What does it mean by Surrendering?

[Reena Searl]

Surrendering starts from mind, by practicing EIGHT VERSES, will have tremendous transformation, I am working hard towards this.

[Manjushri]

Definitions of 'Surreder':
1a : to yield to the power, control, or possession of another upon compulsion or demand <surrendered the fort>
1b : to give up completely or agree to forgo especially in favor of another

2a : to give (oneself) up into the power of another especially as a prisoner
2b : to give (oneself) over to something (as an influence)

Mere scholarly definitions.

So in Buddhist terms, what does it mean to surrender?

To me, it may go to the extreme of renounciation, as you surrender everything that you have, to practise and carry on turning the wheel of Dharma with minimal distractions, or like what has been nicely explained on the other posts, to surrender one's mind to the Dharma. From surrendering our mind, our body and speech will transform accordingly; and you are on the path to practising the 8 verses of thought transformation and the 9 attitudes to guru devotion.

Labelling it as 'surrendering to the Dharma', I feel is more pervasive throughout Buddhism, as it encompasses all types and schools of Buddhism.

In Vajrayana, of course, 'surrending to your Guru', is I guess, one of the higher forms of offering you can do, because it shows that you have 100% conviction and faith in your guru. It is the Dharma that your guru brings to you; hence, ultimately you are surrending to the Dharma, but it is the methods in which your guru trains, guides and teaches you that you surrender to him. Whatever that is negatively inert in you, your guru will skillfully exploit that, and use it to train you, so you surrender your negative habituations with hopes of replacing it with positive ones. However, no matter how much we claim that we can surrender, most of us still have resistence. Samsara is suffering.

Yes, it is not easy to surrender, especially in today's society, the age of degenaration (kaligyuya). But I guess you have to stick a feet out and take it step by step - ultimately with resilience and faith, you will succeed and with the guidance of a guru, there's no way but up. 

[KhedrubGyatso]

The Buddha never ask us to surrender anything other than the causes of suffering.
 Once we let go of resistance to facing our faults, to improve due to elusions like pride etc, our mind becomes clear and it will open us to receive our Guru’s blessings. What we need to surrender are the negative emotions which disturb or afflict our mind.
The methods to do that is via practicing the 50 verses ( or condensed 9 attitudes ). For transformation knowledge alone is not enough. We need to feel our actions experientially.
Surrendering is not about following a Guru’s instructions like a puppet. That would be  too simplistic and being lazy. It must have basis arising from correct faith and spiritual purpose.

[Roberto]

Real surrender begins with the mind. Once, we have let go of criticism, resistance and pride (we think we know better), then the Lamas instructions will sink in and we get the blessing as we carry out the instructions happily. However, we don't let go of the aforementioned, than whatever we do, we do it grudgingly and the blessings will not come and most likely, the result of the instructions will not fall through, we give up halfway or we will meet with even more inner and outer obstacles because of the lack of merit. Hence, our Dharma practice will not bear fruit.

Yes i like what you said here, of course surrendering yourself to the Dharma is a given or else why become a buddhist in the first place, but to surrender to the Lama will be the most difficult of all to do.

We are habiual creatures with lifetimes of karma that clouds our vision that the only way to truly see what is in store for us is by our Lama putting us through different trials and tribulations.

Take Milarepa for example, building houses for his Guru then tearing them down to start over again. Or Tilopa with Naropa, having to steal delicious curry from the wedding banquet again and again. Maybe I am taking them out of context here but if we truly trust in the teachings of the Buddha, then quite logically wouldn't that mean we would have to completely trust in our Teacher who is right in front of us?

Big Uncle you said it nicely, if we do it grudgingly or look at it from our own perspective then yes we will not truly receive the blessings our Guru had in mind for us.

So to say surrender... is one thing.
But to truly surrender... only when you are put in the position to choose
will be another thing.

[Tenzin K]

I agree with Big Uncle that Surrendering is in relation with practicing the Nine Attitudes.

One have full faith in their Guru no matter how difficult it is but the Guru instruction is the main priority and is the motivation of every single move.

