The Will That Tries to Surrender

Many years ago, I encountered a short piece by Meister Eckhart entitled “On True Obedience.” Eckhart was a medieval German Dominican theologian and preacher, but his words did not sound like an ordinary instruction about religious discipline. He wrote that when a person no longer wills anything for himself, God wills on that person’s behalf. The statement was startling because it did not present obedience as the suppression of one will by another. It described a transformation in which the human will ceased to stand apart from God as an independent center claiming ownership over its desires and actions.

Another Eckhartian statement carried the same paradoxical force: God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. We usually imagine nearness in spatial terms. One person is closer than another, while God seems infinitely distant from both. Eckhart reverses that picture. God cannot be distant in the way another object is distant, because our existence already depends upon the divine presence. We cannot step outside that presence and observe it from elsewhere. God may be difficult to comprehend not because God is too far away, but because God is more intimate than the observing self.

These claims helped me understand contemplation in a different way. Contemplation is often described as something we do, such as prayer, meditation, silence, or concentrated attention. All these practices may prepare us for contemplation, but they can also become further projects of the religious ego. We may begin to measure the quality of our prayer, compare our discipline with that of others, or seek an experience that confirms our spiritual progress. God then becomes another object to be reached through effort.

Eckhart’s language interrupts this pattern. Contemplation begins when we stop trying to make God the result of our religious labor. The activity does not necessarily cease, but the structure of ownership changes. Prayer is no longer a technique by which I acquire holiness. Silence is no longer evidence that I have become contemplative. The person remains active, but no longer treats the action as private spiritual property.

This understanding immediately presents a difficulty. Surrender can itself become an achievement. A person may renounce wealth, submit to authority, endure pain, or accept death while remaining governed by pride. The Japanese samurai who chose death to defend personal or family honor did not necessarily transcend the ego. The willingness to die can be the ego’s most dramatic form of self-assertion. Paul recognized the same possibility in 1 Corinthians 13. A person may distribute every possession and surrender the body to suffering, yet gain nothing if love is absent.

True obedience cannot therefore be measured by the extremity of the sacrifice. The deeper question concerns the self that performs it. Does surrender release the need to possess, control, and appear righteous, or does it provide a grander stage for the same need? Eckhart’s teaching is demanding because it removes even renunciation from the list of things by which we can establish our spiritual worth.

The Existential Triad Without a Ladder

The familiar distinction between having and being, associated in modern thought with Erich Fromm, identifies two basic orientations toward life. In the mode of having, reality is approached through possession. In the mode of being, life is approached through presence, participation, and experience. Yet human existence also contains a third dimension that deserves equal attention: doing. Together, having, doing, and being form an existential triad.

It is tempting to arrange the three as a ladder. Having occupies the lowest level because material possession appears selfish. Doing seems higher because it involves productivity, service, or moral effort. Being then occupies the highest level because it appears free from both possession and performance. This hierarchy is attractive, but it does not survive careful examination. Each dimension is necessary, and each contains its own forms of goodness and distortion.

Having is not inherently corrupt. We need homes, clothing, food, tools, savings, and access to knowledge. Relationships also involve a legitimate language of belonging. We speak of our family, our community, and our responsibilities. Memory itself depends upon retaining something from the past. The moral question concerns the form of possession. Having becomes destructive when ownership turns into control, when security requires accumulation without limit, or when a person’s worth is measured by what can be claimed.

Doing is equally necessary. Love that never takes the form of action remains incomplete. Families must be cared for, injustices confronted, promises honored, and work completed. Human creativity enters the world through action. Still, doing can become a source of self-justification. Productivity may become proof that we deserve to exist. Religious service may become evidence of holiness. Even generous work can create an invisible account in which we record what others owe us.

Being appears less vulnerable because it seems to precede both possession and action. Yet identity can become the most intimate possession of all. “I am contemplative,” “I am enlightened,” “I am faithful,” or “I am saved” may sound deeper than “I have” or “I did.” Such statements can also build a fortified image of the self. The person then protects not an external possession or visible accomplishment, but a spiritual identity that feels inseparable from existence itself.

