Silence, Self and Surrender

Live in total surrender and you will live happily ever after!

Yesterday, a well-meaning friend suggested that we try a new form of Vaastu that helps release positive energy in a living space. His point: Vaani and I badly need that positive energy to bounce back in our Life and business. While I don’t deny that we need to bounce back in business, we can’t quite relate, anymore, to any of the methods that are on offer. Not that we didn’t try them before. We did. We wore rings and stones on our fingers, we tried foo dogs and laughing Buddhas and fountains and gem trees, we tried “freeing” up the north-east corner of our home and almost every method that’s available in the public domain. To be sure, we still consult astrology and use it like a dashboard. Even so, with due respect to all the sciences that promise “better living”, I can, through my own personal experience, learnt that the only science that works for intelligent living is the science of silence, Self and surrender.

Simply, when you embrace silence, you understand your true nature, your true Self, and through that understanding you learn to let go and surrender to Life.

I have come to realize that this is the best way to live. Don’t protest any situation. Don’t berate yourself. Don’t be angry, guilty, fearful or anxious. Just accept what is, work to your best ability on changing what is if you don’t like it, and surrender to Life’s ways, to its flow. This is a discipline – like a fitness regimen or a diet or a manufacturing process. You learn to perfect it over time. And you start by being silent for a certain period of time daily – usually 20 minutes is a good start for beginners. Slowly increase it to an hour. During your silence period, you remain silent; don’t try to silence the environment, you remain silent! With diligent practice of daily silence periods, you will awaken to this truth that your trying to control your Life is meaningless drama. You will know that whatever is happening to you is beyond your control and is happening in spite of you and never because of you. Then you will realize that total surrender – saranagati as the scriptures teach us – is what intelligent living is all about!  

Surrender does not mean inaction. It only means that you act knowing that the outcome is not in your control. Not in your hands. So you act, to the best of your ability, and leave the outcome to Life – accepting whatever is! Then you are forever soaking in positivity. You are always happy no matter what circumstances you are placed in. You don’t need any crutches – Vaastu, Feng Shui, superstitions, astrology, gemology – to live. To live well, to live happily, you only need to be silent for some time daily, you will then know who you really are and will realize the value of total surrender!

Surrender to Life and be free!

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! 

Understanding the meaning and power of ‘surrendering to Life’

Surrendering to Life does not mean inaction. It means acting duly but without any attachment to the outcome.

Someone who read my blogpost of yesterday pinged me wanting to know if ‘surrendering to Life’ was ‘accepting defeat’ or ‘giving up’. He said, “All our early Life, through being raised at home, through teachers and peers at school and college, through seeing the way the world behaves, we have been taught the theory of ‘survival of the fittest’. We have been encouraged never ever to give up and keep competing. Isn’t then the concept of ‘surrendering to Life’ a sign of weakness, a sign of ‘accepting that Life has defeated you’?” This reader’s perspective merits a discussion.

First, let’s understand that Life is not a competition. It is not a race either. And nor can you compete with Life. It is perfectly fine for you to have goals, ambitions and aspirations. It is absolutely fine for you to go after them with passion and focus. But, as you may have well realized through your own experiences, you may not always get what you want in Life – despite your best efforts. Or sometimes Life may act in such a way that, without any immediately evident cause or reason, your Life will change. And because your Life has changed, your aspirations will have to change. You will have to accept and live with your new reality – knowing and understanding that some things you planned may never be possible any more.

Let me give you an example. I know of a young lady called Preethi Srinivasan. Had Life not literally felled her in 1998, and left her a quadriplegic, Preethi would have played for the Indian Women’s Cricket team. She overcame shock, grief and agony, accepted her new reality and is now a motivational speaker who also runs this wonderful organization called SoulFree (http://www.soulfree.org/who-is-soulfree/) which she set up in 2013 to help people like her who are dealing with spinal cord injuries. Now, can someone like Preethi, just wallow in self-pity and will such wallowing restore her physical condition? What she can do is to live each day fully – celebrating the Life she has. And she’s doing this remarkably well. In fact, her Life is an inspiration to so many people – including me.

Now, if someone feels that Preethi has been defeated by Life, they are sadly mistaken! And if someone feels that she should be competing ‘better’ with Life, they must go live her Life before making that comment! To me Preethi has embraced the Life she has with total acceptance and this is the reason why she is a personification of the indefatigable human spirit.

Labels like ‘defeat’, ‘failure’, ‘loss’, ‘success’, ‘victory’ – all these are irrelevant in the context of Life. People who are labeling themselves or others are “armchair theorists” – they keep rocking away with their opinions but never really get going in Life!

