In the first year that I began my dharma practice (the study and praxis of the teachings of the Buddha), I began my retreat practice. At least once a year, I go to the woods of Barre, MA and spend six to seven days and nights in silent seated or walking meditation at Insight Meditation Society (IMS), a retreat center rooted in the Theravada Buddhist tradition. Where my daily 20-minute meditation keeps me grounded in day-to-day of my life, the concentrated energy of silence and cultivation on retreat allows me to drop into the nature of my mind and (best case scenario) for insights to arise.

And for years I have contemplated (with confusion) a specific artwork that lives in a hallway staircase at IMS. 

Try not 
to expect
anything 
in this way
everything 
will open up 
to you

On my annual retreat earlier this year, in the silence of things, and in the unknowable way of awareness awakening, this text has moved from an incoherent Buddhist koan to an embodied understanding. 

It’s about cutting the cord of our expectations and how we think things should be. It is about letting things slip out of our grasp. As much as mindfulness and Buddhist practice compels the practitioner to be in the present moment of what is happening, the resulting next step is often to surrender. 

Up and down &
Alongside the water,
Cutting the cord.  

With palms open and fingers outstretched
With no more words
Letting go. 

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What does it mean to surrender? 

The online etymology dictionary informs me that “surrender” comes from the Old French “surrendre” meaning to “give up” or “deliver over” (sur- “over” + -rendre “give back”). 

Merriam-Webster provides a more verbose definition. 

sur·​ren·​der | verb 

1. to yield to the power, control, or possession of another upon compulsion or demand
2. to give up completely or agree to forgo especially in favor of another
3. to give (oneself) up into the power of another especially as a prisoner
4. to give (oneself) over to something (such as an influence)

Power, control, possession. In this definition, surrender is the language of conquest, evoking the battlefield and the forceful acquisition of land. It brings to mind a relinquishing of power, provoking a negative connotation. 

Societally, we are taught not to wave the white flag. But I’d like to counter that giving up is not such a bad thing. Building a practice of resiliency around letting go and surrendering to those things that are not working for us can open up space for more possibilities, for different futures. 

This is a syllabus about building a ritual around letting go. We’ll explore how surrender can be an embrace of emptiness and a recipe for release. 

How can we give up the push and pull and create space for something new to arise? 

This syllabus will look to text, land-based art practice, and movement to provide context for embracing emptiness and building rituals around surrender and release. 

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1: EXPLORING TEXT or BUDDHA SAYS “BE LIKE WATER” 

Listen Sariputra
this Body itself is Emptiness
and Emptiness itself is this Body.
This Body is not other than Emptiness
and Emptiness is not other than this Body.
The same is true of Feelings,
Perceptions, Mental Formations,
and Consciousness.

– The Heart Sutra

Nothing is fixed. Think of how water takes the shape of its vessel, filling the empty space with its form. If I held up a pitcher of water and asked you “What is this?” you would say “It’s a pitcher filled with water”. If I poured that same water into a glass and asked you “What is this?” you would say “It’s a glass of water.” If I then poured the water into a vase and asked you “What is this?” you would say “It’s a vase full of water.” Each is distinctly its own thing. Yet, while water may enter a pitcher, be poured into a glass and then into a vase, transforming to different shapes and configurations, it keeps its essence. 

This is the core of The Heart Sutra, a fundamental Buddhist teaching on emptiness or the nature of all things. It tells us that “form”, which we can take to be an object, a feeling, a way of thinking or the body itself, does not differ from “emptiness”, that which does not exist. And vice versa, emptiness does not differ from form. 

The teaching is meant to transform our view about permanence and how we experience life. We expect things to be “fixed” and continuous when in reality they are always shifting, ever-changing from moment to moment. 

When we expect things to be fixed, we not only suffer from the truth of impermanence, we are unable to transform our views to meet the present moment. The Heart Sutra asks us to embrace the body (form) and its impermanence (“emptiness”), inviting us into a dynamic interplay and interbeing with life. 