The distinction that finally matters is not between having, doing, and being, but between possessive and receptive ways of inhabiting them. Having can become stewardship, in which goods are received, cared for, and shared. Doing can become participation, in which the actor accepts responsibility without claiming total authorship. Being can become receptivity, in which identity is accepted as gift rather than manufactured as a monument to the self.

No part of the triad guarantees freedom from ego. Nor must any part be abandoned. A mature life integrates all three without asking one of them to secure the self. We may have without treating possession as ultimate security, do without turning achievement into personal justification, and be without making identity a boundary of superiority.

Action Without Ownership

The Bhagavad Gita approaches this difficulty through the discipline of action. Arjuna stands on a battlefield, unable to act because the conflict before him involves teachers, relatives, duties, and terrible consequences. Krishna does not tell him that action is unimportant. Nor does he invite Arjuna to withdraw into a spirituality untouched by history. He calls him to discern and perform his duty while releasing attachment to the fruits of action.

The famous verse in the second chapter is sometimes reduced to the advice that we should focus on the process rather than the result. That interpretation captures part of the teaching, but it can also weaken it. The Gita does not declare results irrelevant. Arjuna’s decision will affect lives, families, political order, and his own moral condition. Responsible action still requires an end, and the means must remain answerable to that end. A process does not become sacred because we are absorbed in it.

Krishna’s teaching concerns the actor’s relation to the outcome. We exercise judgment, choose a course, and act with care, but the result never comes from our agency alone. Other people, inherited conditions, natural events, social structures, and consequences beyond prediction all enter into what follows. We are responsible for our action, but we are not sovereign over its fruit.

Attachment to results distorts action because the outcome becomes a judgment upon the self. Success seems to prove our worth, while failure threatens our identity. Under this pressure, the goal may consume the means. We begin to manipulate, conceal, or harm because the desired result must be secured. In other cases, fear of failure prevents action altogether. The Gita refuses both compulsive achievement and retreat into inaction.

Karma yoga can therefore be understood as action without private ownership of the fruit. It is not carelessness about consequences, and it does not excuse poor preparation. It asks for full engagement without the fantasy of complete control. We act because the action is right, necessary, or faithful, not because a successful result will finally establish who we are.

Here the distance between Krishna and Eckhart becomes unexpectedly small, although their religious worlds remain distinct. Eckhart’s obedient person does not cease to will, and Arjuna does not cease to act. In both cases, freedom appears when action is released from the isolated self’s claim of authorship. The person still chooses and remains accountable, but the action occurs within a reality larger than the actor.

This perspective also prevents spirituality from becoming withdrawal. If attachment rather than action is the central difficulty, then work, family life, civic responsibility, and service can become sites of spiritual freedom. The question is no longer whether we act, but whether action becomes another possession with which the ego constructs itself.

Non-Self and the Reality Before Possession

Buddhist thought offers a related challenge through the teaching of anattā in Pali, or anātman in Sanskrit. The term is often translated as non-self or not-self. It questions the assumption that beneath the changing processes of body, feeling, perception, thought, and consciousness there exists a permanent and independent substance that can be identified as “me.” What we call the self is not denied as an everyday reality, but it cannot be found as the fixed owner of experience.

The idea of tathatā, usually translated as suchness or thusness, approaches the issue from another direction. Reality is encountered as it is before the mind divides it according to preference, fear, use, or possession. We normally see things through the question of what they mean for us. Suchness points toward an encounter in which reality is not immediately absorbed into the projects of the self.

These Buddhist concepts resemble Eckhart’s detachment because they weaken the claim of an autonomous ego. They should not be treated as alternative expressions of the same doctrine. Buddhism, Hindu traditions, and Christianity offer different accounts of the self and ultimate reality. The Bhagavad Gita speaks of the deeper ātman, Buddhism questions any permanent self, and Eckhart speaks from within a Christian understanding of creation and divine grace. Similar existential movements can arise from different metaphysical foundations.

Across these differences, each tradition recognizes that suffering increases when the self treats itself as the center and owner of reality. Desire says, “This must become mine.” Achievement says, “This occurred because of me.” Identity says, “This is what I am, and it separates me from those who are not.” Spiritual disciplines attempt to loosen these claims, but no vocabulary can accomplish the transformation by itself.

