosystems.  Your liberal education should have liberated you from self-centeredness and disposed you toward developing a wisdom that seeks to realize what is of greatest value for yourself and others—to discover it and to make it so in an ever more flourishing world.
 
In sum, a true liberal education leads to the flowering of self-actualization and to fruitful words and deeds that follow from one’s blossomed powers, along the way toward wisdom.

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SONNETEERING

The challenge of the sonnet is to fling
A five-beat line across the page and like
A spider hope it finds someplace to cling,
A daring high-wire strung from pike to pike.

You cannot know when you begin where you
Will go, what course you’ll take, what trail you’ll blaze
Or what elusive game you will pursue
While line by line meandering through this maze.

At some point, though, a clearing opens wide—
You see before you what it was you sought
And now have fewer courses to decide
Until your shapely sonnet’s fully wrought.

     There’s some mysterious imperative
     That brings a sonnet forth and lets it live.

 

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 MEDITATION II

     Pace, Sha-drai, Shalom, and Om bring peace,
     Letting the flurried mind slow down and cease,
     Slipping into a meditative trance
     Wherein, if fortunate, you’re blessed to glance
     At Essence and achieve beatitude,
     Most easily attained when not pursued.

 

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BLISS

      
     What is that Bliss that saints and sages seek,
     That rapturous and transcendental peak
     From which they view with cosmic clarity
     The holy essence of reality?

     Once long ago I caught a glimpse of it
     And labored since to find what’s requisite
     To apprehend such Bliss in its full glory,
     The hoped-for happy ending to our story.

     The best I’ve learned is that serenity,
     A poised and tranquil manner, is the key,
     A meditative rapture opening
     The soul to what sweet messengers may bring:

          A taste of honey from some occult comb
          Reminding me of our eternal home.

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TOO LATE SMART

 
“Too soon old, too late smart,” the saying goes.  We can do better.

We can learn to wise up sooner in the course of our lives.  The culture that cultivates our attitudes and our behaviors can be upgraded.  To be wise is to work to realize what is of highest value, bringing that into being, making it so.

Therefore, learning what is valuable and necessary to our optimal thriving is everyone’s proper pursuit—the “pursuit of happiness,” of the highest happiness we can achieve for all, for not only humans but the biosphere that sustains all life on Earth.

We can grow wise.

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THE GOAL

for Nicholas Maxwell

         Though we may aim at wisdom as our goal,      
         Proclaiming we are Homo sapiens,    
         It’s obvious we’ve less than full control    
         Of our misdeeds, with many sins to cleanse.

       How likely is it then we can grow wise
       Unless it’s patiently and one by one,
       For it takes time and care to realize
       What roads to follow and what ways to shun?

       To turn away from error and return
       To innocence in search of sanctity
       Means we must learn to patiently discern
       What serves the Earth and saves humanity.

            For what is wisdom but to realize
            What is of value to our enterprise?

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ON BEING WISE

               What does it mean, then, to be wise?
               It means always to realize
               In both the short and the long haul
               The happiest results for all.
 

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