"On the path of will there are methods, on the path of surrender, surrender itself is the method. All methods are nonsurrendering, because a method means depending on yourself. On the path of surrender you are no more, so you cannot do anything. You have done the ultimate, the last; you have surrendered. You surrender only when every method has become futile, when you cannot reach by any method. You have tried your best. You have knocked on every door and no door opens, and you have passed through all the routes and no route reaches. You have done whatsoever you can do and now you feel helpless. In that total helplessness surrender happens.
But what is surrender and how does it work? Methods are not difficult, you can train yourself. But for surrender you cannot train yourself. You cannot ask how to surrender; the very question is absurd. Can you ask how to love? Either there is love or there is not. Once a technique is given to you, you will cling to the technique. Love is being totally open, vulnerable. Love happens, surrender happens. Love and surrender are deeply one.
How is it that you have not surrendered yet? What is your technique of nonsurrendering? If you have not fallen in love yet, then the real problem is not how to love. The real problem is to dig deep to find out how you have lived without love, what is your trick, what is your defense structure. That can be understood and should be understood.
First thing: we live with the ego, in the ego, centered in the ego. I am, without knowing who I am. I go on announcing, ‘I am’. This ‘I-am-ness is false, because I do not know who I am. This false ‘I’ is the ego. This is the defense. This protects your from surrendering.
You cannot surrender, but you can become aware of this defense measure. If you have become aware of it, it dissolves. By and by, you are not strengthening it, and one day you come to feel, ‘I am not’. The moment you feel ‘I am not’, surrender happens. So try to find out whether you are. Really, is there a centre in you that you can call you call your ‘I’? Go deep down within yourself, go on trying to find out where is this ‘I’, where is the abode of this ego.
Rinzai went to his master and he said, “Give me freedom!” The master said, “Bring yourself. I you are, I will make you free. But if you are not, then how can I make you free? You are already free. And freedom is freedom from ‘you’. So go on and find out where this ‘I’ is, where you are, then come to me. This is the meditation. Go and meditate.”
So the disciple Rinzai goes and meditates for weeks, months, and then he comes. Then he says, “I am not the body. Only this much I have found out.”
So the master says, “This much you have become free. Go again. Try to find out.”
Then he tries, meditates, and he finds that “I am not my mind, because I can observe my thoughts. So the observer is different from the observed – I am not my mind.”
So his master says, “Now you are three-fourths liberated. Now go again and find out who you are.”
So he was thinking, “I am not my body. I am not my mind.” He had read, studied, he was well informed, so he was thinking, “I am not my body, not my mind, so I must be my soul, my atma.” But he meditated, and then he found that there is no atma, no soul, because his atma is nothing but your mental information – just doctrines, words, philosophies.
So he came running one day and he said, “Now I am no more!”
Then his master said, “Am I now to teach you the methods of freedom?”
Rinzai said, “I am free because I am no more. There is no one to be in bondage. I am just a wide emptiness, a nothingness.”
Only nothingness can be free. If you are something, you will be in bondage. If you are you will be in bondage. Only a void, a vacant space, can be free. Then you cannot bind it. Rinzai came running and said, “I am no more. Nowhere I am to be found.” This is freedom. And for the first time he touched his master’s feet – for the first time!
Not actually, because he had touched them many times before also. But the master said, “For the first time you have touched my feet.”
Rinzai asked, “Why do you say for the first time? I have touched your feet many times.” The master said, “But you were there, so how could you touch my feet while you were already there? While you were there how can you touch my feet?”
The ‘I’ can never touch anybody’s feet, it’s touching it’s own feet in a roundabout way. “You have touched my feet for the first time because you are no more. And this is also the last time”, the master said. “The first and the last.”
Surrender happens when you are no more, so you can not surrender. That is why surrender cannot be a technique. You cannot surrender, you are the hindrance. So you and surrender cannot coexist. So find out where you are, who you are. This inquiry creates many, many surprising results. “Who am I?” is an inquiry to dissolve. There is not going to be an answer, that “You are this.” Only the question will dissolve. There will be no one to ask even “Who am I?” And then you know.
When the ‘I’ is not, the real ‘I’ opens. When the ego is not, you are for the first time encountering your being. That being is void. Then you can surrender; then you have surrendered. You are surrender now.
When you surrender you become a valley; when you are an ego you are like a peak. Ego means you are above everyone else, you are somebody. When one surrenders, one becomes like a valley. One becomes depth, not height. Then the whole existence begins to pour into him from everywhere. He is just a vacuum, just a depth, an abyss, bottomless. The whole existence begins to pour from everywhere. You can say God runs from everywhere to him, enters him from every pore, fills him totally.
There are minor surrenders; there are major surrenders. Surrendering to a master is a minor surrender, but you begin to feel it because the master begins to flow into you immediately. If you surrender to a master, suddenly you feel his energy flowing into you. If you cannot feel energy flowing into you, then know well you have not surrendered even in a minor way. Even a look from the master into your eyes will change your total being, but it can change only if your eyes are just vacant, valleylike. If you can absorb the look of the master, immediately you will be different.
So these are the minor surrenders that happen before you surrender totally. . Once you have known that through surrender you receive something unknown, unbelievable, unexpected, then you are ready for a major surrender.
And these minor surrenders prepare you for the total surrender. The master helps you in minor surrenders so that you can gather courage for a major surrender, total surrender.."
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