Indeed, the ego can appropriate the teaching of non-self. A person may take pride in understanding anattā, consider conventional believers intellectually inferior, or form an identity around having no fixed identity. Non-attachment becomes an admired personal quality. Emptiness becomes a doctrine one possesses. The ego announces that it has overcome the ego and thereby returns in a more sophisticated form.

The same pattern appears wherever spiritual language becomes a badge. A person can speak fluently about contemplation while remaining impatient with ordinary people. Another can explain suchness while refusing to receive reality when it arrives in an inconvenient form. Correct ideas remain valuable, but they do not carry their own guarantee of transformation. They can expose the trap, yet the exposed trap may still attract us.

Love Beyond Desire and Possession

Paul’s meditation on love in 1 Corinthians 13 becomes more demanding when read in this context. He names abilities and sacrifices that religious communities naturally admire: eloquence, prophecy, knowledge, faith, generosity, and courage before death. He does not dismiss these gifts as worthless in themselves. He shows that none of them determines the spiritual quality of the person who possesses them.

Love is difficult to use as a criterion because the word covers many experiences. It may refer to attraction, affection, loyalty, desire, care, or emotional dependence. Erotic love often contains longing and the wish for union. These are not necessarily corrupt. Human love normally begins within need, embodiment, and vulnerability. Distortion enters when the beloved is valued chiefly as a source of satisfaction, security, recognition, or control.

Possessive love says that another person matters because of what that person provides. Even devotion can conceal this structure. We may serve someone in order to become indispensable, give in order to create obligation, or protect in order to control. The external form resembles love, while the underlying movement returns everything to the self.

Mature love allows the other person to exist beyond our possession. The beloved has a good that cannot be reduced to our comfort. Such love still desires closeness and may experience grief, jealousy, or fear, but it does not make control the condition of relationship. It receives the other as a reality rather than as an extension of personal need.

Self-love requires the same distinction. It is sometimes treated as a synonym for egoism, but hatred of oneself does not overcome the ego. It can bind attention to the self as firmly as vanity does. Rightly ordered self-love accepts one’s creaturely value without declaring the self to be its own source. The Christian command to love one’s neighbor as oneself assumes that care for the self can become the measure of care extended to another.

Love, then, is not one more achievement to add to prayer, faith, sacrifice, or knowledge. It changes the direction of all of them. Prayer shaped by love does not seek a superior spiritual identity. Sacrifice shaped by love does not need an audience. Knowledge shaped by love does not reduce another person to ignorance. Action continues, but it no longer circles back toward the actor as proof of worth.

This offers a better way to understand the difference between genuine and false surrender. False surrender remains fascinated with the surrendering self. It measures how much has been given up and how courageously suffering has been endured. True obedience is less concerned with its own appearance. Its fruit is an increased capacity to love without turning either the beloved or the act of loving into a possession.

Knowledge That Rebuilds the Distance

The danger becomes especially clear in our relationship to religious knowledge. Imagine a Christian who has read Eckhart’s sermons, understands negative theology, and can compare Christian mysticism with Hindu and Buddhist thought. That person meets another believer who has served in a church for decades but has never heard Eckhart’s name. The educated reader may begin to regard the other as spiritually unsophisticated.

Nothing in the content of Eckhart’s teaching justifies that judgment. His writings repeatedly challenge possessiveness, self-importance, and attachment to spiritual methods. Yet the reader can transform Eckhart into cultural and religious capital. Knowledge of detachment becomes a new attachment. A theology of humility becomes a reason for intellectual pride.

The simpler believer may understand none of Eckhart’s terminology while embodying much of what he teaches. Years of caring for family members, serving without recognition, forgiving injuries, and remaining faithful through disappointment may have formed a life in which action is no longer performed for applause. The scholar may explain true obedience more accurately, while the ordinary believer lives closer to it.

This contrast should not be used to romanticize ignorance. Study matters. Theology can correct destructive interpretations, preserve historical memory, refine moral judgment, and introduce us to forms of wisdom that our immediate community has forgotten. Intellectual discipline also guards against emotional enthusiasm and manipulation. The danger begins when knowledge ceases to serve love and becomes evidence of the knower’s rank.

