There are two modes of living.

In the first mode, which is the dominant mode today, we run around chasing after pleasure and doing all that we can to avoid pain. This is the mode of striving, which inevitably leads to suffering as we are always on the treadmill struggling to make reality conform to our personal preferences. We endlessly chase after security, sensory pleasures, or status in society, no matter how fleeting and illusory.

The other mode is a very different way of being. It’s a state of radical acceptance. Radical surrender. Whatever enters the view of this being is not resisted. One surrenders to the cosmic current. One allows all situations to pass, whether they conform to one’s personal preferences or not. One becomes an instrument of totality, serving the greater good not because it is the right thing to do, but because it is perfectly authentic and natural.

The first and dominant mode leads to suffering because of its futility. The planets and the stars, atoms and molecules, are all intertwined and move along a preset path. For life to go perfectly my way, I would have to be able to control entire cosmos and change it’s flow so that this tiny speck of animated dirt on a backwater planet of one-out-of-billions of galaxies can feel lasting pleasure. It is a grand delusion.

In the mode of surrender, however, we can begin to feel ourselves as inseparable from the cosmic current. Lasting happiness is truly found by using life situations as a way to let go of the personal self. Rather than pursue activities and addictions in order to run away from unpleasant feelings, one sits with them and allows all to pass. One stops chasing and striving. What remains is stillness, available in the constant flow of life. The beautiful quiet of no-self.