There’s only one way you can respond to Life. Which is to accept whatever comes your way, whatever happens to you, and live your Life one day at a time. The action I talk about is doing whatever you can do each day, doing it well, and leaving the outcome to Life. You just be sincere with your living – and your doing. Leave what you are given at the end of each day up to Life. Not doing what you can do in any context – well, that’s inaction. Therefore, ‘surrendering to Life’ is not inaction. In fact, if you truly understand the power of ‘surrendering to Life’, you will value a ‘good night’s sleep’ as your biggest blessing, your greatest wealth at the end of each day – and never the money you have made or the money that you are pining for!

The best principle, as I told my reader friend, is to not think too much about Life. Just do your best daily – and live with what you have been given, fully!

Drop your grief, let go and surrender to Life

Intelligent living is all about letting go and living in complete surrender to Life!

Know that we are all custodians of this opportunity and energy called Life. We didn't ask to be born. This Life is a gift we got. So, if we were given the gift of Life without our asking for it, please understand that we will also get all that we need to live it fully.

This is the truth, the reality of Life. When we seek material things__money, power, position, fame__we are looking a gift horse in the mouth. We have been given a Merc but we are asking why is the upholstery not of a pastel shade, why is there no bar inside, why is a DVD player not fixed in the rear side of the car? By wanting, we are being ungrateful beneficiaries. Instead, surrender to Life. Be the way you were before you were born. You__and I__may not remember it, but we were totally at the mercy of Life before and when we were born. For the first few years of our Life, we stayed that way. But as we started getting educated, we started wanting. When each want was initially fulfilled by our parents, we started wanting more. There, the miracles stopped. And our challenges began. So, to attract miracles into your Life, just surrender. Just tell Life that you are in command and I am a humble follower. That I will accept and enjoy anything that you will give me.

Those of us who have surrendered and seen the miracles in our lives will appreciate this perspective from experience. Those who find this logic difficult to understand, need to just observe Life around them closely and they will see that everything__everything__in this Universe is created only on this principle. When we lose something and we grieve its loss, it’s because of this wanting in us. In fact, grief itself is a sign that we are out of the surrender mode and are in the want mode. Jalaluddin Rumi, the Persian mystic says,"Don't grieve over anything that you have lost. It will come back in another form." That coming back, the miracle, can be created by you, when you drop your grief and surrender to Life!

Surrender to the Cosmic Design

It is important to let Life’s design take care of you instead of you trying to control that design.

This does not mean inaction. This means insightful action. This means acting with a deep awareness of the nature of Life. That everything is transient. That you must live flowing with Life. This is what living intelligently really means. It means to be live spiritually. To be spiritual does not mean you must not live well. Spirituality, in fact, makes no demands on you. There is no need to abstain from anything, no need to propitiate any Gods, no need to observe any rituals and no need to give up anything compulsorily. Spirituality is the flowering of inner awareness. An awakening that teaches you how to live in this world and yet be above it.

When we are merely acting on Life, we are actually reacting. When we are acting with insight, we are actually meaningfully, purposefully responding to Life’s every move, every hue. That’s the only way to live in this world, face all its challenges, and still be above the world, and unmoved by those very same challenges. Only if you can prevent death, can you control Life, can you attempt to change its design for you. Without the ability to control death, controlling Life is like trying to grab and hold water in your fist__it is, well, improbable, impractical and impossible! The truth also is that, when you look back at your Life so far, you can’t but agree with the way your design has evolved. Every success, every tragedy, every opportunity, every loss, while it didn’t make sense as it unfolded or happened, appears to have so perfectly fallen in place, so sweetly timed.

So, surrender yourself to the cosmic design and flow with Life! Only then can you wear the Life it weaves for you on your sleeve!

                                                                                                                                                                                

When you don’t know what to do, simply surrender to Life!

Life is a great leveller.

Whether you like it or not, whether you ask for it or not, at some time or the other, in some unique, unfathomable way, Life will bring you to a state when you will awaken to the truth that your Life is not in your control. At such times, the best response is to simply surrender to Life. Let whatever must happen, happen. Because, whatever is to happen will anyway happen!

But the normal human response is anger, frustration, depression, fear, insecurity, anxiety, worry and grief. There’s no point suppressing these feelings. They will naturally arise in you. Allow those feelings to come. Feel each of them and ask yourself if they can help you deal with your Life situation any better. If they can, persist with them. Let’s say, someone’s dying of cancer. How can any of these feelings help cure the cancer? Or prevent that person from dying? Or let’s say you have been let down in a relationship. How can these feelings help you cope any better? When you sit calmly and analyze your Life situation – any situation which cannot be solved at a human level; and there are many of them – you will understand that going with Life’s flow, and the grand Cosmic Design, the Master Plan, is the only intelligent option you have. So, logically, there’s no point persisting with these debilitating emotions. Surrendering to Life really means dropping these feelings and being free!