Paul states the issue directly in 1 Corinthians 8: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.” His words do not oppose truth. They distinguish between two ways knowledge can inhabit a person. Knowledge can inflate the boundaries of the self, or it can increase the capacity to serve. Its spiritual value appears in the relationship it creates between the knower and those who know less, know differently, or do not share the same faith.

The Bible itself can be drawn into the same pattern. Christians confess that salvation comes through the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ, not through personal merit. Yet the statement “I am saved” can become a possession more intimate than wealth or reputation. Grace is affirmed as unearned while being used as a status that separates the secure from the condemned.

Once salvation becomes private property, the Gospel’s internal logic is reversed. An undeserved gift provides a reason for superiority. The believer may approach another person less as someone already known and loved by God than as a spiritual deficit to be corrected. Evangelization then becomes an exercise of rank, even when its language remains doctrinally accurate.

The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector portrays the same reversal. The Pharisee’s religious practices may be genuine. He fasts and gives what the law requires. His error lies in using faithfulness as a height from which to look down upon another person. The tax collector offers no record of accomplishment. He stands before God without property to defend, including the property of moral superiority.

Scripture, theology, and spiritual experience are meant to transform the person who receives them. When they increase contempt, their content has been separated from their purpose. A person may possess the words of the Gospel while resisting the movement of grace that those words announce. Theological knowledge reaches maturity when it removes the platform from which we judge, rather than raising that platform higher.

Contemplation Made Fruitful

The movement from possession toward receptivity does not end in inactivity. Eckhart’s treatment of Mary and Martha is instructive here. Christian tradition often presents Mary, seated at the feet of Jesus, as the image of contemplation, while Martha represents necessary but spiritually secondary work. Eckhart reverses the expected ranking. Martha’s activity does not separate her from God because she acts from a grounded center. She can remain with things without becoming trapped in them.

Contemplation matures when it becomes fruitful in action. A person who requires silence, isolation, and ideal conditions in order to remain spiritually centered has not necessarily reached the freedom Eckhart describes. Those conditions may be valuable, but dependence upon them can become another attachment. The test arrives when contemplation enters work, conflict, family responsibility, disappointment, and service.

True obedience also cannot mean unconditional submission to human authority. Religious language about surrender has often been used to silence conscience and protect abusive institutions. An authority may demand compliance while calling resistance selfishness. Yet surrender to God cannot require the abandonment of truth, moral judgment, or responsibility. At times, obedience to God takes the form of refusing a human command.

The fruits of true surrender are therefore concrete. The person becomes less occupied with appearing holy, more willing to accept correction, and more capable of acting without recognition. Responsibility increases rather than disappears. Other people are granted greater freedom because they are no longer required to support the believer’s identity. Love becomes less possessive, and knowledge becomes more hospitable.

Having, doing, and being can now be seen without arranging them into a hierarchy. Having becomes stewardship when possessions are received as goods entrusted to our care. Doing becomes service when action is freed from the demand to establish our worth. Being becomes receptivity when identity is accepted without being turned into a wall against others. The existential triad remains intact, but its center of gravity changes.

Eckhart’s true obedience does not ask us to disappear. It asks us to release the claim that we are the isolated origin of whatever is good in us. The Bhagavad Gita does not ask us to ignore results. It asks us to act without making the fruit the possession of the actor. Buddhist non-self does not excuse us from moral life. It questions the permanent owner around whom craving and fear organize themselves. Paul does not reject knowledge, faith, or sacrifice. He places them within the transforming demand of love.

The teachings meet at a difficult recognition: the ego can survive every attempt to defeat it. It can possess wealth, achievements, identities, doctrines, renunciations, and experiences of emptiness. It can even possess the conviction that it has surrendered. Freedom begins anew whenever that final claim is released.

We may read every word Eckhart wrote and remain untouched by true obedience. We may also encounter someone who has never heard his name but whose life has become an unclaimed gift to others. The difference cannot be measured by vocabulary alone. It appears in whether knowledge reduces distance, whether action permits freedom, and whether love can receive another person without turning that person into evidence for the self. The ego’s last possession may be the belief that it has learned to let go. True surrender leaves even that possession behind.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash