Tag: surrender

Material and spiritual surrender


Surrender is understood as a kind of giving, of giving in, or giving up. When we surrender we give something to another, we yield or renounce it. Something that is ours becomes the possession of someone else. Two actors vie for custody or control of something that cannot be shared, something that must be renounced by one, to the advantage of the other. 

Our most immediate experience of surrender is a material one. We voluntarily agree to surrender a material possession to an other who claims a right to it. We recognise this right and surrender the possession. This right might be legal, political, social, moral, or demands it by threat or actual violence to give them. A similar act of surrender sometimes takes place a without our consent. Threatened with violence or other forms of coercion we may surrender our possessions to others against our will.  
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Surrendering nothing

Somehow we aren’t able to think about surrender without thinking about things. Surrendering is always the thought for surrendering something, some thing, of dispensing with something, of renouncing something, of letting go of something that we possess. It inevitably refers to some property we hold, an to which we feel some kind of natural or acquired right . It might be a material thing, what we commonly call ‘private property’, a book or bicycle or a house. Or it might be a non-material thing, an idea or a thought which invented or are the originator of and to which we therefore have a similar kind of right.

This way of thinking about ‘private property’ is distinctly Western in its origins, even if it has spread to become a global norm. Its most puzzling feature is the problem of its origin.

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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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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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Giving oneself – potlatch

Potlatch is the name of the practice of certain indigenous groups of the Pacific Northwest. It is a ritual whereby wealth, prestige and power is demonstrated through gift-giving. In order to affirm or confirm power and legitimacy, a leader ritually dispenses with or destroys material.  Enrichment through impoverishment, rising in stature by ejecting or even destroying what is materially valuable. And yet unlike the ritual of surrender, potlatch commonly takes the form of a competition. During the ritual one of the honoured guests takes the role of the recipient of gifts, and yet in the closed logic of the ritual the beneficiary is expected to match the sacrifice of value.  Giving or destroying in equal or greater amounts, the value given by the host. The greatest honour and recognition falls to the one who is most able to dispense with the material value held. 

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