There is no excuses for the obstacle arises to carry out the task but just to find the way of how to fulfill or accomplish the task given by the Guru.
I believe by having great Guru Samaya is the way to gain attainment & ultimately for enlightenment.

[hope rainbow]

The Buddha never ask us to surrender anything other than the causes of suffering.

If we were 100% clear on that, then surrender would not even be at all, for there would be nothing left to surrender.

But we are not clear on that and still are confused about what are the causes of suffering and what are the causes of happiness.
This is why we call it surrender, like it is something "hard to let go of" hard "to give up."

"Surrender" here means that even though still in a state of mental confusion, we let go of our "instinctual" judgment about the causes of suffering or happiness and instead take a leap of faith by recognizing that a Buddha knows better than us on the subject.

Yep... faith and humility are essential to the act of surrender.

[Klein]

I think surrendering means letting go. In the context of guru devotion, it means surrendering ourselves to our guru and follow whatever our Guru says. This is important for our spirituality because when we truly understand that our Guru's main objective is to lead us towards Enlightenment, we will have the confidence to follow our Guru's instructions regardless of our fears. When this happens, attainments can be realised faster. 

[hope rainbow]

What does it mean to surrender to your Guru and the Dharma? To what extend would you go?

We have read and probably know in theory from the many Dharma books that real surrender is basically letting go of one's ego, or one's entire body, speech and mind. To me that is a just an empty words if one does not realise it internally. We can say it and no matter how eloquently we put it, but are we in our daily affairs really doing it? Quite the opposite because if we did, we would not be where we are today, we would be attained by now.

However, we know this and if we really open up and let go, we know we can definitely make huge spiritual progress. And so why are we not doing it?

The reality is our egos are too huge and it will take a lot, if not many life times to chip it all away. But never the less we need to start, so for me I think the very first step would be to trust and follow whatever instructions given by the Guru.

E.g. If the Guru says give up on your business, then you should do it and trust it without a doubt. But how many of us could and would we put limits to our "surrendering"?

I surrender to my Guru, for I know for sure that my Guru knows better than me.
Simple and deep surrender, key to achieve Guru devotion in practice.

I surrender to the Buddha, for I know for sure that Blessed One has led by example and has achieved full enlightenment.

I surrender to the Dharma, for I know for sure that the Dharma is correct when I am bias.

I surrender to my Sangha, for I know for sure that the Sangha is my only reliable friend.

I surrender to my Guru, for I know that he embodies the Buddha the Dharma and the Sangha.

[yontenjamyang]

I think surrendering encompasses all aspect of life.

First we surrender to the Guru, the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha Jewels.

We surrender to the realizations and the teachings of the the Lamrim. Abide by it.

Most importantly we surrender to our vows; whatever our vows are and abide by it 24/7.

[hope rainbow]

Most importantly we surrender to our vows.

Thank you YJ, you have opened a new field of thoughts in my mind.
We surrender to our vows, that is wonderful!
We don't fight with them and run a battle everyday, we simply surrender to our vows, because they represent the better person that I can be.
We surrender to the potential that they have, in fact surrendering to our vows, is like surrendering to the Three Jewels, it has the same meaning for the aim is just the same.

[vajratruth]

Surrendering means giving up control. And so surrendering to our Guru is to give up:

(i) our comfortable mental environment which we have structured to maximize the sense of security for our fragile minds - this is our assumed knowledge that we based all decisions on, our perceptions of how things and people should be;
(ii) our emotional barriers i.e. not confronting situations that makes us feel ashamed, scared, insecure, unwanted, desperate. This may even be giving up what has previously made us "strong" i.e. our stubbornness;
(iii) our physical and environmental comfort zones - pushing our bodies physically and allowing to put into situations that we are not used to;
(iv) the primary goals of living for our own benefit and replacing it with another purpose that involve living to create benefits and wellbeing for others;
(v) seeing ourselves as having any value other than the value imputed upon us by the Guru;
(vi) everything that has previously made us "happy";
(vii) everything that has previously made us morose;

[Amitabha]

MEANING
The path of selflessness (enlightenment) is like a razor’s edge. If you fall left or right, into the abyss of dualism, good and bad, you turn from a Buddha into ten thousand devils… one of the great Zen masters has been quoted to this extent.

