Surrender

 

Once there was a great Zen master called Banzan. He spent many years in the pursuit of enlightenment but it eluded him. Then one day as he was walking in the marketplace, he overheard a conversation between a butcher and a customer. “Give me the best piece of meat you have” said the customer. The butcher replied “ Every piece of meat I have is the best. There is no piece here that is not the best.”

Upon hearing this Banzan became enlightened.

So you are wondering how did this happen. When you accept what “is” every piece of meat - every moment - as perfect or is the best, you are enlightened.

At that point you are no longer trying to control, change, influence, aspire, achieve - you are content. Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to impress. You have suddenly become free. A key element of achieving this freedom is you have surrendered to what “is”.

So what is this surrender ?

It is the art of letting go, relinquishing control to another. In the olden days when there were kingdoms that went to war, one of them would be winning and the other would surrender, preventing further bloodshed. Sometimes the surrender happened when one kingdom was close to being defeated, but sometimes it happened even before the war when one kingdom realised the supremacy of the other in their fighting ability. To avoid bloodshed they surrendered.

A key element of surrender is to give up control to someone more powerful or perceived to be more powerful. To surrender to another individual who is bigger, stronger and brighter than us, comes easy to all of us, however to surrender to someone who is equal to us or perceived by us to be weaker than us is hard.

Most of us have been brought up to be in control of our lives and hence we struggle to let go especially when it involves something as esoteric as the universe, nature or god. All of these are things that we rarely think are superior than us in our day to day activities, because their superiority is not visible (unless of course you are caught up in a natural disaster of some type). Our habit of being in control never allows us to let go.

This begs the question when to surrender?

Stephen Covey in his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective people talks about - sphere of control and sphere of influence. He says highly effective people prioritise their effort on the sphere of control. In other words, they first focus on things they can control rather than things outside their sphere of control that they can only influence. Extending this thinking further, anyone who is trying to spend too much time on trying to control things in their sphere of influence (that is things they have no control over) such as how others behave, act and perceive you, they are not only ineffective but also become stressed and suffer anxiety in controlling uncontrollable things. It is these things that one cannot control one must surrender as a starting point. This is the secret of being effective and being stress free.

What about day to day items that are in my control should I surrender those too ?

On a day to day basis we are continually thinking of our goals, outcomes of our actions that we are trying to achieve. Always thinking about outcomes of our actions binds us to the results of our actions and makes us stressed if the expected outcome is not achieved.

Surrender of the outcomes of all day to day items is a must if you wish to lead a stress free and enjoyable life.

How can I surrender the outcomes while still not loosing control ?

Being in control and surrendering are mutually exclusive, you cannot have both at the same time. You have to choose between the two.

That is all very well, but when I get involved in an activity with a deadline or a target, I can't stop thinking about the outcome while doing the activity and this stresses me out. What can I do to not get entangled up ?

If like most people you are heavily outcome / achievement focussed, chances are you are always thinking about the outcomes all the time, possibly even in your dreams. If this is the case it is likely you are too vested in the outcomes and you see failure to achieve them as a personal defeat. In such a scenario a distance needs to be created between you and the outcome. Below are some things you can do -

• Become aware and observe yourself doing an activity, any activity as a starting point would be fine. The more you become aware, the more you observe and the more detached you become from the activity. This practice of being aware can be cultivated even while doing nothing, just watching your breath, the trees, birds, etc.

• Attend to one thing at a time, do not multi-task. The more you focus on a single task at a time, the more your attention / concentration grows and the longer your attention span. The more stronger the concentration the less you will have background thoughts about outcomes. If you want you can choose to be aware of the activity as an observer in the background, with a focus on just one task. This is called attention with awareness. There is a path of knowledge program specifically designed to help you achieve attention with awareness.

• The above two will sharpen your attention to a point where you are not easily distracted and the awareness practice will keep you detached from your outcomes and make you balanced. As you practice this, there will be times when you enter an absorbed state or a state of presence. You are no longer thinking, you are just in a state of flow, where neither the outcome matters, nor the journey matters, the present moment is all there is and you are in a state of bliss. In such a state, you have surrendered to the activity and become one with it. In this state you become an instrument of the universe, there is no doership, you are totally free from results of your actions.

If I surrender things in my life, won't I be out of control, I will miss all my work, study and day to day deadlines. I will never be able to accomplish anything. How is this effective ? Isn’t this asking me to not plan at all, just surrender?

No on the contrary your life becomes very easy. You still must plan, have goals, set targets and have a clear intent. Once your intent is clear and goals are set you must forget about them and focus on the task at hand initially through attention and awareness practices and eventually being in the “present “ moment by surrendering to the “what is” or the present. As you experiment with this you will find rather than missing deadlines you are achieving them well before time. This is something to be tried with small tasks until you grow in confidence in surrendering big things.

This is the only way you can enjoy what you are doing, avoid stress, focus on perfection, be deliberate and conscious in your actions and above all free from the results of your actions.

In summary surrendering like this makes you free of suffering, anxiety of achieving and above all frees you from me and mine and makes you one with the entire existence and above all, always in bliss.