“When the heart is right, "for" and "against" are forgotten.”
― Zhuangzi, The Way of Chuang Tzu
Thanks for taking the time to read these scribblings. As I look out my window to the snow melting, the light fading this wintry afternoon, I’m feeling lucky.
I can hear my family in the next room, running amok, shouting and yelling. Quite often I’ll get some small foot trying to kick down the door … “Daddy!! Come play!”. It’s not ideal for getting work done, but, and I shrug, “What can I do?”.
There’s no more face to face teaching for the next while – who knows when, and this is a huge part of my income. One of my favourite things to do is dining out, and that’s been cancelled for the foreseeable. I’d really love to hang out with my good buddies who live just the next block over, and again, who knows when?
You know how it is – (unless you’re living in New Zealand that is) – and yet I do feel lucky.
I’ve spent so much time and energy in the past fighting things large and small which I have no control over. Throwing TV remotes across the room in a rage because I can’t make them work properly. Being so angry at injustices and systems that aren’t fair – or could be way better if someone cared enough. Kicking and breaking and yelling and boring other people … and for what?
Just to waste precious time and energy with painful stress and expensive breakages.
What can you do?
The poet Robert Frost sums up what I feel is one of the greatest gifts I’ve been given in this inner journey …
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“Always fall in with what you’re asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way.
My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever’s going. Not against: with.”
— Robert Frost
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Not against: with.
And perhaps most importantly:
The wisdom and clarity to know when I’m going against. To clearly see when I’m hitting my head against a brick wall so I can stop all the sooner.
This is what the inner journey has given me; the absolute clarity of when I’m going against – and I’m incredibly grateful for that.
My Ishaya teacher once told us that his greatest wish for his students was that we could see how we create peace or suffering for ourselves.
I wish the exact same thing for you.
While I feel I talk about this aspect of surrender so much, it is only because I see this lack of surrender causes such suffering, completely needlessly.
The Ishaya vows I took mention surrender about 1000 times (I’m exaggerating, slightly). It’s THAT important to a life of free of suffering, but also a life of action. Battling that which you cannot change isn’t a useful strategy to get things done, is it?
So, surrender, go with.
Fascinatingly, I’ve found the more you immerse yourself in surrender, the more your heart stops judging for or against.
You don’t discriminate. You truly experience that the whole world and everything that happens to you, it happens for you.
Your heart, as Zhuangzi writes in our opening lines, becomes right.
And when your heart aligns in this manner, you feel lucky.
You feel blessed to be alive – there is true contentment and quiet joy in response to life – regardless of the circumstances you find yourself in.
You’re not separate from life, you’re immersed in it; and that is the true gift of surrender:
You live an ideal life, the life you were born to live, filled with goodness.
And that’s me today, thank you, and as always …
Go well!
Arjuna.