This Is Truth: A Cold January Night in Boston

Part 1

Opening & Gratitude

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Wakanyi. And Stephen, thank you, too, for your introduction and providing an opportunity for us to listen to Howard [Thurman] and the depth of his insights. I actually could never really explain what happened to me twenty-three years ago, literally almost to the day. It was in the middle of January on a cold winter night in Boston.

But listening to what Howard said, I now fully understand the depths of what happened to me on that day — the sound of the genuine. I had an opportunity to... Well, before I start, I also just wanted to say thank you to all of you for holding the space with me to listen to this story. I've, I've never shared this publicly before, and to do so here in this sacred space and this sacred gathering with all of you makes it so meaningful and special for me.

It resonates with me today, and I think it's gonna resonate with me for a long, long time to come, and I really, really appreciate that.

Part 2

The January Night

So on a Thursday night, mid-January of two thousand and one, I had read a story in The Globe about a young Tibetan Buddhist monk, twenty-nine years old. He had just moved to Massachusetts a few months earlier, and he was teaching at the First Parish Church in Concord. I had no experience with Buddhism.

I had never sat in front of a Tibetan Buddhist monk before. So I decided to drive over on a Thursday night just to be there and have the experience. I sat down in my chair. As I was listening to Lobsang Phuntsok, almost immediately as he was speaking, not only did his words have meaning, but I could tell this was a human being that embodied everything he was saying.

He was living what he was saying, and the more he spoke, the more his words resonated with me. One of the words he introduced me to on that night is a Tibetan word, Jhamtse, and Jhamtse means love and kindness in the deepest meaning of both words, both sides of the coin. And he went on to talk about how we all have that in us.

It's in our inherent nature, and that through mind training, you can scrape away the layers to get to that source of truth, get to zero. Halfway through a ninety-minute talk that he gave, I had a sensation in my chest that was a warm vibration that gave me a sense of peace and contentment that I had never had in my life before.

Part 3

The Voice

At the same time that sensation was happening — it gave me a calmness and a contentment — a voice, not in my brain, I don't know where it came from. It was a gentle voice, but also had a firmness, and it said, "This is truth." Later, as I learned more, I can look back at that experience and understand what Howard was talking about.

But at that moment in time, it wasn't so much the words that he was saying — it was the fact that his inner truth had come into me, knocked on the door of my inner truth and said, "Hey, man, take a listen to this 'cause I wanna share something with you." The night that happened, I remember tears welled up in my eyes.

I drove home, and I was really excited to tell my wife what happened. And she gave me a hug, and she said, "I'm so happy you're content, and I'm happy because you're happy." At the time, what I didn't tell her — right there on the spot, and I heard this tonight from Howard's words — is I decided to dedicate my life to being on this path.

It had opened up in front of my eyes, and it had such a profound impact on me that I said, "I am gonna follow this, and I'm gonna learn as much as I can on how to stay on this path and this Jhamtse and love and compassion and how to train my mind to get to my inner truth." For seven years, I had the opportunity to work very closely with him while he lived in the Boston area.

Part 4

Lobsang's Story

One thing I should mention contextually about the man whose inner truth tapped my inner truth is that he was discarded at birth by an unwed mother. He was left in an outhouse. He was discovered by his grandparents, and he was raised by his grandparents only till the age of seven, because he was really struggling.

He tried to commit suicide a couple times, and his grandparents sent him away to a monastery in southern India, where he lived for twenty years, and he had a transformative experience. This is a man who, discarded at birth, subsequently would go on to start a home and a school for children like himself — so-called uninvited, uninvited guest in the universe.

And he was gonna call that community Jhamtse Gatsal, which means garden of love and compassion. And to this day, I still don't fully understand how someone who is discarded at birth, who considers himself an uninvited guest in the universe, could go on to create a garden of love and compassion for children that, fast-forward eighteen years, is actually changing the education models throughout India.

It's an amazing story. We talked about changing education this morning, and there's an opportunity for that to happen. I helped Lobsang start a nonprofit in the year two thousand and five, the year before the community opened. My journey and my inner transformation has been deeply connected to this Jhamtse journey and this Jhamtse mission.

Part 5

The Wake-Up Call

But what I learned from the conversation this morning as well, there's been somewhat of a dichotomy in terms of the inner work and the outer work associated with what I'm doing. I spend a lot of time on the outer work with this nonprofit and trying to grow the nonprofit. I'm also trying to deepen my inner transformation and my practice, but I've been struggling with that recently.

But I had a wake-up call again with Lobsang this fall. We were together on a retreat in Europe to talk about our future and where are we gonna go with Jhamtse and love and compassion in the Jhamtse Gatsal community over the next ten to twenty years. We talked about having a global mission to rekindle the human spirit and rebuild the human community.

Lobsang looked at all of us and said, "If we're gonna embark on a global mission to share Jhamtse with the world and to share love and compassion in the most meaningful way possible" — because it's not just for children, it's for all of us to get to that true source of truth — he basically said to us, "If our mission is rekindling the human spirit and rebuilding the human community, you have to be the mission."

You have to embody the mission. At the time, he didn't mention Gandhi, but it's very much like what Gandhi said — that my life is my message. So at that point — that was this fall when that was shared with me — later that night, I went back to my hotel room and I opened up my inbox, and I had an email from Nipun and Audrey inviting me to attend this event, where I was thinking to myself, "Okay, I have to really double down not only on the outer work and this expansion of our global model, but how am I gonna really do the most important work, get to that ninety percent under the iceberg, and really focus on staying more in tune with my true inner self?"

Part 6

Closing

And then I get the invite to come here. I almost didn't make it here. I didn't make a decision to come here until the Sunday before — this was the fourteenth. You guys pulled me to be here because I knew I was gonna need help. In order to continue on my path and my inner transformation, I was gonna need to be in a collective of people like you to help me deepen my practice and stay more in touch with who I truly am.

You pulled me to be here. This has been a pilgrimage for me, and I can't thank you enough for doing that. I can't thank you enough for listening to that story. And the fact that we are on this journey together to, I guess, basically get to the same place — I am so grateful for that, and thank you very much.