Saturday, January 12, 2013

Surrender

What does that mean, to surrender?  Giving up?  
Quitting? Losing?  Fundamentally, there is only one thing we can give up, and it is not our lives.

For each of us there will come a day when our future is truncated.  For me, that day was yesterday.  I was informed that I had cancer and that it would likely kill me.  Much crying ensued, and then something else happened.  I was liberated.  Without a future, I was unburdened.  I am now free to think or do or say whatever I wish.  My past is over, I let it all go.  My mind has never felt so free.

When we surrender, what we give up is not a thing, but an idea.  An idea of what our personal future would be like.  The future is not real, but we try to live there anyway. Living an illusion that we create.  Only when we give up our attachment to our future and past selves can we be fully in the present.

I have been reading about Buddhism for about the last 15 years.  Throughout this time I have added knowledge and engaged in practices that have gradually changed me.  But at what point are you a Buddhist?  That happened for me today, when I realized that I had accepted my death in the Buddhist manner and it had freed me.  Today, I am a Buddhist.

Over the next few (years I hope) I will be studying “The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying”.  I will post my thought on the book and my process here for anyone to read.  I welcome discussion and will do my best to be responsive.

Some of the practices and methods I have used and non-standard.  They are not standard because they are not socially acceptable in our society.  As I no longer fear, I will be discussing these as well, because they have been the most important, transformative experiences of my life.

I am walking dead.  So are you.

3 comments:

  1. Yes Frances that was the message. But KI ant everyone to understand where I am with this mentally.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I understand. Shungo (from my heart to yours), you remain in my thoughts.

    ReplyDelete