Sunday III of Christmas
January 11th
Mt 3, 13-17
On one occasion, Ramesh Balsekar – a disciple of Nisargadatta – was asked how he would summarize all his teaching in a single sentence. Without hesitation, the wise man replied: “Everything I teach can effectively be synthesized in one sentence: ‘Thy will be done.’”
Expressed in a theistic way, this brings to my mind a phrase that my grandmother used to repeat to me: “My son, don’t worry: nothing will happen that God doesn’t want.” With this, my grandmother put words to two attitudes that constituted two great pillars of her existence: acceptance and trust.
It’s obvious that Balsekar, with his Hindu tradition, non-theist, wasn’t referring to some god whose will one would have to accept, however arbitrary it might be. And yet, in essence, he was referring to that very same double attitude.
“Thy will be done” equates to saying yes to life, accepting at all times what the present brings, in an attitude of lucid surrender, which goes hand in hand with absolute trust.
In my grandmother’s experience, acceptance and trust arose from the belief in an all-powerful and good God, someone you could rely on at all times. In non-dual understanding, they emerge from the certainty that the only truly real subject is life (consciousness). Therefore, even when things go badly for the self, it is always possible to remain grounded in the trust that we are.
We maintain a stance of resistance to what happens when we believe the self is a free subject. Once it is understood that free will does not exist, there is nothing left to do but surrender to the course of life at each moment. This, however, has nothing to do with fatalistic resignation that assumes one has no other option. Surrender is born from the *understanding that we are life*, and therefore, identified with it, at each moment we are aware of living what we “have to” live.
Enrique Martínez Lozano
(Weekly Bulletin)
English version translated with AI