You are already enlightened. You already have everything you need to have an optimal existence. You already have what you need to face the future realistically, without anxiety, with alertness and an inner peace.

But you need to wake up (“buddha”).

That’s what the Buddhist tradition has been teaching for 2500 years. OK. Seriously? Wow. But how to “wake up”? Do you have to become a Buddhist?

Turns out you don’t. It doesn’t even matter if you’ve ever heard the word. Waking up is about delving deeply into the realities of life, which can be done by anyone, anywhere. Understanding the real nature of the self, the nature of society, the interdependence of things, all wake you up.

Time has shown that this sort of investigation into processes—and everything is a process—changes people. It brings them self-awareness, patience, empathy, generosity, and a profound sense of gratitude, among other things. It helps them to face life’s vagaries with equanimity and grace. It helps them to be happy.

The good news is that you have the astonishing good fortune to be in a place and at a time for your own awakening. When Columbia professor Robert Thurman was here in the 1990s, he told me that Dickinson is a Buddha factory, a beautiful garden for awakening. He meant that here there are a huge variety of ways to open the heart and gain insight into the nature of reality.

Look around and you’ll see gurus in abundance. This one is teaching you about how human beings in Africa have been shaped by culture; this one helps you analyze American society; this one helps you understand human evolution; this one explores the relation of society and religion to ecology; this one helps you understand human sexuality; this one reconstructs the human past through archeology; this one helps you understand the human mind by examining the history of art; this one teaches you about the creation and evolution of the solar system, stars, and galaxies.

From this you learn about the dependence of creatures upon their environment and how they change their environment; the dependence of each person upon another; the dependence of individuals upon society; the dependence of individuals on their culture, and of their culture upon their environment; the dependence of culture on language and of language on culture. We could go on and on.

The basic function of all of the classes of Dickinson is to reveal the obvious and hidden interdependences of all things relevant to us as humans. It is to enlighten us. And as we are enlightened, we will be changed, becoming more open, more tolerant, more compassionate.

I got these examples from the Academic Bulletin. I didn’t get past “A” (Africana Studies, American Studies, Anthropology, Arabic, Archeology, Art and Art History, Astronomy) and I picked only a few of many possibilities. I invite you to look at the whole catalogue again and ponder how this incredible collection of courses, only a few of which you will be able to pack into four years here, is truly a garden of enlightenment.

Of course, none of this can happen without the right attitude. You need to be sincere. You need to approach your courses at Dickinson not as a series of hurdles you need to jump in order to get to your “real” life, but as precious opportunities to delve deeply into yourself, your society, your world. You need to be humble, aware that what you don’t know is vast, what you do know is tiny. You need to be grateful for this opportunity to learn at the feet of brilliant, kind men and women who have dedicated their lives to helping you awaken. You need to seize the moment, for this opportunity is very brief and will not be repeated.

For this sort of education is rare. We should remember that only 6.7% of the world’s population has a college education. Only about 130 of the approximately 3500 colleges and universities in the U.S. are like Dickinson, offering a real liberal arts education; only about 3% of U.S. college students are in such places.

At liberal arts colleges like Dickinson, the emphasis is not on training you for a particular job in the world, but on helping you to find out who you are and how to understand your world so that you can decide what path you ought to take. It is about awakening.

Become who you are. Wake up. Be a Dickinson Buddha.