18.66: Surrender is not about giving up, but about going up

The Bhagavad-gita (18.66) concludes by calling upon us to surrender to Krishna. To many of us, the word surrender may conjure images of a defeated military general reluctantly and resentfully giving up a lost fight. The Gita’s understanding of surrender is totally different: it connotes a voluntary offering of our heart’s love to Krishna expressed by harmonizing our human will with his divine will. It arises from a higher vision of reality that discovers in life’s battles hidden opportunities to experience Krishna’s love for us and to express our love for him.

Thus, surrender is not about giving up: abandoning a battle unwillingly, but about going up: raising our vision willingly to plug in to a higher cause. Once we have connected ourselves to the higher cause of becoming an instrument of Krishna’s will, we then see the battle in a new light, evaluating dispassionately whether it is worth fighting and intuiting perspicaciously the best way to fight it. More importantly, by going up ,we naturally grow up in our relationship with Krishna, which in and of itself is a success more lasting than victory in the specific, temporal battle.