The Dharma of Surrender
Sometimes after I give a Dharma talk, someone will raise their hand and say brightly, “I’m thinking about how this can apply to my daily life, and…” Consciously or not, they have been mentally matching the teaching up against some current thought pattern about an issue in their life.
Now, the teachings are meant to be practical, and even personal. That is how Buddhism becomes real. If this isn’t about our life, what are we doing? Broadly speaking, I am glad people are thinking about how Dharma teachings can apply to their life. However, my aim in this essay is to question this relationship to the teachings, so that you are aware of alternatives.
Looking for an immediate application of a teaching may function as a bypass. By hearing the Dharma and immediately turning it outward toward my daily circumstances, I fail to take it in deeply. It runs off the surface, rather than penetrating down into the heart, where it might touch something uncomfortable, nourish something I’ve been trying to starve, or melt something I cherish in its hardened form. Can we allow a more intimate contact with the teachings?
Suppose the talk is about the five spiritual faculties. Maybe it’s useful to think immediately of how the five faculties can operate for you at work, or how they might solve that tricky relationship issue that’s been hijacking your attention. But I’m not sure. In doing so, we are “auditioning” the teachings to see if they can play the role of personal helper. This stance makes a demand on the Dharma: “I demand that you are immediately relevant to an issue related to my self, in the way that I conceive of it.” It is a transactional relationship.
The teachings do not work very well when we are making demands of them. Instead, these teachings can work us. When we sit back and just do the practice, and just listen to the teachings, changes start to happen, often in surprising ways.
This became clear to me when I began doing long retreats of more than a month. There is no way to approach such a retreat with the idea of “working on” a single life issue because the mind goes through too many changes, and anyway, the details of daily life fade away after a few weeks. I ended up just doing the practice. And yet, I observed that when I got out of retreat, life flowed differently. I couldn’t say quite what had been let go of, or how, but things were different and less sticky. Then I realized that if our practice is going on for years and even decades, it is just like a long retreat. We can trust it to unfold without needing to compulsively “apply the teachings to my life” during every Dharma talk.
That relationship issue may never be solved. But so what, if you stop suffering for it? As Gil Fronsdal said, “Your problems will not be solved. They will be dissolved.”
The teachings may actually help your life more if you stop trying so hard to make them “apply to your life.” Consider that the Dharma does apply to your life, but not in a way you can think through. Willed application is less effective than letting the teachings work on us.
How to do this? It is good to start with the way you listen to Dharma talks. Just listen. Primarily with your body. Breathe with the words so that they penetrate all throughout your body. If you miss some of the words, no problem.
In the mind-body system, there are other channels besides the cognitive mind and its associated emotions. When I lived at the Insight Retreat Center, there was a Spanish-language retreat. I know very little Spanish, but I would still go to the instructions and Dharma talk, and I felt a distinctive response in the body and heart – something was still getting through. This was even true when I sat retreats in Sri Lanka that were given in Sinhala, a language I don’t know at all.
To an even greater degree, we can understand these alternative channels when we engage in devotional practices such as chanting, ritual, prayer, and some forms of koan. There is a “seasoning” of the heart, a gradual fertilization, as these practices work into the cracks of our heart and harmonize things beyond what we can really know. When I chanted a single sutta every day for three months on one retreat, I had insights during the retreat, but also realized that that practice was still echoing in my heart months and maybe years later. I have also engaged in koan practice with two teachers, and each time I have discovered anew how the mind finds ways to free itself simply by coming in contact with the Dharma and without expectations.
On a different retreat, when I walked into the meditation hall one day, I was struck by seeing the altar. I gazed at it for a while, allowing the image to penetrate without thinking about what was happening. When I sat down to meditate, the five faculties unfolded sequentially in my mind and body.
Touching the teachings intimately is how they lead to genuine transformation, not just improvements. They are meant to shape us quite fundamentally, for Awakening is not a mere improvement. There is no danger in this transformation because it only happens when we consent to it.
All of this requires qualities not much loved in the West: Patience, humility, surrender. Yes, surrender.
There are many kinds of surrender. Sometimes we surrender our willful pushing and enter into passive allowance, letting the flow of the Dharma have its way, even settling into complete stillness if that is the way of things. And other times, we surrender our hesitancy to embrace the vital, creative force of the Dharma, stepping forth to do, to act, in new and liberated ways. We don’t choose what the surrender will entail; that is the nature of surrender.
In the words of Rosemerry Trommer:
Part of me wants to give you
the book of answers, the solution key,
to help you know which decision, A, B, C or D,
will bring the most healing, the most happiness.
I no longer believe in such a book, such a key.
Instead I wish for you the peace
that comes only with surrender--
a word that sounds beyond reason
until it becomes beacon, becomes
north star, becomes map.
You may feel concern about surrender – after all, it is not wise to surrender to just anything. Rest assured: The foundation for the kind of life described here is goodness. The simple goodness of sincerely wishing no harm, even if we do not enact it one hundred percent. Goodness conjoined with practice results in wisdom, and through wisdom we are able to give up both our small, personal will and our reliance on outside authority. We are learning to listen to something that is neither of those. We can hear it in our heart when the mind is clear, alert, and gentle.
Stand there for a moment right now. Stand in your own wisdom. Now feel how this clashes with a willful effort to “apply this teaching to my daily life.” This deeper wisdom already knows how to apply the Dharma. We must only wait for it to reveal the next step.