There’s a forgettable Tamizh movie called Azhagiya Tamizh Magan (2007, Bharathan, Vijay) that has a great song (with some awful picturization though!) composed by A.R.Rahman in it. The song celebrates the Creator – to me, Life, the Higher Energy – and goes, “Ella Pughazyum Oruvan Oruvannuke, Nee Nadhi Poley Odikonduirru…”. It means, “All glory is to the Only One, you keep flowing like a river…” The essence of this song has resonated with me every time that I have heard it. I have come to believe that not knowing what to do in Life is an opportunity to understand, appreciate and live Life better. It is a humbling experience. Our education and intellect make us believe that we are in control, that we are achieving this and that, we are creating assets and raising families, that we have everything planned out and mapped out in our lives. But when a Life situation strikes, and pushes you into a corner, you realize that you were never in control then – or now. It is only through this awakening that you understand the value of surrendering to Life and going with its flow.

So, if you are in a place in Life when you don’t know what to do about someone or some situation, go with wherever your Life is taking you. Don’t resist. Don’t fear. Don’t agonize. Perhaps, that’s where you eventually need to be and that’s where you will be peaceful and happy!  

Surrender to Life to see how beautiful it really is

When you can’t do anything about a situation you find yourself in, in Life, simply surrender.

You have probably heard this before. But possibly you have struggled with both the concept and act of surrender. Surrender means to completely give yourself up to Life, to be in a let go! This really is your native state. As an infant, you surrendered yourself to Life. When you were born, you didn’t know your parents. You didn’t know if they will provide for you or not. You did not know where to look for warmth, succour and nourishment. You did not crave for either attention or love. Yet you got everything you needed without even asking for it – or knowing how to ask for it. And that’s because you were worry-free and unwittingly – through your under-developed sense of being – were at Life’s mercy.

To be sure, Life hasn’t changed. You – and I – have. If you let go, and surrender to Life, it will still provide for you and give you all that you need without exception. The reason you find it hard to let go is because your education and intellect come into play. You have come to believe that you must solve all the situations that Life throws at you. So you keep battling with and fighting Life. The harder you fight, the tougher it gets. Because what you resist, will persist! Simple! You must realize that there are only two kinds of problem situations in Life. Those that you can solve and those that, inspite of howmuchever hard you try, you simply cannot solve. For those situations or problems that you can solve, you don’t need to worry. While logically you don’t need to worry about situations that you can’t solve either, your mind will force you to, precisely, worry about them. So, instead of letting go and surrendering to the situation, you will keep fighting it imagining that you are trying to solve it! This is how you create suffering and invite misery into your Life!

Intelligent living is not about applying your intellect to Life. It is about being intelligent enough to know that you must let go when you can’t help or solve a situation! All ancient scriptures talk of the concept of surrender. In Hinduism it is called saranagati. It basically means being in a let-go! But because the wisdom of the scriptures are often expressed through religion, which currently is practised very divisively and needlessly ritualistically, it ends up alienating even those people who may be willing to give the concept a chance.

The path of surrender involves letting go of your ego. It is the state when you realize that the “I”  in you can’t solve a problem or crisis! You are then willing to go with the flow of Life. Even then your Life’s problems may not get solved immediately. But, importantly, you are not fighting them anymore. And when you are not fighting, when you are not resisting, you are peaceful. This is when you will find that Life is beautiful, despite the circumstances you are placed in or faced with. This is when you will know what living really means!

Get out of your own way!

There are times in Life when nothing will go your way. There will be so much unsaid, so much unresolved. And it may just seem like everything is wrong about your Life. Every effort you make, each step you take, you will be stonewalled, tripped or pushed to a corner. The mind will invite you to despair. Decline that invitation artfully and let Life lead you. You get out of your own way!

Relax. Get yourself a cup of tea or grab a drink if you can. The mind is like a tennis-ball practice machine. It keeps spewing out worries and fears endlessly. These debilitating thoughts will tell you that you can and must solve the problems that face you just now. But what if you have already tried all that you can think up of. And failed. And the problems persist. The very thought that there’s no way forward may force you to allow your fears to take hold of you. Please don’t let them. Your fearing something is not going to take that something away. Life is to be faced. Not feared. So, let Life happen as it has been and as it is happening. These are times when accepting that there’s no choice is an intelligent choice in itself.  Exercise it.

