acceptance and expansion

 

 

 Suzuki Roshi said that renunciation is not giving up the things of the world,

 but accepting that they go away.

 

 An acceptance of impermanence helps us learn how to die. 

It also reveals the flip side of loss, which is that letting go is an act of generosity.

 We let go of old grudges, and give ourselves peace. We let go of fixed views,

 and give ourselves to not knowing. 

 

We let go of self-sufficiency and give ourselves to the care of others.

 We let go of clinging and give ourselves to gratitude.

 We let go of control and give ourselves to surrender.

"Surrender is not the same thing as letting go. 

Normally, we think of letting go as a release often accompanied by a sense of freedom

 from previous restraints.

 

 Surrender is more about expansion. There is a freedom in surrender,

 but it is not really about setting something down or distancing ourselves from an object,

 person, or experience, as it is with letting go. 

 

With surrender, we are free because we have expanded into a spaciousness,

 a boundless quality of being that can include but not be constrained by

 the previously limiting beliefs that once defined us, keeping us separate and apart.

 

 We release the fruitless habit of clinging to changing objects as a source of happiness.

 

 In surrender, we are reconstituted. We are no longer enslaved by our pasts.

 No longer imprisoned by our former identities. We become intimate 

with the inner truth of our essential nature.

 

 In surrender, 

we feel ourselves not gaining distance, but rather coming closer.

 

 

 

 

 

~ Frank Ostaseski

from The Five Invitations

art by by Antony Gormley