A LASTING STRUGGLE

Between Surrender and the Thirst for Knowledge

By Prof. Dr. Fahd M. Nasr

Keith’s comment: There was no struggle with my many experiences. They taught me Reality does not negotiate when It calls.

Nonetheless, I thought you would be interested in the Professor’s historical review of the world’s experience of Reality’s existence as a “lasting struggle”.

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There are those who surrender completely, letting the currents of fate carry them where they will. And then there are those who resist, their minds burning with questions, their souls restless in pursuit of meaning. But what of those who embody both?

Can one surrender to the vast, unknowable mystery of existence while maintaining an insatiable thirst for knowledge? Can one relinquish the need for absolute control yet remain ever-curious, ever-seeking?

Throughout history, philosophies, traditions, and faiths have grappled with this paradox. Some have upheld surrender as the highest virtue, urging believers to place their trust in divine will, cosmic order, or natural flow. Others have extolled the pursuit of wisdom, calling upon humanity to question, to explore, to grasp at the edges of understanding.

And yet, the deepest wisdom often emerges in the space between these two forces, not in the certainty of blind faith nor in the relentless grasping at answers, but in the delicate dance between surrender and inquiry.

Across philosophies and faiths

In the Eastern traditions, this balance is deeply woven into the spiritual teachings.

Hinduism speaks of bhakti, devotional surrender, as a path to enlightenment, yet it also reveres jnana, knowledge, as essential to self-realization. The Bhagavad Gita portrays Krishna urging Arjuna to surrender, not in passive submission, but in a way that liberates him to act with wisdom and purpose.

Buddhism, too, embraces this paradox. The seeker must surrender attachment to illusions and desires, yet the path to enlightenment is paved with deep questioning, contemplation, and meditation.

The Zen tradition goes even further, breaking the chains of rigid logic through paradoxical koans (riddles without logical solution), forcing the mind to move beyond the limitations of thought while still urging it to probe deeper.

The Abrahamic faiths, while often emphasizing submission to divine will, have also nurtured traditions of intellectual inquiry. Judaism, with its rich history of debate and exegesis, encourages its followers to wrestle with sacred texts rather than accept them passively. Christianity, especially in its mystical traditions, speaks of surrendering to grace while also seeking deeper understanding through contemplation. Islam, with its doctrine of tawakkul, trust in God, also commands believers to reflect on the signs of creation, leading to a flourishing of philosophical and scientific inquiry in the medieval Islamic world.

Yet within all these faiths, institutions have often drawn a line, warning that questioning should not challenge the fundamental tenets of belief.

A person moves through life with a quiet yet unshakable grace, surrendering to the vast unfolding of existence while remaining ever-curious, ever-seeking. Their heart is open, unburdened by the need to control what cannot be controlled, yet their mind is ablaze with questions, drawn to the infinite mystery that stretches beyond the edges of understanding.

They do not resist the currents of fate, nor do they drift in passive resignation; rather, they lead a life with a deep awareness, embracing both the unknown and the pursuit of wisdom.

They listen, not only to the voices of tradition, philosophy, and science but also to the silent truths whispered by the world itself, by nature, by the rhythm of existence.

They know that answers are never final, that knowledge is not a possession but a journey, and that surrender does not mean rejecting the hunger to understand but rather making peace with the reality that some truths will always remain beyond reach.

In their presence, there is both serenity and fire, an acceptance of life’s impermanence paired with an unrelenting desire to see more, learn more, and become more.

They are neither bound by rigid belief nor lost in relentless skepticism, for they understand that wisdom is found in the balance: in yielding without losing oneself, in seeking without clinging, in questioning without despair.

They embody the paradox of true enlightenment, where surrender is not the end of inquiry but the very force that makes deeper knowledge possible, and where the thirst for understanding is not a rebellion against the unknown but a reverent embrace of it.

In the West, the Greek philosophers stood at the threshold of reason and surrender. Socrates, embodying both wisdom and humility, surrendered to the recognition of his own ignorance while relentlessly questioning the nature of truth.

The Delphic Oracle’s call to “Know thyself” was not an invitation to blind certainty but to an endless process of self-exploration.

The Stoics, too, spoke of surrender, not to divine law, but to the unfolding of fate, while urging individuals to cultivate wisdom and virtue.

Taoism, perhaps more than any other tradition, embraces the paradox with grace. The Tao Te Ching teaches that surrendering to the Tao, the Way, is the path to true wisdom, yet this surrender is not passive resignation but an attunement to the rhythms of existence. One does not stop thinking, feeling, or questioning; rather, one moves in harmony with the unknown, no longer struggling against the tides of life but flowing with them, absorbing their lessons with open eyes and an open heart.

Die before you die…to live

Sufism, particularly as expressed through Rumi and his beloved teacher Shams Tabrizi, embraces the paradox of surrender and an insatiable thirst for knowledge in a way that transcends conventional religious doctrine.