MOTIVATION
Lord Atisha was asked about what those will get who practice for worldly – selfish – aims only; his answer was that they will get what they want. When further asked what the future life result of such practice will be, his answer consisted of merely three words:” Hell, hungry ghost, animal.”

METHOD
All of the Buddha’s 84.000 methods aim to destroy self-grasping and self-cherishing. Reaching out with compassion and reaching in through wisdom realizing emptiness.

MIDDLE WAY
In a nutshell’s nutshell, the middle way is the harmony of emptiness – the ultimate nature of everything, and dependent arising – the appearance of everything. As Je Tsongkhapa pointed out, unless grasping at even the most subtle concept of inherent existence is overcome, enlightenment can not happen, which has been misunderstood as nihilism.

Therefore –

MEANING is the result of MOTIVATION and METHOD.

In the discussion about Dorje Shugden, some nihilists argue that since nothing exists inherently, why worry if he’s good or bad, while some eternalists say he truly exists, and argue whether he is enlightened or a demon. Yet, wouldn’t it be more interesting and revealing if we applied the same principles of emptiness/dependent arising, which also clearly include us – our motivation and method – to arrive at a view that will help us on?

The foundation of our practice, and the view with which we perform it – or in other words, our motivation and our understanding of its meaning, these are crucial factors to the results attained, and in a way even more important than the method used. Many great masters have therefore said that the preliminaries are more important than the main practice… quantum physics (Bohm etc) have proven that there’s no such thing as a neutral observer… we, our karmic disposition, arise simultaneously with whatever ‘we’ experience, and cannot be extricated from this whole, this conglomerate of cause-and-effect strands that are continuously weaving the tapestry of here-and-now.

The MEANING of something is derived from MOTIVATION and METHOD; yet the METHOD is influenced by understanding its MEANING and MOTIVATION, which in turn increases or decreases with our present METHOD that hopefully penetrates deeper into the MEANING…

[hope rainbow]

We can only surrender if we have faith.

Why do we surrender?
Because we have faith in the object of our surrender.

The object of our surrender is not ME.

And so we surrender a mind that has faith in "ME" to a mind that has faith in the object of our surrender.

When I go see a doctor, I surrender to my doctor's qualities, and I follow my doctor's instructions.

Same with the Buddha/Dharma/Sangha or our Guru (who embodies all three).
Do we surrender? Or do we think we can be happier being our own Teacher?

We can only surrender if we have faith.

[ratanasutra]

As we know surrender to one guru, it bring a very supreme benefit such as enlightenment to oneself. Even though we know it but how many of us can do it, if we can then we won't be around here any more but why there are so many high lamas who has surrendered out there so it is possible to surrender but what is the main factor of it.

For me, because of my negative and stubborn mind that pull me out to not be surrender even know the benefit. But for those mind which stable and has been control and discipline therefore able to surrender.. so if i also train and control and discipline my mind then i should be able to surrender too. 
one of example : everyone know that eat junk food, drink soft drink, sweet things etc we will get fat but how many of us have discipline in our diet and avoid all that junk food and really eat only healthy food which the result we are fat and not healthy..  i know it not easy but i believe it can be changed once we has wisdom mind.       

[Poonlarp]

When you take refuge to a Guru, we surrender our life to our Guru.

Surrendering in Buddhism have deeper meaning than only give up your worldly things such as business and job? it also includes our self grasping and attitude towards others.

The self grasping and selfishness are the qualities in us which keep us in samsara. The Guru's job is to break all that qualities and bring us to enlightenment.

Giving up self grasping and selfishness is the most difficult part that anyother physical attachment as it's like part of us, like our flesh already since this quality follow us from life to life. We must remove it! It's tough, but we must believe that by removing them, we will become a better person to absorb more Dharma for others!!