The Heart Sutra teaching is put into praxis in Rebecca Solnit’s 2004 book Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities. In the book, Solnit writes about how the urgency of the political moment (then, the Bush Administration and the so-called “War on Terror”) calls for letting go of any fixed ideology. 

“To be anti doctrinal is to open yourself up to new and unexpected alliances, to new networks of power. It’s to reject the static utopia in favor of the improvisational journey”. 

Solnit argues that leftist organizers suffer from clinging to fixed views on the strategies and practices that lead to liberation. In fact, the idea that these fixed strategies and practices will lead to a static utopia is the delusion of permanence. Instead, organizers should adopt a view of process, responding to the needs of the moment. She quotes her friend John Jordan, anticapitalist organizer and climate activist (emphasis my own): 

“Our movements are trying to create a politics that challenges all certainties of traditional leftist politics, not by replacing them with new ones, but by dissolving any notion that we have answers, plans or strategies that are watertight or universal. In fact our strategies must be more like water itself, undermining everything that is fixed, hard and rigid with fluidity, a constant movement and evolution.” 

Endeavoring to be like water, we cultivate a mind willing to let go of attachments. 

Prompt: 

Where do expectations show up in your life? 

Are these expectations limiting?

Where is there space in your life to release expectations?

Read:

• New Heart Sutra translation by Thich Nhat Hanh
• “After Ideology” in Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities by Rebecca Solnit

2: LAND ART or GETTING IN TOUCH WITH THE EARTH

In the 1970s, the late land artist Ana Mendieta began her Siluetas (Silhouette) series, imposing the form of her body in various environments. In the images that capture the series, Mendieta’s body is inseparable from the Earth that holds it. The shape of the female form is carved into hard, compacted dirt in Mexico. A red substance fills in the majority of the form and spills out past the form’s outline. In another work, Mendieta’s body takes the form of ice, laying atop another body of Iowa ice. 

To me, the most resonant works are those where Mendieta’s body is imprinted into the dirt. They feel like both an offering and full suffusion with the Earth. After Mendieta makes her offering, it is fully dissolved into the Earth (again, form shifting). 

Cecilia Vicuña says, 

“The ear is a spiral to hear a sound within.

The earth listening to us.”

In Vicuña’s Casa Espiral, art is also an offering to the Earth. Sculptures are made from materials found on and made of the beach of Concon, along the Pacific coast of Chile. A spiral is carved into the sand and the tide washes it away. A blank canvas is created for Vicuna to fill once more. The art cannot exist without releasing it to the tide. Each sculpture is an offering to release, the force of the Earth elements receiving and absorbing the offering. 

Building a practice of letting go with the Earth. 

PROMPT: 

What is your relationship to the Earth? 

What is your relationship to the four seasons? 

What are your practices and rituals of release and letting? How can you integrate those practices with the Earth? 

VIEW:

• Ana Mendieta, Siluetas
• Cecilia Vicuña, Casa Espiral

3: MOVE, or EXORCISE A FEELING 

Whenever I need to work a feeling through my body (which is often) I put on a playlist I titled “exorcism”. I turn up the volume until I pass the tipping point where my body catches the rhythm and I begin to bounce. Then I turn it up louder and flail my limbs to the beat. I flail hard and shake and attempt to excavate, release, and transform whatever energy is feeling stuck. The playlist is a short 30 minutes, which is about as much high-output energy as my body can continuously sustain without a break. 

Mindfulness directed toward the body is a pathway to letting go. In these 30 minutes, the drill, the antagonism and/or the rhythms of the music meet me in my current condition and move me into an altered state where a feeling can be extinguished, an emotion, idea, or story can move up and out of me, a concept can leave my body. 

Homework: 

Create an exorcism playlist. Pick sonically aggressive songs: the lyrics should set a tone, the beat should shift you into a different state, and each song should bring up something bright within you. It should be music not passively listened to. The music should force you into relationship with it. 

LISTEN: 

• Exorcism (for inspiration)