Between the sea and the earth
Recording 04 of 12
The symbolism of natural world
The talk moves from nature’s wonder to civilisation’s compromise, from success and suffering to the reclamation of love through the six senses, grounded in the body’s present good.
LENGTH: 30 MINUTES
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH
YEAR RECORDED: 1990
PLACE RECORDED: TAMBORINE MOUNTAIN, AUSTRALIA
MAIN TOPICS
Divine life, Suffering, Honeymoon, Purpose of suffering, Purpose of meditation, Symbolism of nature, Meditation practice, Difference between sex and love
SUMMARY
Beginning on a mountain with birdsong, the movement contrasts the sea's heady, cosmic vastness with the inland's manifold life, and recognises the desert as the earth's sea. Between these powers stands civilisation—neither one nor the other—living by names, measures, and analyses. A worldly anecdote punctures the allure of success; the remedy is simple doing, not striving, letting results belong to life.
A 'new myth' redefines sex as love when the five senses awaken the sixth—the direct perceiving of the whole. Woman embodies the idea of love, and man fulfils it by loving with his total senses; otherwise she is left partly loved and becomes hardened by necessity. The teaching turns from 'spiritual life' as code-following to 'divine life' as the immediate good felt in the living body. Right suffering is to be with what is, not to dream of elsewhere. To escape 'brain-weed,' intelligence returns to the whole body. The honeymoon end is prevented by putting fist thing first: first bodies, then worldly activities.
Outline – The sea, The forest, the earth, the desert, Paul Newman's sauce, The meaning of the word sex, The sixth sense, Woman embodies the idea of love, The divine life and the spiritual life, Right suffering, Brainweed, Why does the honeymoon end? Meditation as a discipline
03 - Place and position in the surge of the sea
