Is surrendering to God fatalistic?

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Transcript

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question from Akshay Gowring room is surrendering to God God’s will fatalism you said in one of your articles that stop serving God as an advisor means we should not tell God what is to be done but rather we should accept his will but won’t this lead to fatalism accepting that nothing can be changed and just living passively in life answer no not at all surrender is not fatalism because surrender the very act of surrender includes the understanding it is based on the understanding that we have free will and by our free will we choose to surrender so fatalism means nothing is in our hands whereas when we say surrender to God that means we are accepting that whether to surrender or not is in our hands and that itself means we have free will it is not that we are helpless so that’s the first point secondly when we say surrender to God’s will that does not mean surrender is passive Arjuna surrendered to Krishna’s will Krishna said to Arjuna surrender it’s just surrender to me and Arjuna surrendered normally we think of surrender as when two enemies are fighting and one enemy becomes weak the enemy surrenders put down the weapon but what happens to Arjuna at the end of the Bhagavad Gita is he picks up the weapon yatra yogeshwara krishna yatra partha in 18.78 it says he has picked up his weapon and is ready to fight so that means this we shouldn’t apply on devotional surrender the stereotype notion that we acquired from material movie conceptions of surrender so here surrender means giving up everything else except serving Krishna so in movie surrender just means giving up ending the fight but surrender in bhakti surrender to Krishna means not giving up the fight but but deciding to fight on Krishna’s terms not by our own bhakti is itself active so just as Arjuna picked up the bow and fought he did his duty in a mood of devotional service to Krishna similarly we also do our duty and we do our duty tremendously enthusiastically so the point of surrendering is to harmonize ourselves with God’s will it is not to say that we don’t have any will the very act of surrendering means that we have a will and we use our will to do God’s will so for example when a patient is sick and patient thinks maybe I’ll eat this maybe I’ll do this maybe I’ll do that nothing works the patient finally goes to a competent doctor and says karishevachinam tava I will do your will whatever you tell me I’ll do I’ll take your treatment now the patient is surrendering to the doctor but is the patient being fatalistic oh my sickness is permanent nothing can be changed no the patient is surrendering because the patient is not fatalistic patient understand that by surrendering to this doctor things will I will become healthy so similarly by surrendering to Krishna we will become happy now while we are living the life of devotional service to Krishna there are times when our plans may not work and when things go wrong there are certain things which can be changed there are certain things which cannot be changed you know as it is said that oh God give me the intelligence to change the things which we can change to tolerate the things which we can’t change and to and give me the intelligence to know the difference between the two so surrender means to do what we can with what we have now surrender does not mean to do nothing and we say don’t stop serving God as an advisor what this essentially means is that the things which have not worked out the things which we don’t have we don’t bother too much about that we don’t grieve or complain or about those things rather with what we have now we do it we do what we can so surrender is in that sense the exact opposite of fatalism fatalism means nothing is in our hands surrender first of all means that our own free will is in our hands and by our free will we surrender and then further we also understand in surrender that actually I will serve Krishna I will do my duty with whatever resources I have and with whatever capacity I have surrender in that sense is proactive it is dynamic we are not letting our mental energy get dissipated in things that are not there so we are actually optimizing the use of whatever energies we have for doing the best that we can so surrender is very proactive and dynamic course of action and it is quite the polar opposite of fatalism fatalism means that it’s based on an erroneous conception of surrender where we think of surrender only as passivity no and then we may say nothing is in my hands everything is in God’s hands that is not the idea of surrender surrender means that accept that which is favorable reject that which is unfavorable so we accept that which is favorable that is a choice that again indicates that we have the capacity to choose that we reject that which is unfavorable that also indicates that it’s a choice and we have the capacity to choose so surrender is empowering it is not fatalistic at all thank you you say we are doing the service and we get taste in it