Surrender to Life. This is the only action required of you. When
you surrender, you will be free.
When
you are free, you are peaceful. When you are peaceful, bliss follows. With
bliss comes abundance. With abundance comes all
that you need. When you are in that state, you are radiant.
It’s
possible for all of us to be resplendent, radiant like the idol at Tirupati.
Those who have been to that temple shrine in southern India will agree that
they are speechless, they are thoughtless when in front of the main deity. Many
confess they have even forgotten how to pray or what to seek when in the sanctum sanctorum for those few
nano-seconds. They speak of divinity and they speak of a super power. They are
mesmerized by the glow radiating from the idol, their Lord. They believe it is
a superior energy that is embracing them when in proximity of that idol. I
don’t wish to challenge their beliefs. But I want to say that you too can
radiate that kind of energy. Only if you surrender. Only if you submit yourself
to Life’s situations.
All your
pain comes from fighting, from resisting Life. All suffering comes from
expecting your Life to be different from what it is just now. When you give up
the fight and when you stop expecting, you will be at peace. In that state you
will be bereft of all wants and yet be abundantly endowed with all that you
need. In such a moment, you are one with the Universe, with creation. This is
where you begin to radiate the energy that created the Universe. This is not
just spiritual thinking. This is metaphysics.
Linji
Yixuan, a Buddhist Zen monk, went
to his Master and said, “Give me freedom!” The Master said, “Bring yourself. If
you are, I will make you free. But if you are not, then how can I make you
free? You are already free.” “And
freedom,” his Master said, “really is not the freedom you think of. Really,
freedom is freedom from ‘you’. So go and find out where this ‘I’ is, where you
are, then come to me. This is meditation. Go and meditate.” So the disciple
Linji goes and meditates for weeks and months, and then he goes back to his
Master. He tells his Master, “I am not the body. Only this much I have found.”
So the Master says, “This much you have become free. Go again. Try to find
out.” Then he tries, meditates, and he finds that “I am not my mind, because I
can observe my thoughts. So the observer is different from the observed – I am
not my mind.” He comes and says, “I am not my mind.” So his Master says, “Now
you are three-fourths liberated. Now go again and find out who you are.” So Linji
went away thinking, “I am not my body. I am not my mind.” He had read, studied,
he was well informed, so he was thinking, “I am not my body, not my mind, so I
must be my soul, my atman.” But he
meditated, and then he found that there is no atman, no soul, because this atman
is nothing but your mental information – just doctrines, words, philosophies.
So he came running one day to his Master and said, “Now I am no more!” Then his Master said, “Am I now to teach you the methods
for freedom?” Linji said, “I am free because I am no more. There is no one to
be in bondage. I am just a wide emptiness, a nothingness.” Osho, recounting
this story often, concludes: “Only nothingness can be free. If you are
something, you will be in bondage. If you are, you will be in bondage. Only a
void, a vacant space, can be free. Then you cannot bind it. Linji came running
and said, “I am no more. Nowhere am I to be found.” This is true, real
freedom.”
And this
freedom comes from surrender. Try it. See what you are enslaved by. And break
free. When you realize the nothingness of your creation, the emptiness of your
‘self’, you will be filled with abundance, drenched in a radiant energy. Then you don’t need anything….because you have all that you
need, you have freedom! You are free!
what a thought!
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