Great Surrender and Effortless Action
- What is great surrender?
You wake up; you haven’t opened your eyes yet.
You listen.
Everything is quiet, except the rhythm of your breath.
You take one breath in; you feel the air passes through your nose, your lungs, and then your stomach. It pauses there for a moment. Then the breath goes out gently.
A great peace arises in just one complete breathing cycle.
This is great surrender. This surrender brings you great joy in whatever you do.
A complete act is always very tiny. The chain of your morning acts may continue like this:
· You sit up in bed, your feet touch the ground: you feel the softness of the carpet on the floor touching your feet; a sense of comfort and peace.
· You look through the window: your eyes touch a pinch of grass in the garden. Something alive in the grass brings you subtle joy. You feel a communion with the grass.
· You then open a box of teabags.
“Swap”, you hear the sound of the paper box opening.
You take one bag of tea out of the box; you hold the tea bag with your three fingers; you feel the wrap of the tea bag; you read “black tea”.
You put the tea bag into a cup.
When you hold the teapot, feel your palm touches the cool handle of the teapot.
When pouring water into the cup, you can hear the small sound of running water; a mystery!
Those are complete movements.
You feel great aliveness in each act.
It’s complete.
This is the great surrender.
Surrender to the moment completely through one small action.
- Why great surrender makes your action effortless?
You may not need an explanation. You can experience it and know.
But here is what I have experienced, in case you’re curious to hear…
When surrendering to the moment, you feel a sense of great aliveness arise; you don’t know what is it, but you can feel its subtleness.
A complete act gives you a sense of joy, wonder, and peace.
It even gives you a new discovery, a new insight.
Your chattering mind automatically disappears. It doesn’t interfere with your act. Your act has become a flow.
You and the now cooperate to produce the action.
What you do is irrelevant. Whatever you do in this way brings you a sense of fulfillment. Its quality has changed totally, compare to your action as a means to an end.
When your consciousness is total, your action also becomes total. Your whole being is in the act, nowhere else. You become the act.
Your whole being is in the palm of your hand when you hold a teapot. Great energy has moved into your palm for contact with the teapot’s handle. When you pour water from the teapot into the cup, your whole energy moves into your eyes and ears. You’re delighted in the sound of water running, in the movement of the water.
In surrendering to the moment, you experience relaxation, alertness, and aliveness at the same time.
In this relaxation, peace.
In this alertness, discovery.
In this aliveness, joy.
A complete action is always effortless. You enjoy the act itself.
- But be alert! It very easily to be lost!
When you experience the joy of a complete action, your mind may come in and demand a deeper sense of pleasure. If you listen to this demand, you are already going out of joy. You’re already moving in a different dimension, into the realm of the mind.
This is very normal. It happens to everybody who just comes in contact with this experience. The joy is very easily lost when a desire arises.
But don’t worry. Start again: one tiny complete action.
And a subtle joy will start arising again, slowly, gently…