A Zen Master was asked by the Emperor of Japan…. The Emperor had come and asked the same question, Krishna Deva. Maybe you are the reincarnation of the same Emperor! Because the Japanese tend to be reborn in India — this is the land of their Master, Buddha. Every Japanese keeps the desire to come to India someday. If they die without coming in this life, they are reborn here. They die with the desire.
The Emperor reached the Zen Master and asked him, “What is hell and what is heaven?”
The Zen Master looked at the Emperor and said “You son-of-a-bitch! Have you looked at your face in the mirror lately? I have never seen such a dirty-looking fellow before!”
The Emperor was enraged! He had not expected such a thing from such a great saint. You don’t know great saints! You know only small, puny saints. A real saint is not a cat, he is a tiger!
The Emperor was so enraged that he pulled his sword out of its sheath. He was going to cut the head of the Master. Just as the sword was coming closer, the Master said, “Wait! You are entering hell. This is the gate to hell.”
The way the Master said “Wait!” was so powerful that the Emperor’s hand was stopped in the middle, and he understood — “True!” He threw the sword away, fell at the feet of the Master, and the Master laughed and said, “This is the way to heaven! You have already experienced both within a single moment. The distance is not far.”
Whenever you are surrendered to existence, whenever you live in trust, love, prayer, joy, celebration, you are in heaven.
Surrender
Story says whenever you complain, what you have created for yourself? Simple question and we realize how we have created misery in our life.
What we can learn from this short and sweet story?
Emperor was expecting logical answer from Zen master. You can not satisfied your mind by logical answer. For such questions you need only your own experiences. Whenever you are complaining what you have created for yourself? Can you recollect it? It’s always Hell. And whenever you surrender you created Heaven for you.
Learning from the story is Surrender.
Experience Learning
The key to Surrender is yes to the reality.
Always say “yes” to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say “yes” to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.
What is the Meaning of Surrender and How Surrender Works?
To some people, surrender may have negative connotations, implying defeat, giving up, failing to rise to the challenges of life, becoming lethargic, and so on. True surrender, however, is something entirely different. It does not mean to passively put up with whatever situation you find yourself in and to do nothing about it. Nor does it mean to cease making plans or initiating positive action.
Surrender is the simple but profound wisdom of yielding to rather than opposing the flow of life. The only place where you can experience the flow of life is the Now, so to surrender is to accept the present moment unconditionally and without reservation. It is to relinquish inner resistance to what is.
Inner resistance is to say “no” to what is, through mental judgment and emotional negativity. It becomes particularly pronounced when things “go wrong,” which means that there is a gap between the demands or rigid expectations of your mind and what is. That is the pain gap.
If you have lived long enough, you will know that things “go wrong” quite often. It is precisely at those times that surrender needs to be practiced if you want to eliminate pain and sorrow from your life. Acceptance of what is immediately frees you from mind identification and thus reconnects you with Being. Resistance is the mind.
Non-surrender hardens your psychological form, the shell of the ego, and so creates a strong sense of separateness. The world around you and people in particular come to be perceived as threatening. Not only your psychological form but also your physical form – your body – becomes hard and rigid through resistance. Tension arises in different part of your body, and the body as a whole contracts. The free flow of life energy through the body, which is essential for its healthy functioning, is greatly restricted.
If you find your life situation unsatisfactory or even intolerable, it is only by surrendering first that you can break the unconscious resistance pattern that perpetuates that situation.
Surrender is perfectly compatible with taking action, initiating change, or achieving goals. But in the surrendered state a totally different energy, a different quality, flows into your doing. Through nonresistance, the quality of your consciousness and, therefore, the quality of whatever you are doing or creating is enhanced immeasurably. The results will then look after themselves, and reflect that quality. We could call this surrendered action.
It is the quality of your consciousness at this moment that is the main determinant of what kind of future you will experience, so to surrender is the most important thing you can do to bring about positive change. This is what Jesus talked about as “the one thing that is needed.” Any action you take is secondary. No truly positive action can arise out of an unsurrendered state.