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
--TS Eliot, East Coker
Sometimes after I give a Dharma talk, someone will raise their hand and say brightly, “I’m thinking about how this can apply to my daily life, and…” Consciously or not, they have been mentally matching the teaching up against some current thought pattern about an issue in their life.
Now, the teachings are meant to be practical, and even personal. That is how Buddhism becomes real. If this isn’t about our life, what are we doing? Broadly speaking, I am glad people are thinking about how Dharma teachings can apply to their life. However, my aim in this essay is to question this relationship to the teachings, so that you are aware of alternatives.
Looking for an immediate application of a teaching may function as a bypass. By hearing the Dharma and immediately turning it outward toward my daily circumstances, I fail to take it in deeply. It runs off the surface, rather than penetrating down into the heart, where it might touch something uncomfortable, nourish something I’ve been trying to starve, or melt something I cherish in its hardened form. Can we allow a more intimate contact with the teachings?
Suppose the talk is about the five spiritual faculties. Maybe it’s useful to think immediately of how the five faculties can operate for you at work, or how they might solve that tricky relationship issue that’s been hijacking your attention. But I’m not sure. In doing so, we are “auditioning” the teachings to see if they can play the role of personal helper. This stance makes a demand on the Dharma: “I demand that you are immediately relevant to an issue related to my self, in the way that I conceive of it.” It is a transactional relationship.
The teachings do not work very well when we are making demands of them. Instead, these teachings can work us. When we sit back and just do the practice, and just listen to the teachings, changes start to happen, often in surprising ways.
This became clear to me when I began doing long retreats of more than a month. There is no way to approach such a retreat with the idea of “working on” a single life issue because the mind goes through too many changes, and anyway, the details of daily life fade away after a few weeks. I ended up just doing the practice. And yet, I observed that when I got out of retreat, life flowed differently. I couldn’t say quite what had been let go of, or how, but things were different and less sticky. Then I realized that if our practice is going on for years and even decades, it is just like a long retreat. We can trust it to unfold without needing to compulsively “apply the teachings to my life” during every Dharma talk.
That relationship issue may never be solved. But so what, if you stop suffering for it? As Gil Fronsdal said, “Your problems will not be solved. They will be dissolved.”
The teachings may actually help your life more if you stop trying so hard to make them “apply to your life.” Consider that the Dharma does apply to your life, but not in a way you can think through. Willed application is less effective than letting the teachings work on us.
How to do this? It is good to start with the way you listen to Dharma talks. Just listen. Primarily with your body. Breathe with the words so that they penetrate all throughout your body. If you miss some of the words, no problem.
In the mind-body system, there are other channels besides the cognitive mind and its associated emotions. When I lived at the Insight Retreat Center, there was a Spanish-language retreat. I know very little Spanish, but I would still go to the instructions and Dharma talk, and I felt a distinctive response in the body and heart – something was still getting through. This was even true when I sat retreats in Sri Lanka that were given in Sinhala, a language I don’t know at all.
To an even greater degree, we can understand these alternative channels when we engage in devotional practices such as chanting, ritual, prayer, and some forms of koan. There is a “seasoning” of the heart, a gradual fertilization, as these practices work into the cracks of our heart and harmonize things beyond what we can really know. When I chanted a single sutta every day for three months on one retreat, I had insights during the retreat, but also realized that that practice was still echoing in my heart months and maybe years later. I have also engaged in koan practice with two teachers, and each time I have discovered anew how the mind finds ways to free itself simply by coming in contact with the Dharma and without expectations.
On a different retreat, when I walked into the meditation hall one day, I was struck by seeing the altar. I gazed at it for a while, allowing the image to penetrate without thinking about what was happening. When I sat down to meditate, the five faculties unfolded sequentially in my mind and body.
Touching the teachings intimately is how they lead to genuine transformation, not just improvements. They are meant to shape us quite fundamentally, for Awakening is not a mere improvement. There is no danger in this transformation because it only happens when we consent to it.
All of this requires qualities not much loved in the West: Patience, humility, surrender. Yes, surrender.
There are many kinds of surrender. Sometimes we surrender our willful pushing and enter into passive allowance, letting the flow of the Dharma have its way, even settling into complete stillness if that is the way of things. And other times, we surrender our hesitancy to embrace the vital, creative force of the Dharma, stepping forth to do, to act, in new and liberated ways. We don’t choose what the surrender will entail; that is the nature of surrender.
In the words of Rosemerry Trommer:
Part of me wants to give you
the book of answers, the solution key,
to help you know which decision, A, B, C or D,
will bring the most healing, the most happiness.
I no longer believe in such a book, such a key.
Instead I wish for you the peace
that comes only with surrender--
a word that sounds beyond reason
until it becomes beacon, becomes
north star, becomes map.
You may feel concern about surrender – after all, it is not wise to surrender to just anything. Rest assured: The foundation for the kind of life described here is goodness. The simple goodness of sincerely wishing no harm, even if we do not enact it one hundred percent. Goodness conjoined with practice results in wisdom, and through wisdom we are able to give up both our small, personal will and our reliance on outside authority. We are learning to listen to something that is neither of those. We can hear it in our heart when the mind is clear, alert, and gentle.
Stand there for a moment right now. Stand in your own wisdom. Now feel how this clashes with a willful effort to “apply this teaching to my daily life.” This deeper wisdom already knows how to apply the Dharma. We must only wait for it to reveal the next step.
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
--TS Eliot, East Coker