Month: April 2021

Neither male nor female

Verse 53

We observe our bodies and we see the physiology of men and women, of male and female. This material confinement of gender and sexuality steers mundane social conflict and political debates about which bodies we are authorised to love. The life of material love, of material desire, is intertwined with the dualism of genders. In our modern experience of sexuality this dualism is sometimes inverted, exchanged or reassigned. But we seem unable to imagine ourselves, to grasp our identities without it. 

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What is generosity?

We are awash in generosity. And yet it can neither be taught nor learned, neither given nor taken. Being generous is never just being something. Nor is it just doing something, least of all just giving. Olives give olive oil, and yet they know nothing of generosity. It’s because generosity, when it is anything, is not one thing, but two. Generosity is only meaningful when it teeters between being the generous quality of a person, the heart and soul of someone, one soul, who gives, and the singular quality of a generous gift. Giver and gift, soul and thing, feeling and object.

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Love is everything

Love is the ultimate surrender.

We all seek to love and be loved. It is the deepest need and and at the same time the deepest desire we have. This essential truth cries out to us from every aspect of our lives, from the way we relate to our children and our parents, to our relation with our neighbours and friends, to the interactions with colleagues. In all of these relations, the shape and power of love are making themselves felt. To say that ‘love is everything’ is not understating this experience we have at every instant of our day, every moment we think a thought, every we breath we take, everything we do. 

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The longing we feel

In the love that is objectless and subjectless, there is no ego that loves, and no thing that is loved. This longing we feel, this suspicion in hearts, this sliver in our minds, is the hint of longing on its way to us, longing that is growing, longing that will see the light of day. 

Yet it is by longing for material things that we resist the divine longing, standing intentionally, or perhaps intuitionally in the way, Of course we want to feel that weak signal of divinity, for that is what lies behind every moment of pleasure we have. All the aesthetic sources of pleasure—beauty, fragrance, taste, sensation—are also clues to the inner longing for the divine beauty.

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Fear of surrender

To resist is to stand against something. And this experience of standing against, of standing for or standing up for is so ancient, so deep in us, that we cannot recall when it was not part of us.  A child is born into a moment of surrender for which no surrender was necessary. Where there is a self, there is a standing-against, standing against being, standing against the world. Even the infant’s first convulsive motions are reflex of unarticulated struggle to not fall back into pure existence, to exist, to express to live. 

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Desire to surrender

Every child recognises the push and pull of desire in its simplest form: I want the thing I do not possess. But my desire is not only connected to the object of my desire. It is also woven into the thought that I do not want to desire. I want this desire to end. I want the longing to be over. It’s not the thing I want, whatever it may be, so much as to put an end to wanting it. I want it to be mine, I want to be one with it, I want this feeling of wanting to dissolve into my unity with the thing, so that there will be no more wanting, no more longing, no more desire, no more separation. 

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The soul must give itself away

True surrender is generosity. We say that to surrender is to be generous with oneself, to give of oneself, to share something intimate with another. But what exactly is being given when we, in our generosity, give of ourselves? What can it mean that we are generous with ourselves, of ourselves, for ourselves, that we give our selves? How can we both give and be given?Who is surrendering and who is surrendered? We are both the giver and the given, we are the giver and the gift. We are the actor and agent of the gift, the object, the thing, the gift that is given. We are divided asunder by the act of generosity.  By giving of our selves we give ourselves and thus our selves away, We give away the self that is the giver, the one who gives. We give the giver. To whom?

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Surrender, gift of the self

What is surrender? Who surrenders? And to whom?  Why do we surrender? What is given when we surrender and what is gained? Is surrender an effort or a release? An expression of cowardice or courage? Of service or disservice?  

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