Surrender

 

 

Surrender. What is surrender? To surrender is to be ready for faith. Surrender means to be yielding, to allow faith to happen. It means to be receptive, to be unguarded, to be vulnerable, open.

 

If you come in contact with a Buddha, with a master, yield to him. Don't resist him, because you are resisting yourself, you are fighting against yourself. If you resist a master you are not allowing him to work; you are not helping him to help you. You are creating problems, unnecessary anxieties, unnecessary barriers. You already have too much nonsense. Don't create more barriers. The master will have to do much work upon you as you are, even if you have surrendered. If you are nonsurrendering, you are creating unnecessary troubles and it will become impossible to help you. You are working against yourself.

 

Don't be against yourself -- that is what is meant by surrender. Yield, allow, cooperate, so that something can be done and you can be transformed.

 

The master, the guru, is a person with whom you are in deep love and faith and reverence. It is not just a relationship; it is a deep creativity. He can create you, he can transform you, he can give you a new birth. But then, you will have to be ready to pass through many things. Many unknown paths will have to be travelled, many unknown doors will have to be passed, many unknown locks will have to be opened. If you are not in a deep surrender, you will not move into this unknown territory; you will resist. You need a deep trust so that when the master moves into the unknown you can follow him like a shadow.

 

Surrender means a deep yes-attitude to the master -- never say no. If you say no, you have taken yourself in your own hands. If you say yes, you are in his hands.

 

I will tell you one anecdote:

 

There was a great master, a Sufi master. A disciple came to him. This disciple became very famous later on. The disciple's name was Bayazid.

 

Bayazid came to his master. The master looked into his eyes and said, "Remain silent." He had not even uttered a single word; the disciple had not said anything, he had not even been introduced. This was the first thing the master said. He looked into the eyes of Bayazid, the young man, and said, "Remain silent."

 

Bayazid thought, "He may be occupied. I will wait." But this waiting lasted for twelve years. How could Bayazid speak when the master said to remain silent? So he remained with his master for twelve years, not speaking a single word. Many came and went in these twelve years, crowds came and went. Bayazid was there, just waiting, waiting. It was a long, long wait -- twelve years. And because the master had said, "Don't speak. Remain silent," of course he would not speak to anyone else either. He was totally silent.

 

By and by, thoughts dropped. If you don't use them, they drop. By using them, you give them energy and fuel. Finally, thinking stopped. After twelve years of no speaking, no talking, just waiting, the mind dropped. Suddenly one day....

 

The first time Bayazid had come, the master had looked into his eyes. After twelve years, he again looked info Bayazid's eyes and said, "Now there is no need to speak" -- as if this was the second sentence, connected with the first; as if there had been no twelve years of waiting in between and he was still speaking: "Remain silent. Now there is no need to speak." But there was a gap of twelve years between these two sentences!

 

Bayazid laughed. The master said, "Now, you can go and teach others. You are ready. You have become a master in your own right."

 

People asked the old master again and again, "How did this happen? This young man was not doing anything and now you say he has become a master in his own right. He was just waiting here, wasting time. He looks stupid, dull. He has not even uttered a single sentence; he may be dumb. He goes on sitting and sitting; he's just lazy. What are you saying? How can it be that he has become a master in his own right when he has not practiced anything?"

 

The master said, "But he need not practice anything. He didn't need to. He simply surrendered, and I could work." He said, "Then there was no need on his part to do anything else. A total yes was enough on his part. Then I entered him and worked. For these twelve years I have been working. He was simply allowing."

 

This is what surrender means. Allow.

 

Relax your ego. Then, much is possible. Otherwise, you go on destroying yourself, doing many things against yourself.

 

-Osho, “The New Alchemy: To Turn You On, #13, Q1”