Daily Connect: I Surrender !

For most of us, an act of surrender means to be defeated, to give up, to lose, to fail. War movies depict defeated soldiers with raised arms, desperately and fearfully shouting "I surrender" to their
enemies, forlornly giving up any hope of victory. To surrender suggests we have run out of options and hope and are unable to take action; we are in a dangerously vulnerable spot and are helpless and impotent to change our situation.

As mentioned in my last post, for the past few weeks I've been contemplating my intention for 2012. I'd hoped and assumed it would be something very bold and impressive; an active intention to be brave (like a sword-wielding Kali) or a spacious determination to be awake in each moment (imagine Togden Antrim). But as I listened quietly, the feeling and meaning of surrender bubbled up within me, and much as I tried, I was unable to ignore it.

Surrendering in contemplative traditions is not a servile passive act, but an attitude of courage and trust; a trust which is not belief, but an absence of doubt in one's true nature, in the mystery inherent in existence. By opening oneself to all of our experience without pushing any away, is to allow any possible outcome. To surrender to our love and longing is to relax and let go and trust that whatever results is a blessing and a teaching. It also means bowing down to the grandeur of life, (i.e., everything which can't be controlled or conceptually understood), and the Buddha Nature inherent in all beings.

To all the Buddhas who traverse the three times,
To the Teaching and the spiritual community
I bow down with emanations of my body
Equal to the number of atoms in a Buddha-field.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE EVERYWHERE !

I gratefully bow down to your luminous Buddha Nature!