To them, surrender is not blind obedience to dogma, nor is the pursuit of knowledge limited to mere intellectual accumulation, it is an awakening, a burning away of illusions to reveal the divine truth that pulses through all things. Rumi, in his poetry, often speaks of surrender as a dissolution of the ego, a willingness to be swept away in the ocean of divine love. Yet, this surrender does not lead to passivity but rather to an endless journey of discovery. “Die before you die,” he says, urging the seeker to let go of their limited self in order to encounter the vast, infinite reality of divine wisdom.

Shams Tabrizi, the enigmatic mystic who transformed Rumi’s life, challenged the conventional understanding of surrender by embodying both radical submission to the divine and an uncompromising demand for truth. He shattered Rumi’s world of structured learning, forcing him to see beyond books and doctrines, beyond the safety of intellectualism, and into the raw, burning experience of divine love. Shams did not ask Rumi to stop seeking but to seek differently, to let go of the illusion that truth can be possessed and instead allow truth to possess him. “Don’t seek water, seek thirst,” he urged, for it is the longing itself, the relentless yearning for understanding, that brings one closest to the divine.

For both Rumi and Shams, surrender was not about passive acceptance but about trust, a trust so deep that it allows one to dance with the unknown, to embrace the mystery without fear, and to seek truth not through rigid answers but through direct experience. They taught that knowledge is not the accumulation of facts but the stripping away of falsehoods, the burning away of everything that keeps one from direct union with the Beloved.

In this way, the Sufi path is one of both surrender and endless seeking, a path where one loses themselves to find themselves, where surrender is not an end to questioning but the very foundation of a deeper, more transformative inquiry.

As Rumi and Shams Tabrizi sat face to face, the flickering lanterns cast long shadows around them, and the rhythmic turning of the dervishes filled the air with silent poetry. The atmosphere was charged with an energy that seemed to dissolve the boundaries between the seen and the unseen, the spoken and the unspoken.

Shams, eyes gleaming with the fire of truth, leaned forward and said, “Tell me, Rumi, what does it mean to surrender?” Rumi, gazing into the depths of the night sky, smiled as if hearing the question from the very soul of existence itself. “To surrender is to fall into the arms of the Beloved without hesitation, without fear. It is to abandon the illusion of control and to trust the river of divine wisdom to carry us home.”

Shams nodded but his voice carried the weight of paradox. “And yet, my friend, surrender is not blindness, nor is it silence for the sake of silence. If surrender were merely submission, the spirit would wither. What, then, of the fire within, the hunger for truth, the longing to know, the insatiable thirst that drives the lover toward the Beloved?”

Rumi closed his eyes for a moment, as if listening to the turning of the dervishes, to the murmurs of the wind. “Ah, you speak of the dance between surrender and seeking. To surrender is not to cease questioning; rather, it is to step beyond the limits of the mind while still allowing it to wonder. The one who truly surrenders does not stop seeking, they simply cease searching in the wrong places.

The seeker and the surrendered are not separate, for the thirst itself is a gift from the Divine.”

Shams laughed, his voice ringing like a bell in the temple of the night. “So you see, my friend, the one who surrenders does not drown in the ocean; he becomes the wave. The one who seeks does not lose himself in the desert; he becomes the wind. There is no contradiction, only harmony. The heart bows in surrender, but the soul soars in longing.”

Rumi’s eyes shone with understanding, and he placed his hand on his heart. “Then let us surrender and seek in the same breath, dance and be still in the same moment, and let every question be an opening to the infinite.”

The dervishes spun, the stars whispered their eternal hymns, and in that sacred moment, the two souls dissolved into the truth they had always been searching for (this conversation between Rumi and Tabrizi is a speculation.

Final thoughts

In every tradition, in every era, those who embody both surrender and insatiable curiosity have been regarded as mystics, sages, or enlightened beings. They are the ones who, having relinquished the illusion of control, do not fall into complacency but remain ever in alert of the mysteries that surround them. They walk the fine line between faith and inquiry, between acceptance and the hunger for truth. They do not demand certainty, nor do they silence the questions that arise from the depths of their souls.

And yet, this path is not easy. To surrender entirely is to risk becoming passive, unquestioning, susceptible to dogma. To thirst endlessly for knowledge is to risk being consumed by doubt, lost in an abyss of endless questioning. But to hold both within oneself, to surrender while still seeking, to seek while still surrendering, is to touch a rare and luminous wisdom.

This is the struggle of those who refuse to choose between the two, those who will not be confined to the rigid walls of blind faith nor the cold corridors of relentless skepticism.

They live in the mystery, where certainty dissolves, where the heart bows in surrender even as the mind reaches ever outward. They know, in a way beyond words, that the deepest truths are not possessed, not conquered, but glimpsed in fleeting moments, like sunlight breaking through a veil of clouds, like a whisper carried on the wind.

Best wishes to all,

Copyright 2025 Prof. Fahd Nasr. All rights reserved. yeastwonderfulworld.wordpress.com

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