I recently met the CEO of one of India’s leading retail brands. He shared with me how, about 15 years ago, a vindictive police officer, illegitimately and extra-constitutionally shut down all his stores and threw him in jail, where he had to spend 89 days. “There seemed no way out. This man had cases foisted against me under every provision of the law. It was a legal maze. And with our business shut down, cash was just not available. My family tried to mobilize something, both financially and legally, but it took three months. I was very clear that he could take away everything from me. But he couldn’t take away my spirit. I refused to give up because my conscience was clean. We had not done anything wrong and were simply a victim of circumstance and time,” he said. After a protracted legal battle that took a few years, this CEO was acquitted with a clean chit, has since rebuilt his business and his brand is one of India’s most admired. He told me, as I took leave of him, “Some nights are long and dark. But if it is night, know for sure that a dawn will follow!”

When we try to solve some of our problems and don’t meet with much success, intelligence lies in letting go, letting Life take over, and getting out of our own way. The truth is that Life has always been flowing on its own. You and I have done precious little to make our lives happen. Getting out of your own way is not inaction. In fact, it is a more sensible action than to be perpetually frustrated and fearful! When you get out of your own way, you can see the way that Life has laid out for you clearly! And that way, always, takes you to where you must eventually arrive!

Embrace your tragedies just as you would your fortunes

Have you felt helpless about everything at some time__ your Life, your work, your relationships, your health, your money? Or if you are feeling so just now, either about all those, and more, aspects, or perhaps about a few, simply surrender to Life. Totally accept what is. And let Life take over.

In fact, Life was always in control. It was your foolish ego that was making you believe and imagine that you were controlling your Life or were at least leading and directing it on your own accord. Your ability not to be able to control it in times such as this is a way of Life reminding you that you were never in control!

Trying to control Life is like trying to hold on to water in your clenched fist. The more you try to hold on, the more you will see it flow away. And the more empty you will feel. As your feeling of emptiness increases, so does your suffering.

A friend of mine lost his only child. I visited him to offer my condolences. We sat together for 45 minutes. He didn’t say anything. I didn’t either. Finally as I got up to leave, he burst out into tears and said: “I simply can’t understand Life. I just feel so helpless!” I had nothing to say to him. What could anyone say? No amount of consolation would be enough and would only seem hollow. Mere words in the face of Life’s deep, painful wound. A few months after this incident, another couple we know, lost their teenage son. He committed suicide. When we visited them, they appeared stoic but their pain was evident. Occasionally tears would run down. For some moments there would be silence. And in some others they would recall memories of their child. When we hugged the couple, and took their leave, they thanked us. And the husband, the father of the boy, said, “Who can change Life’s plan? I am not trying to make any meaning out of this. I have let go!”

Sorry for those morbid stories on a Sunday morning. But in them there’s a germ of a big Life learning. A person who understands Life will not try to understand it. He or she will be in a let go. Because Life was never in your control. Life was never offering any meaning. Or guarantees. Or solace. You imagined you were in control. You thought you understood Life. You believed because you were good and ethical, Life will treat you fairly. But Life never promised anything.

It is in Life’s dark moments and tragedies that we awaken. It is through pain that we can let go of suffering. It is in the darkness that we can truly appreciate the value of light. So embrace your tragedies just as you would welcome your fortunes. Because there simply is no other way. Every scripture points to this. Every painful Life experience leads to this learning. So let go. Surrender. And let Life, like always, take you to where you truly belong!

There’s a great beauty in being incapable

There is a great beauty in being incapable. This may seem absurd. In a world where performance is measured in nano-seconds, all the time, how can being ‘incapable’ be something to celebrate, to crow about? The world only wants capable people. How can someone incapable even dream of surviving in an intensely competitive arena?

The fact that you are capable and have caused your success is the biggest myth you__and I__are wedded to. In fact, we have long been kidding ourselves with this view.

Every once in a while, through its inscrutable ways, Life will render you completely incapable. You will be left dangling at the edge of a precipice. You can’t possibly do anything. If you do something of your own, you risk falling off that edge, into a ravine, with no possibility of a return. So, you then have only one way out. To surrender to Life. And let Life take you to where you belong, to where you must logically go.

Surrendering is not at all complex. At one level it is a no-brainer. If you can do something about a situation, why would you worry? Why would you fear? Why would you suffer? Similarly, if you can’t do something about a situation why would you worry, fear or suffer? Simply accept that you can’t do anything about it.

Surrender requires nothing but a total acceptance of what is. The truth about Life is that all your grief comes from what you are attached to. You feel you have worked hard__which you indeed have__and so if something is being snatched away from you, it is grossly unfair and unjust. But Life is such that what you perceive as unfair will keep happening again and again and again. It is when you resist what is happening to you that you will suffer. It is when you keep clinging on to your false sense of capability that you will be miserable. Instead let go of all notions. Let go of your definitions of success and failure. Just accept that there will be some situations in Life that you cannot do anything about. That all you can do is to live through them.

Through your awakening to your incapability, through surrender, you will arise into freedom. And discover how beautiful, magical and bountiful Life really is!