The Value of Surrender

Dear friends, 

In the upside down ways of the world, people want to win. “Total victory,” says one leader, "I didn’t lose, I won big,” says another. These are reflections of us and our battles with reality. An attitude that might be more attuned to the deeper truth of our existence is that the desire to win is a mis-formulation of the mind. Instead, we might consider the value of surrender. 

“The Gate of Surrender” is the title of the sixth chapter of Rabbi Bahyeh Ibn Pekuda’s eleventh century masterpiece, Duties of the Heart. Reading it is a balm to the ridiculous vanity of our times.  

Pekuda describes a person who acts with the value of surrender: “a soft tongue, a low voice, humility at a time of anger, not exacting revenge when one has the power to do so.” 

How different would our world be if we all acted with humility at times of anger? How different would our family lives be, our friendships, our relationships with our national and personal neighbors? 

Today, one of the worst sources of pride-infused certainty is religion. I guess things weren’t so different a thousand years ago, since the God-touting person’s destructive pride is what led Pakuda to write this chapter:  

“...arrogance in the acts devoted to G-d was found to seize the person more swiftly than any other potential damager. Its damage to these acts is so great that I deemed it pressing to discuss that which will distance arrogance from man, namely, surrender.” 

Of course, people spouting their righteous anger are not exclusively religious. As a matter of fact, when secular people speak passionately about the horrors they see in the world, and about the justice they fight for, they most often do it with the same religious fervor that people of faith do. Almost everyone these days seems to need to work hard against arrogance: 

“...to distance a person from the grandiose, from presumption, pride, haughtiness, thinking highly of oneself, desire for dominion over others, lust to control everything, coveting what is above one, and similar outgrowths of arrogance.” 

Surrendering to the deeper reality of our humanness helps. 

“One of the wise men would say on this matter: "I am amazed at how one who has passed through the pathway of urine and blood two times (once as semen, the other as a newborn) can be proud and haughty?" 

We could continue fighting death for as long as we want. We won’t win. We could continue fighting what is for as long as we want. We won’t win. Accepting this can make the work of improving the lives we live and the world we live in not only more pleasant, but also more effective.  

“...for one whom arrogance and pride have entered in him, the entire world and everything in it is not enough for his needs due to his inflated heart and due to his looking down with contempt on the portion allotted to him. But if he is humble, he does not consider himself as having any special merit, and so whatever he attains of the world's goods, he is satisfied with it for his sustenance and other needs. This will bring him peace of mind and minimize his anxiety. But for the arrogant - the entire world will not satisfy his lacking, due to the pride of his heart and arrogance, as the wise man said (Proverbs 13): "A righteous man eats and is full, but the stomach of the wicked never feels full." 

צַדִּיק אֹכֵל לְשֹׂבַע נַפְשׁוֹ וּבֶטֶן רְשָׁעִים תֶּחְסָר. 

If anything will lead us to victory it is surrender. I pray for acceptance, for gentleness, for the ability to move forward toward goodness with simplicity and truth. 

Shabbat shalom, 
Rabbi Misha